We would be all that Thou hast meant for man,
Up through the ages, since the world began!
God! save us in Thy Heaven, where all is well!
We come slow-struggling up the Hills of Hell!
Too confidently, as we may learn, have we of the other race relied upon the Negro's innate optimism to keep him a safe citizen and a long-suffering servant. That optimism, that gaiety and buoyancy of spirit, if not indestructible in the African soul, is yet reducible to the vanishing point. There are signs of something quite different in the attitude of Negroes toward their white neighbors to-day. In their poetry this reputed optimism, where it exists, is found in union with a note of melancholy or of bitter complaint. A characteristic utterance of this mood I find in a poem entitled “The Optimist,” from which I will give one-third of its stanzas:
Never mind, children, be patient awhile,
And carry your load with a nod and a smile,
For out of the hell and the hard of it all,
Time is sure to bring sweetest honey—not gall.
Out of the hell and the hard of it all,
A bright star shall rise that never shall fall:
A God-fearing race—proud, noble, and true,
Giving good for the evil which they always knew.
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