by Claude McKay · 1922
Poetry · Classics
Claude McKay's 1922 collection of poems, among the first of the Harlem Renaissance, from the sonnet "If We Must Die" to quiet poems of exile, longing for Jamaica and the hard beauty of city life.
Content note: Written in 1922, these poems deal with racism, violence and desire, and use language of their time.
I shall return again; I shall return To laugh and love and watch with wonder-eyes At golden noon the forest fires burn, Wafting their blue-black smoke to sapphire skies. I shall return to loiter by the streams That bathe the brown blades of the bending grasses, And realize once more my thousand dreams Of waters rushing down the mountain passes. I shall return to hear the fiddle and fife Of village dances, dear delicious tunes That stir the hidden depths of native life, Stray melodies of dim remembered runes. I shall return, I shall return again, To ease my mind of long, long years of pain.
MORNING JOY
At night the wide and level stretch of wold, Which at high noon had basked in quiet gold, Far as the eye could see was ghostly white; Dark was the night save for the snow’s weird light.
I drew the shades far down, crept into bed; Hearing the cold wind moaning overhead Through the sad pines, my soul, catching its pain, Went sorrowing with it across the plain.
At dawn, behold! the pall of night was gone, Save where a few shrubs melancholy, lone, Detained a fragile shadow. Golden-lipped The laughing grasses heaven’s sweet wine sipped.
