however, fails to become clear. If, with his copiousness, the reserve of disciplined art ever becomes his, and his critical faculty is trained to match his creative, then poetry of noteworthy merit may be expected from him. His deeply religious bent, his aspiration after the best things of the mind, his ambition to treat lofty themes, augur well for him.
Mr. Jones’s two best poems, The Sylvan Cabin: A Centenary Ode on the Birth of Abraham Lincoln and An Ode to Ethiopia: to the Aspiring Negro Youth, are too long for insertion here. I will give a shorter patriotic ode, not included in his book, but written, I believe, during the World War:
FLAG OF THE FREE
Flag of the free, our sable sires
First bore thee long ago
Into hot battles’ hell-lit fires,
Against the fiercest foe.
And when he shook his shaggy mien,
And made the death-knell ring,
Brave Attucks fell upon the Green,
Thy stripes first crimsoning.
Thy might and majesty we hurl,
Against the bolts of Mars;
And from thy ample folds unfurl
Thy field of flaming stars!
Fond hope to nations in distress,
Thy starry gleam shall give;
The stricken in the wilderness
Shall look to thee and live.
