Countee Cullen

This is the song of the Wakeupworld,
The beautiful beast with long tail curled:"Wake up,
O World;
O World, awake!

We shall not always plant while others
The golden increment of bursting fruit,
Not always countenance, abject and mute,
That lesser men should hold their brothers cheap;

The many sow, but only the chosen reap;
Happy the wretched host if Day be brief,
That with the cool oblivion of sleep A dawnless Night may soothe the smart of grief.
If from the soil our sweat enriches sprout One meagre blossom for…

Once riding in old Baltimore,
Heart-filled, head-filled with glee;
I saw a
Keep looking straight at me.

Never love with all your heart,
It only ends in aching;
And bit by bit to the smallest
That organ will be breaking.

Since men grow diffident at last,
And care no whit at all,
If spring be come, or the fall be past,
Or how the cool rains fall,

Wherein are words sublime or noble?
What Invests one speech with haloed eminence,
Makes it the sesame for all doors shut,
Yet in its like sees but impertinence?

I cannot hold my peace,
John Keats;
There never was a spring like this;
It is an echo, that repeats My last year's song and next year's bliss.

I have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth,
And laid them away in a box of gold;
Where long will cling the lips of the moth,
I have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth;

Locked arm in arm they cross the
The black boy and the white,
The golden splendor of the
The sable pride of night.

Some are teethed on a silver spoon,
With the stars strung for a rattle;
I cut my teeth as the black racoon—For implements of battle.
Some are swaddled in silk and down

Then call me traitor if you must,
Shout reason and default!
Say I betray a sacred trust Aching beyond this vault.
I'll bear your censure as your praise

I've often heard my mother say,
When great winds blew across the day,
And, cuddled close and out of sight,
The young pigs squealed with sudden

That brown girl's swagger gives a
To beauty like a Queen,
Lad, never damn your body's
When loveliness is seen.

All through an empty place I go,
And find her not in any room;
The candles and the lamps I
Go down before a wind of gloom.

This is not water running here,
These thick rebellious
That hurtle flesh and bone past
Down alleyways of

I did not know she'd take it so,
Or else I'd never dared;
Although the bliss was worth the blow,
I did not know she'd take it so.

I have a rendezvous with Life,
In days I hope will come,
Ere youth has sped, and strength of mind,
Ere voices sweet grow dumb.

What is Africa to me:
Copper sun or scarlet sea,
Jungle star or jungle track,
Strong bronzed men, or regal

My father is a quiet
With sober, steady ways;
For simile, a folded fan;
His nights are like his days.

What if his glance is bold and free,
His mouth the lash of whips?
So should the eyes of lovers
And so a lovers lips.

”Lord, being dark,” I said, ”I cannot bear
The further touch of earth, the scented air;
Lord, being dark, forewilled to that despair
My color shrouds me in, I am as dirt…

They in their cruel traps, and we in ours,
Survey each other’s rage, and pass the hours Commiserating each the other’s woe,
To mitigate his own pain’s fiery glow.
Man could but little proffer in exchange Save that his cages have a…

He never spoke a word to me,
And yet He called my name;
He never gave a sign to me,
And yet I knew and came.