He talks of kings and in his eyes at times
I catch parading banners tossing by
He puts to rout my gathering cloud of rhymes
By smiling suddenly and lifting high
His weather-beaten forehead to the sky.
With speculative twists he throws the ball
Of chatter with agility most spry
And keeps the thread, nor loses it at all.

His face is like old oak the sun has burned
To mellow beauty, and his eye is such
That if it suddenly on me is turned
I am aware of things that matter much
In analysing why the common touch
Of sight to sight means more than words may say,
And why the earth may sometimes seem a smutch
Of soot upon the lintel of the day.

He grows in greatness to his words and I
Diminish in their magic to an ear
Existing solely for the thoughts that fly
In colored ardency from him so near
And I so far, thoughts longer than a year
With wisdom heaped on wisdom, yet they pass
As swiftly as a half-unconscious tear
Dropped suddenly upon a heated glass.

He hitches up his one suspender, chews
Tobacco with a ruminating air,
Dissects with equanimity the news
Of warring nations, with a word lays bare
The white nerve-centers of some great affair
And solves the riddle that a statesman died
To find the key to, turns a knowing stare
Upon humanity—and once he sighed.

He sits upon this battered hulk, the earth,
And plays with theory as men with dice.
He knows the nations from their feeble birth
In prehistoric fields of sliding ice.
Through age and age he traces each device
That man perfected for the sake of Man,
And has no need to brood upon them twice,
But places each within its proper plan.

Incompetent he may be for a world
Too eager of delight to know a seer
Who reads the heavens as a sign unfurled
And finds philosophy a spinning drear.
But there are times I feel that gods are near
And through the windows of his eyes a light,
Auspicious, awful and divinely clear,
Glows like the burning bush across the night.

Had I a land that I might call my home,
I would be glad;
But I'm compelled this cruel world to roam
With feeling sad,
Because the Lord, in his wise way, preferred
To make me black;
Therefore the lighter races of this earth
Would keep me back.

Methinks, sometimes, it is a hard, rough lot
The Negro has to bear, willing or not:
He's scorned and driv'n about from door to door
Without an open ear to his implore;
Without a heart's being touched by his sad plight;
Without a hand to help his way to fight,
Save that of God, who doth all things aright.

Two hundred eighty years have past and gone
Since first he trod upon this unkind land:
Two hundred eighty years of basest wrong
Pollute this nation's history, to stand
As long as this creation shall extend,
Though not recorded by historian's pen.

The boasted pride sung by this populace,
The liberty and freedom talked upon
Are not enjoyed by this darker race,
Although these do by right to it belong.

A flag which doth enshroud beneath its fold
Such deeds of crime unwritten and untold,
Save by the hand and tongue of the oppressed,
Or by a friend,—of whom we few possess,—
Is not a flag of freedom, nor for right,
However long it wave, or to what height.

Yet, such a flag does now wave o'er our head,
Intent our names to hide of martyred dead;
But no; the Negro's tongue shall not be hushed,
Nor his protesting feeling e'er be crushed,
Until the hand of dastard crime is stayed
And bound by freedom's laws, by free men made.