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 o...

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