21 quotes
It is from the blues that all that may be called American music derives its most distinctive characteristic.
Every race and every nation should be judged by the best it has been able to produce, not by the worst.
The colored people of this country know and understand the white people better than the white people know and understand them.
Young man—Young man—Your arm’s too short to box with God.
God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse (1927)
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered.
And God smiled again,
And the rainbow appeared,
And curled itself around his shoulder.
God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse (1927)
The glory of the day was in her face,
The beauty of the night was in her eyes.
O black and unknown bards of long ago,
How came your lips to touch the sacred fire?
How, in your darkness, did you come to know
The power and beauty of the minstrels' lyre?
Fifty Years and Other Poems (1917)
With his head in his hands,
God thought and thought,
Till he thought: I'll make me a man!
God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse (1927)
And Satan smiled, stretched out his hand, and said,—
"O War, of all the scourges of humanity, I crown you chief."
Fifty Years and Other Poems (1917)
Eternities before the first-born day,
Or ere the first sun fledged his wings of flame,
Calm Night, the everlasting and the same,
A brooding mother over chaos lay.
Fifty Years and Other Poems (1917)
Lift every voice and sing
Till earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty.
Let our rejoicing rise high as the listening skies;
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Whose starward eye
Saw chariot “swing low”? And who was he
That breathed that comforting, melodic sigh,
“Nobody knows de trouble I see”?
Fifty Years and Other Poems (1917)
And God stepped out on space,
And He looked around and said,
"I'm lonely—
I'll make me a world."
God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse (1927)
This Great God,
Like a mammy bending over her baby,
Kneeled down in the dust
Toiling over a lump of clay
Till He shaped it in His own image.
God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse (1927)
Father, Father Abraham,
To-day look on us from above;
On us, the offspring of thy faith,
The children of thy Christ-like love.
Fifty Years and Other Poems (1917)
Some men enjoy the constant strife
Of days with work and worry rife,
But that is not my dream of life:
I think such men are crazy.
For me, a life with worries few,
A job of nothing much to do,
Just pelf enough to see me through:
I fear that I am lazy.
Fifty Years and Other Poems (1917)
How would you have us, as we are?
Or sinking 'neath the load we bear?
Our eyes fixed forward on a star?
Or gazing empty at despair?
Fifty Years and Other Poems (1917)
Find Sister Caroline...
And she's tired—
She's weary—
Go down, Death, and bring her to me.
God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse (1927)
You sang far better than you knew; the songs
That for your listeners’ hungry hearts sufficed
Still live,—but more than this to you belongs:
You sang a race from wood and stone to Christ.
Fifty Years and Other Poems (1917)