Mr. Hawkins, whom I have quoted, entitled his book Chords and Discords. What did he mean by “discords”? Perhaps a disparagement of his muse’s efforts at music. Perhaps, and rather, something in the content, for the contrasts are sharp, the tones are piercing. These “discords” abound in contemporary Negro verse. Between the octave and the sestet of the following sonnet, by Mrs. Carrie W. Clifford, the discord is of the kind that stabs you:
AN EASTER MESSAGE
Now quivering to life, all nature thrills
At the approach of that triumphant queen,
Pink-fingered Easter, trailing robes of green
Tunefully o’er the flower-embroidered hills,
Her hair perfumed of myriad daffodils:
Upon her swelling bosom now are seen
The dream-frail lilies with their snowy sheen,
As lightly she o’erleaps the spring-time rills.
To black folk choked within the deadly grasp
Of racial hate, what message does she bring
Of resurrection and the hope of spring?
Assurance their death-stupor is a mask—
A sleep, with elements potential, rife.
Ready to burst full-flowered into life.
The Negro’s deep resentment of his wrongs has found its most artistic expression in the verse of a poet who came to us from Jamaica—Mr. Claude McKay. In another chapter I have given the reader an opportunity to judge of his merits. He
