A Singer there came, with a tender lyre,
And dawn-filled eyes of love and fire;
And I knew, as Dunbar swept the strings,
That he brought what long, long yearning brings:
Dream-Voice of a crooning race was he,
God's hint of a beauty yet to be!
For I know, by a glimpse of his lyric scroll,
That beauty dwells in the black man's soul.
An Orator came, and he thrilled the heart
Till the blood surged hot, with a sudden start,
As he rent the bleak rocks of a people's gloom,
And sounded Oppression's knell-filled doom.
Written by James D. Corrothers (1869-1917)
<----> SEND THIS POEM TO A FRIEND! <---->