| James Weldon Johnson, ed. (1871–1938). The Book of American Negro Poetry. 1922. |
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| Negro Poets |
| | | Charles Bertram Johnson |
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| FULL many lift and sing | |
| Their sweet imagining; | |
| Not yet the Lyric Seer, | |
| The one bard of the throng, | |
| With highest gift of song, | 5 |
| Breaks on our sentient ear. | |
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| Not yet the gifted child, | |
| With notes enraptured, wild, | |
| That storm and throng the heart, | |
| To make his rage our own, | 10 |
| Our hearts his lyric throne; | |
| Hard won by cosmic art. | |
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| I hear the sad refrain, | |
| Of slavery’s sorrow-strain; | |
| The broken half-lispt speech | 15 |
| Of freedom’s twilit hour; | |
| The greater growing reach | |
| Of larger latent power. | |
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| Here and there a growing note | |
| Swells from a conscious throat; | 20 |
| Thrilled with a message fraught | |
| The pregnant hour is near; | |
| We wait our Lyric Seer, | |
| By whom our wills are caught. | |
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| Who makes our cause and wrong | 25 |
| The motif of his song;’ | |
| Who sings our racial good, | |
| Bestows us honor’s place, | |
| The cosmic brotherhood | |
| Of genius—not of race. | 30 |
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| Blind Homer, Greek or Jew, | |
| Of fame’s immortal few | |
| Would still be deathless born; | |
| Frail Dunbar, black or white, | |
| In Fame’s eternal light, | 35 |
| Would shine a Star of Morn. | |
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| An unhorizoned range, | |
| Our hour of doubt and change, | |
| Gives song a nightless day, | |
| Whose pen with pregnant mirth | 40 |
| Will give our longings birth, | |
| And point our souls the way? | |
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