This page has been validated.
AD ASTRA PER ASPERA
185
what might to another man, in the middle years of his life, have seemed a bitter loss, but of love, and exhortation, and encouragement. Blind, he lives in the Light. In his little book, entitled Daddy’s Love and Other Poems, are poems witnessing to a beautiful spirit, poems of beauty. Because of its sage counsel, however, I pass over some of these lovelier expressions of sentiment and choose a didactic piece:
TO OUR BOYS
I speak to you, my Colored boys,
I bid you to be men,
Don’t put yourselves upon the rack
Like pigeons in a pen.
Come out and face life’s problem, boys,
With faith and courage too,
And justify that wondrous faith,
Abe Lincoln had in you.
Don’t treat life as a little toy,
A dance or a game of ball;