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THE POETRY OF PROTEST
233
Or shall I with love prophetic bid you dauntlessly arise,
Spurn the handicap that binds you, taking what the world denies?
Bid you storm the sullen fortress built by prejudice and wrong,
With a faith that shall not falter in your heart and on your tongue!
The second is by Will Sexton:
TO MY LOST CHILD
It is well, child of my heart, the rosebush drops its petals on your grave.
It is well, child of my heart, the sparrow sings to you when Aurora has rouged the sky.
In your trundle bed deep in the bosom of the earth you can dream pleasanter dreams than I.
You have never felt the sting of living in a white man’s civilization and beneath a white man’s laws.
You have never been forced to dance to the music of hate played by an idle orchestra.
You have never toiled long hours and bowed and scraped for the chance to breathe.
In your dreams you wonder in the Heaven beyond the skies with the God civilization rebukes.
Tell me, little child, are you not happy in that realm no white man can enter?
In much of this utterance of protest, this arraignment of the white man’s civilization that rebukes God, there may be more passion than poesy. But out of such passion, as it were a
