o's mind," they yet truly reveal, to the reflecting person, what
has sunk deep into his heart. They are therefore a message to America,
a protest, an appeal, and a warning. They will penetrate, I predict,
through breast armor of _aes triplex_ into the hearts of those whom
sermons and editorials fail to touch in the springs of action. Such is
the virtue of music wed to persuasive words.

A sonnet entitled _To a Caged Canary in a Negro Restaurant_ will
present the poet's people and his own manner of poetic musing:

Thou little golden bird of happy song!
A cage cannot restrain the rapturous joy
Which thou dost shed abroad. Thou dost employ
Thy bondage for high uses. Grievous wrong
Is thine; yet in thy heart glows full and strong
The tropic sun, though far beyond thy flight,
And though thou flutterest there by day and night
Above the clamor of a dusky throng.
So let my will, albeit hedged about
By creed and caste, feed on the light within;
So let my song sing through the bars of doubt
With light and healing where despair has been;
So let my people bide their time and place,
A hindered but a sunny-hearted race.

It would be an injustice to this poet did I convey the idea that his
seventy-odd poems are exclusively occupied with race wrongs and
oppression. Not a few of them bear no stamp of an oppressed or
afflicted spirit, though of sorrow they may have been nurtured.

A lyric of pure loveliness is the following, entitled:

TO A NOBLY-GIFTED SINGER

All the pleasance of her face
Telleth of an inward grace;
In her dark eyes I have seen
Sorrows of the Nazarene;
In the proud and perfect mould
Of her body I behold,
Rounded in a single view,
The good, the beautiful, the true;
And when her spirit goes up-winging
On sweet air of artless singing,
Surely the heavenly spheres rejoice
In union with a kindred voice.

_The Wings of Oppression_ strikes a high level of artistic expression
and makes a quite extraordinary appeal. It is intense poetry, lyrical
and meditative.

Here is that solid body of thought which, in addition to artistic
expression, is requisite to poetry that attains and holds a high place
of esteem. Great variety of form is also here; excellent blank verse
with a movement at once easy and restrained, an equable, strong flow,
bearing lofty meditations; sonnets after the manner of the masters;
octo