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P aul L aurence Dunbar
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Voet Laureate of the
cHegro cRace
<By
Mrs. Paul Laurence Dunbar
Frof. W. 5. Scarborough
Reverdy C. Ransom
Illustrated
^printed from The A. M. E. Church RefbieU)
Published at 631 Piue Street, Philadelphia, Pa.
Reverdy C. Ransom, Editor
Trice Fifteen
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PATJ£. LAURENCE DUNBAR
Paul Haitrettr? Smthar
IJopt Haur?atr of the Nfgrn Starr
BY
Mrs. Paul Laurence Dunbar Prof; W. S. Scarborough
Reverdy C. Ransom
ILLUSTRATED
%rjmntrb from A. ii. IE. (Hljurrli Uruifui
■publtalfrii by
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THE POET AND HIS SONG
Alice M. Dunbar
UR notions upon the subject of Biography," says
Carlyle, "may perhaps appear extravagant; but
if an individual is really of consequence enough
to have his life and character for public remem¬
brance, we have always been of opinion that the
public ought to be made acquainted with all the
inward springs and relations of his character.
How did the world and the man's life, from his par¬
ticular position, represent themselves to his mind? How did co¬
existing circumstances modify him from without; how did he modify
these from within? With what endeavors and what efficacy rule
over them; with what resistance and what suffering sink under them?
* * * Few individuals, indeed, can deserve such a study; and
many lives will be written, and, for the gratification of innocent
curiosity, ought to be written, and read and forgotten, which are not,
in this sense, biographies."
Thus Carlyle. It would seem then, that if one must write about
a poet, the world would wish to know how and in what manner the
great phenomena of Nature impressed him, for Nature is the mother
of all poets and there can be no true poetry unless inspired deeply
by the external world which men do not touch. If the poet was an
urban child, if the wonder of star-filled nights, the mystery of the
sea, the beauty of sunrise and sunset, the freshness of dewy morns,
and the warm scent of the upturned sod filled him with no rapture,
then he was no true poet, howsoever he rhymed. So if one wishes
to get a correct idea of any poet whatever, he must delve beneath the
mere sordid facts of life and its happenings; of so many volumes
published in such and such a time; of the influence upon him of this
or that author or school of poetry; of the friends who took up his time,
or gave him inspiration, and, above all, one must see what the love of
Nature has done for the poet.
Mere looking into the printed words may not always do this.
Who knows what heart-full of suggestion may lie in one expression?
Who can tell in how much one word may be, as Higginson has ex-
6
Paul Laurence Dunbar
pressed it, "palaces to dwell in," "years of crowded passion in a
phrase," "half a life concentrated in a sentence?" To the banal mind
a phrase may be nothing but a sweet rhythm of language, a well-
turned, well-chosen expression. To the one who may have had the
chance of communion with the creative mind, ere it expressed its
longings in words, the phrase may be all pregnant with suggestion.
Your true poet is a child o^ Nature and lies close to the great
Mother-heart. Even though he were born in the city, where his out¬
look on trees and fields is an incidental and sporadic occurrence in
his life, he senses the divine heart pulsing beneath all things, and
when he is finally brought face to face with the wonders of out-of-
doors, untouched by the desecrating hand of man, he bursts forth into
song, released from the conventionalities of other men's verse.
This was true of Paul Dunbar. He was a child of the city, a
small city, true, where Nature was not so ruthlessly crushed away
from the lives of men. There were trees and flowers near home, and
a never-to-be-forgotten mill-race, which swirled through all his
dreams of boyhood and manhood. Like the true poet that he was,
he reached out and groped for the bigness of out-of-doors, divining
all that he was afterwards to see, and in his earlier verse expressing
his intuitions, rather than his observations.
Love of nature was there, but the power to express this love
was not. Instead, he harked back to the feeling of the race, and
intuitively put their aspirations into song. Tennyson and Lowell
meant much to him, because they had expressed his yearnings for the
natural world, and his soul yearned toward their verse. The exquisite
line, "When cows come home along the bars—" how much of the
English poet went into that line, and how much of the reminiscences
of the earlier life of his family? More of the former, he always
confessed.
Children love "The Seedling." It is good for them who are being
initiated, city-wise, into the mysteries of planting and growth. It
is scientific, without being technical—it is Tennyson's "Flower in the
crannied wall," Americanized, brought down to the minds of little
folks. The poet loved Tennyson, he walked with him in his earlier
years, he confessed his indebtedness to him in his later days; he
always praised him, and defended him hotly against the accusation
of too much mere academic phrasing.
In the poem "Preparation" we see more of this groping toward
the light; the urban child trying to throw off the meretriciousness
of city life. Say what you will, or what Mr. Howells wills, about the
"feeling the Negro life esthetically, and expressing it lyrically," it
was in the pure English poems that the poet expressed himself. He
PoPt Laureate of the Negro Race
7
may have expressed his race in the dialect poems; they were to him
the side issues of his work, the overflowing of a life apart from his
dearest dreams. His deepest sorrow he told in "The Poet."
He sang of life serenely sweet,
With now and then a deeper note.
From some high peak, nigh, yet remote,
He voiced the world's absorbing heat.
He sang of love when earth was your.g,
/wid love itself, was in its lays,
But, ah, the world, it turned to praise
A jingle in a broken tongues.
This is a digression. "Preparation" is contemporaneous with
"Discovered" and "Delinquent," but in "the latter poems, he is feeling
his way to make the laughter that the world will like; in the former,
he is feeling his way to that true upward expression of the best in
him. "A little bird sits in the nest and sings" is too much of Lowell
to be true, "But the note is a prelude to better things," reflecting as
in solution the thought of the "Vision of Sir Lkunfal." Our poet
cast the poem aside as a thing of no worth, nor is it, except as it
glimpses a bit of the soul within, like Lowell's clod "reaching up to
a soul in grass and flowers."
Then came the experience on the lake. It was a never-to-be-for¬
gotten summer. Opportunity and youth combined with poetry and
the unsuspected beauty of the inland sea. Nature burst upon him
witb a surge. He knew now to the full the beauty of the gray days
that he had dimly sung; the wind rising along the lake reeds and
shivering premonition into them; the moon scudding before the wind
clouds like a pale wraith with flung-back hair; the storm, never so
swift in its wrath as on the shores of a lake; these things entered
into his soul like a revelation. This, then, was what it all meant—
these quivering fears and wonders of the early spring. From a little
boy, he confessed, the spring filled him with longings, unexpressed,
vague, terrible, like the fears, of the night, which persisted long after
manhood. What did it mean, this terrible loneliness, this longing
for companionship, and disgust with mere human company? He
knew now. Nature had called him, and he had not been able to heed
her call, until the Lake told him how.
He had- sung about "Merry Autumn" in the conventional manner;
he had enumerated pictures in the "Song of Summah," and he had
written many conventional spring poems, dialect and otherwise, from
the point of view of the spectator, but now began that passionate
8
Paul Laurence Dunbar'
MRS. PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR
Poet Laureate of the Negro Race 9
oneness with Nature, that was not to leave him until he deliberately
turned his back upon her.
Beginning with that summer, he began to learn how to store up
pictures in the mind as Wordsworth did. He began, mind you, only
began to vlearn how to accumulate experiences that would later burst
red-hot in one phrase, one line, one stanza that combined a month's
experiences, a season's joy, a year's longing in them. It is only the
true poet-heart that can do this. Whether or not it may be able to
express it in rhythm, or metre, or music, or painting, or express it at
all, is a mere matter of no moment. If these accumulated experiences
be stifled in the sweet darkness of the heart, that is no matter, they
have been; it is enough.
This faculty of stored experiences swiftly phrased may be ex¬
quisitely traced in many a poem. There was in Washington a bare,
red-clay hill, open to the sun, barren of shade on its highest point,
steep of ascent, boldly near the sky—truly, almost a "heaven-kissing
hill." Daily walks on the hill fulminate in one line in "Love's Apo¬
theosis," the sun-kissed hill." The white arc light of the corner lamp,
filtering through the arches of the maples on Spruce street, make for
the tender suggestion in "Lover's Lane," where the lovers walk side
by side under the "shadder-mekin' " trees. Up in the mountains of
the Catskills, where the rain fell often in July days, more often than
the lover of out-door sports would relish, there was one little phoebe-
bird, who would sing plaintively through all the rain, ending with a
mournful chirp when the sun shone out at last. His little song through
the disappointing storm was infinitely cheering, and often finds ex^
pression in the song of the human bird who listened to him.
An' it's moughty ha'd a-hopin'
W'en de clouds is big an' black,
An' all de t'ings you's waited fu'
Has failed—er gone to wrack—
But des keep on a joggin' wid a little bit of song,
De mo'n is alius brightah w'en de night's been long-.
"Keep a Song Up on De Way" enshrines both the little bird and
the beloved water-fall that boomed all night under the windows. The
first and third stanzas were merrily conceived and merrily written,
a "compliment to the persistent bird."
Oh, de clouds is mighty heavy—
(The cloud wraiths used to creep down the mountain side and
10
Paul Laurence Dunbar
literally, camp in the front yard, so that one went stumbling about
in the mixture of cloud.and mist.),
An' de rain is mighty thick;
Keep a song up on de way.
And de waters is a rumblin'
On de boulders in de crick,
Keep a song up on de way.
Fu' a bird ercross de road
Is a-singin' lak he knowed
Dat we people didn't daih
Fu' to try de rainy aih
Wid a song up on de way.
The power of keen observation grows in arithmetical ratio as the
soul divests itself of the littlenesses of life, the mere man-made am¬
bitions, the ignoble strivings after place. The poet found new joy
in the patch-work greenery of the mountains spread out at his feet;
in the lights and shades on the fields of rye and corn and wheat and
buckwheat, making the mountains seem as if Mother Nature had
cunningly embroidered a huge cover for her summer dress. When he
discovered, on the first visit, that the ground of the potato fields
was violet, he cried aloud for joy. It had been a hard struggle to
see that the light turned violet in the shadows under the vines, but
when the realization came home, it was an exquisite sensation, worthy
to be enshrined in a tender line. Thereafter, the mountains meant
more than they had before, and subsequent visits always held out a
promise of new things to be keenly detected and shoutingly an¬
nounced. The waterfall that droned all night, save when, swollen
with pride by the rain, it roared; the rain pouring down slantwise
through the skies across the fields; the clouds casting great shadows
athwart the mountain sides may have been forgotten those summers,
yet, trick-like, they return here and there in unexpected places, show¬
ing how deeply they had become a part of "that inward eye, which is
the bliss of solitude," of which Wordsworth sings. "The bird's call
and the water's drone," and the "water-fall that sang all night," from
"The Lost Dream," were but single instances of the stored-up mem¬
ories expressed years after the summers in the Catskills were them¬
selves fragments of forgotten days.
In the little poem "Rain-Songs" he sings:
The rain streams down like harp-strings from the sky,
The wind, that world-old harpist, sitteth by;
And ever, as he sings his low refrain,
He plays upon the harp-strings of the rain.
This came long after the simile of the harp-strings had been dis¬
covered, exulted over and laid aside on the tables of his memory.
Poet Laureate of the Negro Race
11
One more recollection of those days in the mountains is worth
recording. The first time the song of the whip-poor-will came to him,
he was amused. Plaintive it is to all who hear it for the first time,
but to him it suggested tattling, from its nervous haste, its gasping
intake of breath, like a little boy trying to clear himself from fault,
yet half pleading that his companion in misdeeds be let go unpunished.
The poet queried with much anxiety of every one on the place, was the
cry "Whip-poor-will" a command, or was it "Whip-poor-will" a pa¬
thetic question and hoping of Will's final exoneration? It was a
whimsical turn that he gave to the cry of the night-bird, and the
shrill insistence of the katy-did in the little poem "Whip-poor-Will
and Katy-Did," when he wants to know why one must "Whip-poor-
Will," when we know from the song of the insect that it was Katy
who did?
This humorous outlook on Nature is a quaint turn of mind that
few poets posses. Nature is stern, awful, sweet, sympathetic, lov¬
able, but hardly humorous, so the world thinks. Yet where are there
such exquisite manifestations of humor to be found in the man-
made world about us? Nature's humor is grim sometimes, tricksy
sometimes, dainty ofttimes, and sternly practical many times. To
view life with humor is as Nature intended us to do. The gods must
laugh, else where did men learn how?
This apropos of West Medford, Massachusetts. Here he visited
thrice, and confessed that the place held for him the charm of hallowed
association, which all the country near Boston must have for the
world born outside Massachusetts, which still rules the minds of the
hoi polloi with the potent sway of the nearest approach in this coun¬
try to anything like reposeful ease and culture. But historic spots
and monuments and powder mills of Revolutionary fame and battle¬
fields meant but little after a while to the poet. Middlesex county
abounds in rivers—were they fishable ? Fishing was his one pastime,
which he loved ardently, passionately, with the devotion of the true
fisherman. Was there a river? Then the next question, "How is
the "fishing?" Walton's "Compleat Angler," is all right to read, but
better to live. Anyhow it contains too many recipes for cooking. Van
Dyke's "Fisherman's Luck" is better, particularly as the book is
dedicated to the "Lady in Gray." Fishing and the color gray! His
favorite sport and color; an unforgettable combination.
So the streams in the Catskills were deliciously suggestive of
mountain trout, and even native indolence and poor health did not
prevent him from arising one Fourth of July morning at three o'clock,
and taking with him all the valiant souls who would go, to hie them
to an over-fished stream, where the most carefully chosen flies only
12
Paul Laurence Dunbar
made the trout sniff and flirt themselves arrogantly; and where the
unsportsmanlike women, having found a cool pool to use as a re¬
frigerator, were stupid enough to try to tempt sophisticated suckers
to bite—and that after a fierce cannonading of fire-crackers in honor
of their early patriotism.
So West Medford suggested fishing, wonderful possibilities. What
though Longfellow had enshrined the Mystic in the Hall of Fame by
the lines in Paul Revere's Ride? That was no matter. Anything as
brown and dimpled and slow as that river must be fishable. Thus
he decided on his first visit and came back to investigate when there
was more time, and lo! The result he humorously enshrined in the
"Ballade."
By Mystic's bank I held my dream,
(I held my fishing rod as well) ;
The vision was of dace and bream,
A fruitless vision, sooth to tell.
* * * * *
Oh, once loved, sluggish, darkling stream,
For me no more thy waters swell,
Thy music now the engines' scream,
Thy fragrance now the factory's smell.
* * * * *
Thy wooded lanes with shade and gleam
Where bloomed the fragrant asphodel.
Poor Mystic! "Arcadia now has trolley lines," mourns the poet,
and so wends his way home to put up his fishing rod, and pack away
the reel until the streams of the Rocky Mountains lure the basket
and rod out again.
To the soul born inland, the sea is always a revelation, and a
wonder-working experience in the life. The man born near the sea,
who has been reared near its beauty and wonder, whose soul has
learned early in life to enter into its moods, to understand its gentle¬
ness and not to fear its grimness, whose life has been attuned to
the roar of the breakers and the purl of its littlest white waves,
such a man can scarcely understand the rush and uplift that comes
to the inland man who sees the ocean in his maturity for the first
time. Such was the tidal wave that swept over the poet when the
ocean burst upon his view. And like all those born inland, when
once the fascination of the sea possesses them, it becomes more /ex-
Poet Laureate of the Negro Rare
13
quisitely a part of the whole nature than even it does in the case
of the one born on the shores of the sea. When the sea became a
part of the poet's life, it wrapped itself naturally into his verse—
but hardly ever disassociated from the human element. Humanity and
the ocean melted into one indistinguishable mist, even as Words¬
worth's moors were always peopled with one shadowy figure so in¬
distinct that it merged into the grayness of the horizon. There is
no hint of the sea, save from the hearsay point, in the first published
volume of poems, but before the second came, Narragansett Pier had
opened his eyes to the mystic beauty of the ocean, and his soul to its
turbulence. The journey to England made him familiar with the
gray nothingness of mid-ocean, and life subsequently meant fre¬
quent pilgrimages to the seashore. Gray skies and gray sea; these
meant most to him; sombreness and gloom seemed part of the real
meaning of the ocean. One need not seek in the life of the poet a kin¬
ship between love of the serious aspects of nature and a fancied
wrong or injury in life. Because Milton always loved the moon
veiled in clouds is no reason why we should conclude that early and
unfortunate loves left him unable to view skies moonlit and cloudless
without sorrow. Because Keats found passionate intensity of emo¬
tion in the mere aspect of Grecian beauty, a passion that saddened
him, is no reason why we should conclude that Greece had wronged
him or that beauty had wrecked his life. A poet is a poet because
he understands; because he is born with a divine kinship with all
things, and he is a poet in direct ratio to his power of sympathy.
Something of this, emanating from his own experience the poet
shows in his poem "Sympathy."
"I know what the caged bird feel, alas!"
The iron grating of the book stacks in the Library of Congress
suggested to him the bars of the bird's cage. June and July days
are hot. All out of doors called arid the trees of the shaded streets
of Washington were tantalizingly suggestive of his beloved streams
and fields. The torrid sun poured its rays down into the courtyard
of the library and heated the iron grilling of the book stacks until
they were like prison bars in more senses than one. The .dry dust of
the dry books (ironic incongruity!—a poet shut up in an iron cage
with medical works), rasped sharply in his hot throat, and he under¬
stood how the bird felt when it beat its wings against its cage.
When he went down to Arundel-on-the-Bay—picturesque name
of a~picturesque place—he was thrilled as though stepping on hal¬
lowed ground. This was the Eastern Shore that gave birth to Doug¬
lass. More than the Boston Common, which memorized Attucks and
14
Paul Laurence Dunbar
deified Robert Gould Shaw and inspired his best sonnets, this was near
the home of the idol of his youthful dreams, the true friend of his
enthusiastic youth. The place was wild after the fashion of the shore
of the Chesapeake; it seemed almost home to him—and the fishing was
excellent. He enshrined it in his memory, and later came the poem
"The Eastern Shore." It was written months after the lure of the
bay had been forgotten when the skies swirled snow down on a shiver¬
ing city, and the mind warmed the body as it harked back to the hot
days of July under the burning skies and over the clean-washed sands
of the Chesapeake Bay. One more poem the eastern shore inspired,
"The Memory of Martha." The story "The Memory of Martha1' be¬
ing finished, the poet found himself rushed onward with a mighty
sympathy for the man he had created, whose wife had left him for
the unknown. It was the poet-heart throbbing in sympathy with the
woes of the universe. He was the old husband, mourning his loss,
even as when he wrote "Two Little Boots"; he was, for the time being,
the broken-hearted mother, mourning over the little shoes. He wept
as he wrote the poem, both poems in fact, and then laughed at his
own tears—no immediate animus for either poem, just the overflow¬
ing of an understanding soul over a fancied grief.
Sometimes with him the memory of the words of another author
commingled with a landscape, and then there is a rare combination
of verse. It was when in the dire grip of pneumonia that the oft-
reiterated desire, perhaps delirious, certainly comic, came for "A bear
story, just one little bear story," to be read aloud to him. blessed
fortune it was then that Ernest Thompson-Seton was just giving to
the world his inimitable "Wild Animals I Have Known," and fever
or no fever, the poet must revel into forgetfulr.ess of pain in listening
to the woes of Raggy-lug, and the too canny wolves and bears. It
made a review of the "Jungle Book" a delightful process, and invited
a re-persual of Bliss Carman's poems. When the Catskills burst
upon his delighted vision a while later, what more natural than that
"To the Road," with its hint of Carman should enshrine the little
white road winding up the mountain side?
Cool is the wind, for the summer is waning—
Who's for the road?
Sun-flecked and soft where the dead leaves are raining,
Knapsack and alpenstock press hand and shoulder—
Merriment here, loud and long, because any old dead branch when
carried on a walk became dignified by the name of alpenstock, and the
leather chatelaine purse of the companion in tramping became a
knapsack.
Poet Laureate of the Negro Race
15
The "Forest Greeting" enshrined both Kipling and Thompson-
Seton. "Good Hunting," from the cry of the wood brothers in the
"Jungle Book," but the mourning was for the wounded animals, the
funeral wail of the little ones left alone to whose sufferings Thompson-
Seton was the first to call attention in an unsentimental way.
All this newly-acquired love of the wee things of Nature and life
had taught him to let the smallest suggestions find expression in the
quaintest turns of comic verse. The east winds from the Massa-
chussetts Bay howl around the houses of West Medford, and their
piercing "Woo—oo—ee!" suggested the "Boogah Man," written for
the very tiny maiden of two years, who persisted in hugging his
avuncular shoes when he wanted to write sonnets about Harriet
Beecher Stowe and Robert Gould Shaw. How can one work? he asked
fretfully, and then burst laughingly into "How's a poet to write a son¬
net, can you tell?" And so dashed off the poem on scrap paper, and
read it aloud to the small maiden, who thereupon suggested that the
"Woo—oo" of the wind was a "Boogah Man." So that was written
immediately, dramatizing it as he wrote, much to her delight.
The dramatic instinct was strong behind the delicate perception
of the power of suggestion. One must dramatize the poems as they
were written, white hot. So, when "The Dance" and "The Valse"
were penned, the metre must be dramatized in order to get it right;
anapestic tetrameter admits of no limping lines; so one must waltz,
humming the lines in order that there be no faulty rhythm. It was
well that there were good dar.cers in the household to be sure there
would be correct metre. "Whistling Sam" was troublesome. All had to
whistle Sam's tunes, and then the music teacher must come and play
them out on the piano, and transcribe the musical notation to be
sure there were no mistakes.
Suggestion—that power of making one idea bring out a poem
apparently foreign to the original thought—was never more humor¬
ously exemplified than in "Lias" ard "Dat 01' Mare o' Mine," both
products of that winter in Colorado. "Dat 01' Mare" was a weird
and eccentric maiden horse of uncertain age and dubious ancestry,
whose ideas were diametrically opposed to any preconceived notions
one might suppose horses in general and Colorado horses in partic¬
ular to have. But she would come home "on de ve'y da'kest night,"
without guidance, even if she did betray doubtful pre-ownership in the
day-time when an exaspeiat<d an I emlarrassed woman drove her into
Arapahoe street, the end of the ranch road, upon which street she
would make frequent, unpsychological and embarrassing stops. But
16
Paul Laurence Dunbar
she would come home unguided and sure, hence "Dat 01' Mare o'
Mine."
There never was a "Lias," except generically, but maternal ad¬
jurations as to the beauty of the life of the despised early worm,
and the "early to rise" maxim generally was greeted with Homeric
laughter, and culminated in poor abused "Lias."
Colorado! As much of a revelation of Nature as the sea! But
"DAT OL' MARE O' MINE"
here was a new mother, more stern, less sure, never so capable of
intimacy. Magnificent sweep of mountain range visible from the
windows of the tiny house on the ranch—one hundred and fifty miles
of Rocky J^puntairs, from Pil e's Peak to Long's Peak, with all the
unnamed spurs in between! Unsurpassed sunsets, wonderful sun¬
rises that flushed the eastern prairies, and reflected back on the
snows of the mountains in the west so that the universe went
suffused in a riotous prismatic color scheme; the meadow lark perched
Poet Laureate of the Negro Race
17
on the eaves of the house, tossing golden liquid sweetness to the high
clear heavens; cowboys herding unwilling cattle across the horizon,
miles and miles away; clear ozone, thin air which pierced the lungs
and made them expand, sharp extremes in January from 60 degrees
above to 30 degrees below. Here was Nature, untamed, unconfined,
unfamiliar, wild. It went to the head like new wine, and ideas came
rushing, fulminating, fructifying. One forgot sometimes, and it be¬
came comic when forgetting that the altitude of Denver and the sur¬
rounding land of 5200 feet or more was just becoming familiar; one
rushed fearlessly into the higher strata of other towns, like Lead-
ville and Colorado Springs, and was brought sharp up against the
stubborn fact that rarity of air is not to be tampered with by the
tenderfoot.
But the longing for the beloved East persisted, and though two
novels and some short stories came forth that winter, the verse halted
because the heart was elsewhere. "A Warm Day in Winter" and
"Spring Fever" are both suggestive of the East, yet both were de¬
scriptive of days in Harmon. In the darkness of the night came the
sound of a herd of cattle, padding1 feet echoing through closed doors,
and so the simile of a race struggling slowly through the dark was
born, and the poem "Slow Through the Dark" came to life:
Slow moves the pageant of a climbing race;
Their footsteps drag far, far below the height—
The spectacle of a small caravan climbing the heights of the
mountains in the far distance, up the steep winding road that crept
whitely out of sight across the snow-capped boulders, was pregnant
with the same suggestion. So came to his mind "By Rugged Ways":
By rugged ways and through the night
We struggle blindly toward the light.
These two poems were always among his favorites. The darker
side of the problems of the race life was being brought home more
and more forcibly to him as he grew older, and the stern ruggedness
of nature in the Rocky Mountains forced him to a realization of the
grim problems of the world's work.
As the herd of cattle climbing the sides of the mountain sug¬
gested something more than insensate animals struggling toward food
and shelter, so the trifle of a brick side yard, damp and shut in by
high brick walls of the two houses on each side, made for a riot of odd
little poems. There were many poems born out of the fulness of the
heart, out of a suggestion of long ago, from a picture, from a book,
from a chance expression. Many were truly lyrical in that they were
the record of the "best and happiest moments," as Shelley puts it. So
18
Paul Laurence Dunbar
many were truly poetic in that they were the record of the divine
oneness with all mankind and all nature, and so many were like that
group of November poems in that they were merely experiments in the
power of suggestion.
If a short brick walk between two brick walls of two city houses
does not suggest a cloistered walk of a monastery, what, then, does
it suggest ? And if that walk be damp, as perforce it must be, and if
violet beds grow on the side, wild rank things, pushing through the
brick crevices and allowed to remain because the inmates of the house
are sentimentally fond of violets—even wild ones that grow in city back
yards—what more natural than that all kinds of cool, damp, cloistered
ideas will emanate from the tiny spot? So in one dies mirabilis were
born "To a Violet Found on All Saint's Day," "The Monk's Walk,"
"The Murdered Lover," "Love's Castle," Weltschmertz," "My Lady
of Castle Grand," and "In the Tents at Akbar."
It is a base libel, much advertised and bruited abroad, to label
the exquisite "Violet Found on All Saints' Day" as a vulgar premoni¬
tion, Within the one little flower was all the lesson of "The Seedling,"
fruition now, less Tennyson, more filled uith the understanding of ma¬
turity. The poet had been told by those near him, who once had lived
in a Roman Catholic community, that on All Saints' Day every one
goes to the cemeteries laden with flowers to lay on the graves of the
loved lost ones. He had always loved the custom and he remembered
each All Saints' Day with a tender sympathy. So he saw in the violet
not a premonition of despair, but a sweet effort on its part to bloom
in memory of man's sorrows.
The chill November winds, following an unusually riotously
beautiful Indian summer, waved the bird's nest in the Virginia
creeper on the house next door, and "Weltschmertz" came forth, his
deepest sympathy with all the woe of the world—complete universality
of the true poet, nothing personal, merely infinite. The line "Count
me a priest" betrays its cloister sisterhood. "The Monk's Walk"
was near enough to the original idea of a monastery, but it evolved
into the "Murdered Lover." The little walk grew to mean cloisters,
castles, priests, knights—even "My Lady of Castle Grand," by the
process of suggestion comes to life, for what so medieval as a castle
with an inverted Lady of Shalott?
The medieval fancy ran riot then, and though it seems a far cry
from Tennyson's "Lady of Shalott" to Bayard Taylor's "Bedouin
Love Song," yet such a bridge does the poet's fancy make from reality
to dreamland, that all strange fancies clustered about that cloistered
walk, and his imagination careened out into the desert sands "In the
Tents of Akbar," because the "Murdered Lover" of the poem, written
Poet Laureate of the Negro Race 19
in the morning, suggested the murdered dancing girl under the burn¬
ing skies, and the grief of Akbar rent his heart in the evening. It is
the exceptional mind that drags its pitifully methodical way through
conventional, well-worn grooves of thought. One who thinks at all
thinks by leaps and bounds, ranging all the universe, touching but
tangentially the thought suggested by the last thought, and then
winging swift flight elsewhere. Else wherefore think? One might
as well ruminate. The ]joet puts wings to his words, as Homer
phrases it, "winged words," and lo, a poem is born. And three or four
great poems may have the same trivial place of conception, or a great
soul-shaking experience may culminate in a line. Else why write
poetry ?
The power of Mother Nature having once entered into the poet-
soul, it could never leave altogether. When the day came that he
turned his back upon her deliberately, she did not avenge herself,
but persisted in the haunting line, the pregnant phrase, the tender
mood, albeit dimmer in each succeeding poem. For she gathers all
her children to her breast and croons them melodies that will last
through all eternity, if they will have them last; and even when the
petulant children stop their ears, the inward ear listens to the great
mother heart and heeds its call.
Wilmington, Del.
W. S. SCARBOROUGH
Preside.it Wilberforce University, Wilberforce, Ohio
Poet Laureate of the Negro Race
21
THE POET LAUREATE OF THE NEGRO RACE
W. S. Scarborough, LL. D.
ILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS, Edmund Clarence
Stedman, Eugene Field, James Whitcomb Riley,
James Lane Allen and Robert Ingersoll were the
jury which named Paul Laurer.ce Dar.bar poet
laureate of the Negro race.
Dr. Davis W. Clark, of Boston, in speaking
of our poet, says: "But, when all is said, his
true distin<*Lion lies in the fact that he interpreted
the particular to the universal, the Negro to the whole human race.
He demonstrated, too, by his own genius that the Negro also belongs
to the divine family on earth, in spite of all prejudiced denial. He
easily molded the white man's language into the modes of thought of
the black man and vice versa; thus showing that they are inter¬
changeable. So the community of genius is illustrated and proven.
The accident of his seniority as the poet of his race would alone
insure him a permanent place.
He is the first among ten million. Again, he did not inherit, he
originated. His race had nothing to transmit in the way of literary
or poetic instinct or training. That this young Negro should take
up what has heretofore been the white man's own distinctive art,
and excel and surpass in it, is the marvel of the hour. The Cau¬
casian's wealth of literary inheritance and training of several millen¬
niums seemed to give him no advantage over the meagerly furnished
and heavily handicapped son of Ham. Right worthily, then, is Paul
Laurence Dunbar "laurel-decked."* Thus does Dr. Clark emphasize
the appropriatness of the verdict of these eminent men.
The Unveiling of the Poet's Monument
It was June 26, 1909, that the white citizens of Dayton, Ohior
paid a tribute to the memory of the dead poet by unveiling a monu¬
ment in his honor erected by popular subscription and locating it in
* An extract from the address delivered by Dr. D. W. Clark, of Boston, at the
unveiling of the poet's monument in Dayton's most beautiful cemetery and on the
most beautiful knoll in that cemetery. The other orator was the writer of this
appreciation of the poet.
22
Paul Laurence Dunbar
harmony with the poet's expressed wish under a willow, near a pool
of water and not beyond the noises of the road. (See "Death's Song.")
It was a beautiful sight, more than a thousand of Dayton's best
eitizens had gathered at his tomb that beautiful morning in June,
seemingly vying with one another in paying respect to the memory
of one of their most distinguished dead—Paul Laurence Dunbar.
James Whitcomb Riley was there. It was he who whispered his con¬
dolence in the ear of the poet's mother over the long distance telephone,
"not trusting his pen or waiting for the mail." Others eminent in
poetry and prose and national in reputation were present to do honor
to his memory. The Philharmonic Society—seventy in number—com¬
posed of Dayton's best white musicians, men and women, sang as hymns
the poet's words set to music. It was indeed a gathering for an un¬
usual purpose. It was not that a memorial to a great citizen was an
extraordinary occurrence, for this is almost a daily happening. But
it was a remarkable thing that such a gathering should be in memory
of a man not only of humble birth, bift one of the darker race—one
with a sable skin, the badge of servitude and oppression that has been
the Negro's lot for so many years. But on that day race and color
were lost sight of and the Gem City of Ohio was proud to honor its
distinguished son who had helped to give it fame—to honor him be¬
cause of his worth, his genius, his work.
The old adage that a prophet is not without honor save in his
own country is another instance of the falsity of so many popular
sayings; for in that beautiful city where Paul Laurence Dunbar was
reared, where he made his home and gathered to himself friends—
here he was most highly honored; and in that memorial to him they
not only did honor to an individual man of color who had lived and
wrought so well as to deserve recognition by his fellows, but they did
honor to an entire race, and to mankind regardless of race.
As I considered that splendid tribute to the Negro poet, as I
dwelt upon the meaning of such an expression of appreciation of his
greatness, my heart swelled with pride and gratitude that in this
day and generation such a thing is possible. And I was more and
more convinced that, after all, the possibilities of any race are to be
finally determined by the heights reached by its men of intellect, of
brain, of genius—men of power who are able to touch the hearts and
stir the pulses of the world by their marvelous ability for delineation
by pen, brush or Chisel—men who rise in the realm of the fine arts
and command the world to listen, to gaze, to admire, to respect, to
praise their efforts. That tribute to Dunbar by his white fellow
citizens showed that after all genius is not a matter of race, color
or condition, and that it will win its way forward and upward. The
Poet Laureate of the Negro Race
23
men and women who possess it are the ones who will raise a people
to higher planes. These are the ones who will give this same people
a place among the nations of the earth. These are the ones that
.we especially praise and honor.
But the Negro race has had such men scattered throughout its
history—men of color who have distinguished themselves. We do
not need to go back to the centuries when Bagay or Cugoano or Vassa
lived for such material to declare the Negro's ability. The last
century has given the world a proud list from which we may draw
examples of Negro greatness in the higher walks of life.
I recall with pleasure the sight of a bronze figure in the Place
Malesherbes of Paris which was the work of the great artist and
sculptor Dore. It is that of Alexander Dumas pere, France's great
Negro historical romancer, who has enchanted the world with his
story-telling genius.
Dumas, the father, and Dumas, the son, both have carved a
niche for .the race where their names are imperishably written, and
France is proud to honor them. Twenty-three years ago Russia did
honor to another Negro as we did honor Dunbar five years ago. Then
the statue of Alexander Pushkin, acknowledged as Russia's greatest
poet, was unveiled in Moscow to an admiring people who celebrated
thus the literary achievements of the Negro "poet of the Caucasus."
Pushkin's name is immortal in Russian hearts.
Down the list we may come to touch Phyllis Wheatley, whose
powers drew a tribute from George Washington; to Banneker, who
astounded the world with his scientific astronomical calculations—
down to the present where the names cluster more thickly, because
of honors won; Edmonia Lewis, who from Rome made her fame as
a sculptress and Henry Tanner, whose fame as an artist has reached
the coveted recognition of the French Government. These, with
Douglass and Washington and Du Bois, and a host of others, have
proved to the world that the "Souls of Black Folk" differ not from
other souls in high impulses, aspirations, and even genius.
Russia and France are proud of their sable writers, each of
whom stamped his own personality upon the literature of his nation,
and why should not America possess the same pride?
When we come down to modern times and review the field "as it is
stretched out before us, there is no literary character that stands
higher than Paul Laurence Dunbar. We speak of Longfellow and
Whittier and Bryant and Lowell, and other great American poets,
and speak of them with rightful pride; but to my mind not one of
them was a sweeter singer than Paul Laurence Dunbar. He sang
with equal freedom and boldness, he sang with equal musical rhythm,
24
Paul Laurence Dunbar
he sang with their grace and beauty, and he sang of the desires, the
struggles, the ambitions, the aspirations of a people that seemed to
have no future. In his song he has helped pave the way for a future
for his race. He has hewn out a path, has trodden the ground for
others to follow, and what was possible in his case is possible for
others.
The very fact that he made his way to the front from humble
origin and against tremendous odds shows the power of a soul.
Paul Laurence Dunbar was no prodigy, no bundle of eccentrici¬
ties, no Blind Tom whose powers in one direction were miraculous and
balanced by the dwarfing of all else in his nature and character. He
was a normal man in every respect and as such is to be judged as
every other man of letters.
In all nations it is an accepted fact that the literature of a people
is influenced by four things. The race of the writer is to be taken
in consideration as well as the epoch in which he lives and the
immediate environment about him. We do not except from this rule
the one whose name we honored at the unveiling of the monument
erected by popular subscription by his friends of the white race.
Paul Laurence Dunbar was of African ancestry. It could not be
claimed that a large percentage of his ability was due to the amount
of Caucasian blood in his veins. He represented the Negro in-
America in letters as few others who have reached eminence could
do. I would emphasize that his gift of song was pre-eminently
racial. He had the happy gaiety and the weird imagination of his
race. He sang from his heart as the race has sung ever since it
was brought to these shores. It is shown in his dialect poems where
the same wonderful combination of Aesopian wisdom and imaginative
humor that have made Harris' African stories so famous is evidenced
at every turn.
He felt for his race, and as his race he sang with the heart and
tongue of his people. It was not all joy. Sorrow and sadness crept in.
The changeful moods were his, and so his poems met the moods of
mankind and won a place in hearts, which must be done to win a
way to fame. He was a child of nature. The wind dared him to
song: the spring warmed in his veins when the
"Grass commence a-comin'
Throo de thawin' groun'."
And summer lured him with the
"Pines a-smellin' in de wood."
Like all other writers, he was also influenced by his environment^
which here was closely allied to racial influence and had a strong sway
over his works, imbuing them with the touch and personality that
have made their peculiar charm.
Poet Laureate of the Negro Race
25
Every phase of Negro life has been caught by his pen as by a
camera. The simplest and homeliest life about him threw upon his
brain indelible pictures that he transformed to liquid notes of song,
sparkling with grace and vivid imagination. The life of the fireside,
the field, the cabin, the wood, the stream—all gave him happy themes
for his gift to play upon. The peculiar traits of his people, their
quaint characteristics, their propensities and inclinations all received
a loving, tender tribute at -his hand as he wove them into immortal
verse.
The third influence—the epoch—shows comparatively little in¬
fluence over his works. Here and there we find him centralizing
thought upon the spirit of the times about him. It was an age of peace
in Dunbar's years, so his muse was not stirred to clarion tones, but
when the blind rage of mob violence pursued his people, his "Talking
Oak" showed how his heart was stirred; and when Frederick
Douglass died he mourned- in an elegy that showed the true poetic
fire ablaze from the friction of life about him, but his prose has
shown this influence of the world ideas about him far more than his
poetry, for Dunbar's literary fertility was not confined to the poetic
field alone.
Largely influenced by race and environment in his writings, yet
one other influence that has always been the mightiest in the liter¬
ature of any people was also his. This was Genius. We cannot
account for genius in any people. It springs up and no one can
trace it. It comes more often from the lowliest surroundings. The
soul that comes from Nature's God, that lives close to Nature, that
sees life clearly, thai knows other souls by mysterious affinity—that
soul is born and carries its possessor into the upper realms where
but few can follow, and we call it genius.
Paul Laurence Dunbar had genius. Only a genius could have
sung as he has sung, only a genius could have triumphed as he has
triumphed, only a genius could have made a permanent place in
American literature for himself as he has done. His death was
untimely. His career was not completed. "What might he not have
done had more years been given him? But God—who took him—
knew best. And here we may repeat that whatever definition we
may give genius, the fact is that no man possessing such as Dunbar
possessed can ever be kept down. Genius forces its way upward.
It demands recognition. Dunbar's native powers forced the world
to give him place and to sing his praises. I remember in Europe
when, on a special occasion, his name was mentioned before an audi¬
ence, that the people vied in enthusiastic applause for the black boy
who had sung himself into prominence by the greatness of his intel-
26
Paul Laurence Dunbar
lectual powers. If this side of Negro life—the literary side—could
be dwelt upon more, if the career made by one like Paul Laurence
Dunbar could be held up more before the world, if the intellectual
progress of the Negro could be taken up for consideration to a greater
extent, and if the distance that he has come from the days of slavery -
to the present could form the subject of more speeches and orations,
I feel very sure that the people of America would be willing to grant
the black man a hearing and a more favorable consideration in the
matters that make for the highest good of the racs.
If the literature of Dunbar is taken upon its merits, we feel that
both the prose and poetry of others of the race will be likewise favor¬
ably regarded, and in that sense the Negro people will be benefited.
The lives of such men as Dunbar, Tanner and Du Bois, who have
with others made a future for the people along higher lines, should
inspire us all. There are many of the race here and there in nearly
every city, building slowly but surely in' literature and art and are
making a way for those who are to follow. '
Greatness does not come to every man even though he may work
for it, but there are some who by their* own power of mind and
personality tower above the common people, thereby showing that
greatness is limited to no one people and to no one class of people.
Mr. Dunbar was one of this class. His life, as has been said, was
a brilliant one in a literary sense. He was a prolific writer as well.
The large number of volumes emanating from his pen and the great
interest manifested by the public at large in his works clearly prove
that his powers were fed from a perennial spring.
Their freshness and virility both astonished and pleased the
waiting public, which continually called, like Oliver Twist, for more,
and continually gave a spontaneous meed of praise for every new
effort.
He died in the harness, so to speak, with a volume incomplete.
Why the Creator saw fit to remove him from the scene of his
earthly labors at his early age man cannot tell. We feel the loss
as a race of a brilliant man and helper of his people. He has
dropped his mantle. Upon whose shoulders it will fall, time alone
can tell, but it is due his fame to say that we would eagerly applaud
the singer of color who may prove worthy to wear it. We have
lamented the loss of such men as Douglass and Crumwell and Payne,
men on whom the years bore heavily, but Dunbar was young, in his
prime, and greater things were to be achieved. We needed him, as
we need all strong literary characters, to help a people to a standings
place in the world of letters. Yet his life, his work—this memorial-
all must ever be an inspiration to every Negro youth to set his feet
Poet Laureate of the Negro Race
27
in the paths for higher things, to be determined to win spurs in some
great ambitious effort to compel the recognition of the world for
some great achievement.
Every person of color should feel under lasting gratitude to our
honored poet for the position he won for his people; and the race
must never fail to show that gratitude, not only for this fact, but for
every phase of recognition accorded him by other races.
I say his life, with its crown of'laurel, should be an inspiration
to the Negro people, and I also say that it should be a lesson for the
critics of the race. To those who do well, the recognition befitting
their merits should be given. As his mother had reason to be proud
of such a son, so the City of Dayton had reason to be proud of such
a citizen, and this great State of Ohio should feel itself also honored
by such a career of such an illustrious citizen.
I considered it an honor that I was able on that occasion to
stand over his monument and in the name of the Negro people, and,
in the name of humanity, thank all those of that great city who had
joined to raise such a memorial to the honor of this sweet American
bard, to thank them all regardless of race or color, who had risen
to such heights in honoring this poet of sable hue, to congratulate
all that race, color or creed was not allowed to dampen ardor or be
an obstacle in honoring their fellow-townsman. Ohio was honored
by that tribute. America was honored by it, and that day should
ever be a proud one in the annals of that city and its people. There
Dunbar spent his youth; there he developed his talent; there he laid
down his work, and while we add a laurel leaf to the chaplet which
fame placed upon his living brow, we declare that
"The great work laid upon his short years
Is done, and well done."
Such lives are blessings in the world at large. God lends them to
the world to show that mind knows no race—that we are all brothers,
differing from one another only as gifts and graces differ—that the
Creator is our common Father through whose gracious kindness such
lives spring up, blossom and bear fruit to prove the immortality of
the soul.
Dunbar will never die, even though his body lies buried in the
earth. His soul of song will continue to re-echo in the hearts of men,
and the brightness and beauty, the humor and pathos, the tenderness
and sympathy with which he has enriched the world will rest like a
benediction upon us all for all time to come. Yes, Dunbar still lives
in his songs and in our hearts—the same earnest, sincere, gentle,
genial soul that we knew so well in his earthly years. His gentle
spirit today hovers over the home he loved so well, and the city dear
28
Paul Laurence Dunbar
to his heart, and though he has gone to take his rest, that spirit will
be a guardian angel, blessing all for the greatness of heart and sotii
that has evoked that tribute from a grateful, appreciative people.
His wish was fulfilled. He sleeps among his fellow-citizens, as
he begged in his touching "Death Song."
"Let me settle w'en my shouldahs draps dey load
High enough to hyeah de noises in de road;
Fu' I t'ink de las' long res'
Gwine to soothe my sperrit bes'
Ef I's layin' 'mong de t'ings I's alius knowed.
Personalia
Born, Dayton, Ohio, June 27, 1872. Died, Dayton, Ohio, February
9, 1906. Mother, emancipated slave. Father, slave, escaped from
Kentucky to Canada via underground railway. Educated Dayton
common schools. Graduated, Steele High School, Dayton, 1891.
Wrote class poem. Editor-in-chief High School Times, 1891.
President Philomathean Society, 1891. Only colored man ever elected
to above two positions. Clerk in Haytian Building, World's Fair,
Chicago, 1893. Tendered a reception by the staff of the Century
Magazine, New York, Richard Watson Gilder presiding, 1896. Tour
of England reading and reciting, 1896, eight months. Guest of the
Hon. John Hay, Henry M. Stanley, the Savage Club, the Royal
Geographical Society, etc., London 1897. Employments while in
school, and early part of literary career, elevator boy, court page,
and position in Congressional Library, Washington, D. C. Married
Alice Moore, New York City, 1898. Miss Moore is school teacher,
short-story, magazine writer, and author of two volumes: "Violets
and Other Tales," and "The Goodness of Saint Roque." His last
dialect poem was entitled, "Sling Along." Among his last poems
was one entitled, "Equipment." Four stanzas refer to himself. His
last poem, one stanza, was addressed to his friend, Dr. Burns, who
was also his physician and who died three months before Dunbar.
These as yet unpublished.
Bibliography
1893. "Oak and Ivy" (Poems). United Brethren Publishing Com¬
pany. Out of print. Single copies now sell at $4.
1895. "Majors and Minors" (Poems). Hadley & Hadley, Toledo,
Ohio.
1896. "Lyrics of Lowly Life" (Poems). Dodd, Mead & Co. "Lil
Gal" (Poems). Dodd, Mead & Co. "The Heart of Happy
Hollow" (Prose). Dodd, Mead & Co.
Poet Laureate of the Negro Race
29
1898. "Folks from Dixie" (Prose). Dodd, Mead & Co. "The Un¬
called" (Prose). Dodd, Mead & Co.
1899. "Lyrics of the Hearthside" (Poems). Dodd, Mead & Co.
"Poems of Cabin and Field" (Poems). Dodd, Mead & Co.
1900. "The Strength of Gideon" (Prose). Dodd, Mead & Co. "The
Love of Landry" (Prose). Dodd, Mead & Co.
1901. "Candle-Lightin' Time" (Poems). Dodd, Mead & Co. "The
Fanatics" (Prose). Dodd, Mead & Co.
1902. "The Sport of the Gods" (Prose). Dodd, Mead & Co. "The
Jest of Fate" (The same book under different title. Prose).
Jarrold & Sons, London.
1903. "Lyrics of Love and Laughter" (Poems). Dodd, Mead & Co.
"In Old Plantation Days" (Prose). Dodd, Mead & Co. "When
Malindy Sings" (Poems). Dodd, Mead & Co.
1905. "Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow" (Poems). Dodd, Mead &
Co. "Howdy, Honey, Howdy" (Poems). Dodd, Mead & Co.
Two books were written and the publication anticipated
before Dunbar's death. One book poetry, illustrated, and one
prose, novel.
1906. "Life and Works of Paul Laurence Dunbar" (Poems and
Biography). By Lida Kect Wiggins. J. L. Nichols & Co.,
Naperville, 111.
1906. "Joggin' Erlon' " (Poems). J. L. Nichols & Co., Naperville, III.
1908. "Lyrics of Lowly Life.'' Illustrated (Poems). J. L. Nichols
& Co., Naperville, 111.
Wilberforce University, Wilberforce, Ohio.
.30
Paul Laurence Dunbar
PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR
Reverdy C. Ransom
Paul Laurence Dunbar was a product of the first genera¬
tion of freedom. Whatever of talent, endowment or genius
he possessed belonged to the rich, warm blood of his African
inheritance. We know that capacity, genius, ability, are not
limited by race or blood; but so universal is the imputation
of racial inferiority to the African and his descendants that
the achievements of each gifted son or daughter reflect
glory upon the entire race. The Negro has contributed very
little to what we know as human progress in the terms of
modern civilization. This fact is used against him and is
made to justify his unequal and degrading treatment. It is
only by multiplying examples of the highest achievement
that the universal judgment may be reversed. In the United
States, Dunbar and Henry O. Tanner are "the sea mark, of
our farthest sail" in letters and in art. These are not freaks
or prodigies, but prophecies of the latent powers of the race,
the first unfoldings of which have not yet but fairly begun.
Like the midnight sun of the North Polar regions, the dark¬
ness that has enveloped the African and his descendants
has been briefly illuminated here and there through the
centuries by some bright Negro intellect in almost every
quarter of the earth. However widely the many varieties
of the human race may differ in certain physical character¬
istics, they have a common origin and are of one and the
same family. The Creator has not made one branch of tKe
human family inferior to another. History does, however,
abundantly prove that the groups into which the human
family is divided differ in race traits, characteristics and in
wealth of endowment in certain specific directions. The
world is indebted to the Jews for keeping alive and trans¬
mitting across the centuries a pure monotheism. The Greeks
realized the highest ideal of beauty to which mankind has
yet attained; while the white races of Europe and America
Poet Laureate of the Negro Race
31
have displayed a genius for colonization, cDmmerce and
invention applied to the development of the physical
reLOU; ces of the earth. So large and comprehensive have
been the contributions to knowledge that it is felt by many
thr.t uiere is little left of a distinctive character for the
black peoples to do. But in the spiritual realm, in the emo¬
tions, in music, in kindness, in cheerfulness and the spirit
of brotherhood, the Negro has a wealth of endowment,
which, when his hour comes, will put a living soul into the
activ-ties of human life which may well be the glory and
the crown of that world-wide civilization which makes for
peace, for brotherhood and love.
Dunbar was an interpreter of the life and spirit of his
people. Fresh as a breath from the hills, his poems breathe
with the atmosphere which surrounds the life of his race.
Dunbar'sVoice is the first note of the bird that sounds the
approach of dawn. He fell asleep before his eyes beheld
the day which he had ushered in. But the harp whose
strings were touched by him with such poetic grace will
not remain forever silent. Other hearts that have been
warmed by the equatorial sun will be filled with new and
higher inspirations; other hands, black tinseled by the sub¬
tle alchemy of the tropics, will lift the veil from off the
ability and power of his people, that all the world may feast
its hollow metallic senses in the banqueting house^of mind
and spirit where the heart presides.
Dunbar was always a child—a child at play—who
passed from us before he came to the full maturity of his
powers. From the days of his boyhood, intimately and well
we knew him, when he was yet unknown beyond a narrow
circle in the busy little city where he held a position of
the humblest sort. We have ridden with him many times in
the car of his elevator, where, scattered about him on loose
sheets of paper, were some of the first of his imperishable
lines which were to win the admiration of the world. When
his first book, "Oak and Ivy," came from the press, we intro¬
duced him to our congregation and assisted him in dispos¬
ing of copies he had borrowed from the printer to pay the
cost of publication. More than once have we dined with him,
with chitterlings and hot corn pone as the piece de resist¬
ance. He has come to us in the late hours of the night, when
32
Paul Laurence Dunbar
the muses were singing at the windows of his soul, in search
of a word that might better convey the delicate shades of
thought*or feeling they brought before his vision. The
late John Bigelow said of a visit to Alexander Dumas, that
Dumas showed him a story he had just completed,, and in
reply to a question, remarked that he never rewrote his
manuscripts, but let the first draft stand. This, Bigelow
gratuitously remarks, was "characteristic of his race." This
was not true of Dunbar, who was three-fourths more Negro
than Dumas. When the song had spent itself, he carefully
corrected and revised. May we not add that this was
"characteristic of his race" ? Dunbar was the spoiled child
of the agreeable men and winsome women of every city
where he went. He was not retiring or exclusive; where
beauty, pleasure and music met, he made a feast. He was
his own best interpreter of his works. To hear Dunbar read
from Dunbar's works, with his deep rich baritone voice, with
every action suited to the word, was to see him at his best
and to hold forever afterward a pleasant memory that can¬
not fade.
A spirit so highly strung and sensitive as his was not
without its tragedies. He has come to our study wearing
a look of almost hopeless dejection and begged us to come
upon our knees alone with him, in the presence of the Alone,
to pray for strength and heaven's gracious favor. We have
it told elsewhere how he wrought and what, up to now, is
the world's estimate of his genius, and we have here, too, an
intimate sketch from one who for the first time breaks her
silence to speak of him who first won her hand and linked
her name forever with his fame.
Phyllis Wheatley and Dunbar, each of the pure African
type, were the first to enter the enchanted ground of poesy
and song. Up there among "the choir invisible," with
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, with Burns and Keats, with
Shelley and with Poe, may they not await with confidence
the day when the gifted children of their people will hold
the wrapped attention of the world, while they flood it with
their ravishing strains of music and of song?