For time was, once, when e’en your eyes
Saw Heaven plainly, in the skies.
Past twilight, when a brave moon glowed
Just o’er the treetops, and the road
Was full of romping children—say,
What was the game we used to play?
Yes! Hide-and-seek. And at the base,
Who first must go and hide his face?
Remember—standing in a row—
“Eeny meeny miny mo”?
“Eeny meeny miny mo.”
How fare we children here below?
Our moon is far from treetops now,
And Heaven isn’t up, somehow.
No more for sport play we “I spy”;
Our “laying low” and “peeping high”
Are now with consequences fraught;
There’s black disgrace in being caught.
But what’s to pay the pains we take?
Let’s play the game for its own sake,
And, ere ’tis time to homeward flit,
Let’s get some pleasure out of it.
For death will soon count down the row,
“Eeny meeny miny mo.”
Though of the elder day yet Allen is, like Dunbar, a herald of the generation that is now articulate. In this rôle of herald to a more self-assertive generation, a more aspiring and race-conscious one, he speaks with immense significance to us in this first poem of his book, which, as being prophetic of much we now see in the colored folk
