The Black Troops In Cuba

Round the wide earth, from the red field your valour has won,
Blown with the breath of the far-speaking gun,
    Goes the word.
Bravely you spoke through the battle cloud heavy and dun.
Tossed though the speech toward the mist-hidden sun,
    The world heard.

Hell would have shrunk from you seeking it fresh from the fray,
Grim with the dust of the battle, and gray
    From the fight.
Heaven would have crowned you, with crowns not of gold but of bay,
Owning you fit for the light of her day,
    Men of night.

Far through the cycle of years and of lives that shall come,
There shall speak voices long muffled and dumb,
    Out of fear.
And through the noises of trade and the turbulent hum,
Truth shall rise over the militant drum,
    Loud and clear.

Then on the cheek of the honester nation that grows,
All for their love of you, not for your woes,
    There shall lie
Tears that shall be to your souls as the dew to the rose;
Afterward thanks, that the present yet knows
    Not to ply!

Paul Laurence Dunbar

Paul Laurence Dunbar was an influential American poet, novelist, and playwright of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Born in Dayton, Ohio, Dunbar gained national recognition for his dialectic verse and collections of poems such as 'Majors and Minors' (1895) and 'Lyrics of Lowly Life' (1896). His works often addressed themes of racial identity and struggle, making significant contributions to African American literature. Dunbar's writings served as an inspiration for later writers of the Harlem Renaissance.

Paul Laurence Dunbar

The Ol' Tunes

Paul Laurence Dunbar, Simple Poetry

Trouble In De Kitchen

Paul Laurence Dunbar, Simple Poetry

Joggin' Erlong

Paul Laurence Dunbar, Simple Poetry

To A Captious Critic

Paul Laurence Dunbar, Simple Poetry

English

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The Colored Soldiers

If the muse were mine to tempt it
And my feeble voice were strong,
If my tongue were trained to measures,
I would sing a stirring song.
I would sing a song heroic
Of those noble sons of Ham,
Of the gallant colored soldiers
Who fought for Uncle Sam!

In the early days you scorned them,
And with many a flip and flout
Said "These battles are the white man's,
And the whites will fight them out."
Up the hills you fought and faltered,
In the vales you strove and bled,
While your ears still heard the thunder
Of the foes' advancing tread.

Then distress fell on the nation,
And the flag was drooping low;
Should the dust pollute your banner?
No! the nation shouted, No!
So when War, in savage triumph,
Spread abroad his funeral pall--

Paul Laurence Dunbar

The Unsung Heroes

A song for the unsung heroes who rose in the country's need,
When the life of the land was threatened by the slaver's cruel greed,
For the men who came from the cornfield, who came from the plough and the flail,
Who rallied round when they heard the sound of the mighty man of the rail.

They laid them down in the valleys, they laid them down in the wood,
And the world looked on at the work they did, and whispered, "It is good."
They fought their way on the hillside, they fought their way in the glen,
And God looked down on their sinews brown, and said, "I have made them men."

They went to the blue lines gladly, and the blue lines took them in,
And the men who saw their muskets' fire thought not of their dusky skin.
The gray lines rose and melted beneath their scathing showers,

Paul Laurence Dunbar

Dirge For A Soldier

In the east the morning comes,
Hear the rollin' of the drums
On the hill.
But the heart that beat as they beat
In the battle's raging day heat
Lieth still.
Unto him the night has come,
Though they roll the morning drum.

What is in the bugle's blast?
It is: "Victory at last!
Now for rest."
But, my comrades, come behold him,
Where our colors now enfold him,
And his breast
Bares no more to meet the blade,
But lies covered in the shade.

What a stir there is to-day!
They are laying him away
Where he fell.
There the flag goes draped before him;
Now they pile the grave sod o'er him
With a knell.
And he answers to his name
In the higher ranks of fame.

There's a woman left to mourn
For the child that she ha...

Paul Laurence Dunbar

Frederick Douglass

A hush is over all the teeming lists,
And there is pause, a breath-space in the strife;
A spirit brave has passed beyond the mists
And vapors that obscure the sun of life.
And Ethiopia, with bosom torn,
Laments the passing of her noblest born.

She weeps for him a mother's burning tears--
She loved him with a mother's deepest love.
He was her champion thro' direful years,
And held her weal all other ends above.
When Bondage held her bleeding in the dust,
He raised her up and whispered, "Hope and Trust."

For her his voice, a fearless clarion, rung
That broke in warning on the ears of men;
For her the strong bow of his power he strung,
And sent his arrows to the very den
Where grim Oppression held his bloody place
And gloated o'er the mis'ries of...

Paul Laurence Dunbar

The Veteran

Underneath the autumn sky,
Haltingly, the lines go by.
Ah, would steps were blithe and gay,
As when first they marched away,
Smile on lip and curl on brow,--
Only white-faced gray-beards now,
Standing on life's outer verge,
E'en the marches sound a dirge.

Blow, you bugles, play, you fife,
Rattle, drums, for dearest life.
Let the flags wave freely so,
As the marching legions go,
Shout, hurrah and laugh and jest,
This is memory at its best.
(Did you notice at your quip,
That old comrade's quivering lip?)

Ah, I see them as they come,
Stumbling with the rumbling drum;
But a sight more sad to me
E'en than these ranks could be
Was that one with cane upraised
Who stood by and gazed and gazed,
Trembling, solemn, lips compresse...

Paul Laurence Dunbar

Columbian Ode

I

Four hundred years ago a tangled waste
Lay sleeping on the west Atlantic's side;
Their devious ways the Old World's millions traced
Content, and loved, and labored, dared and died,
While students still believed the charts they conned,
And revelled in their thriftless ignorance,
Nor dreamed of other lands that lay beyond
Old Ocean's dense, indefinite expanse.


II

But deep within her heart old Nature knew
That she had once arrayed, at Earth's behest,
Another offspring, fine and fair to view,--
The chosen suckling of the mother's breast.
The child was wrapped in vestments soft and fine,
Each fold a work of Nature's matchless art;
The mother looked on it with love divine,
And strained the loved one closely to her heart.
And there...

Paul Laurence Dunbar