NEGRO DANCERS
I

Transformed by colored lights a basement den
With chairs and tables banked on either side
And jammed within, your dark-skinned women and men,
Drinking and smoking, merry, vacant-eyed.
A Negro band, that scarcely seems awake,
Drones out half-heartedly a lazy tune,
While nimble, willing boys their orders take
And hurry to an end from the near saloon.
And suddenly a happy, lilting note
Is struck, the walk and hop and trot begin,
Under the smoke upon foul air afloat;
Around the room the laughing figures spin
To sound of fiddle, drum and clarinet,
Dancing their world of shadows to forget.

## II

It is best to sit and gaze; my heart then dances
To the lithe bodies gliding slowly by,
The amorous and inimitable glances
That subtly pass from roguish eye to eye,
The laughter gay like sounding silver ringing,
That fills the whole wide room from floor to ceiling,
A rush of rapture to my spirit bringing,
The deathless spirit of a race revealing.

NEGRO DANCERS

Not one false step, no note that rings not true!
Unconscious even of the higher worth
fine
Of their art, they lizard-like go through
The syncopated bars. Dead to the earth
And her harsh ways of menial toil and strife,
For them the dance is the great joy of life.

III

And yet these are the outcasts of the earth,
The race oppressed and scorned by mighty man.
How can they thus consent to joy and mirth
Who live beneath a world-eternal ban?
No faith is theirs, no shining ray of hope,
Except the martyr's faith, the hope that death
Some day will free them for their narrow scope
And once more merge them with the infinite breath.
But, oh they dance with poetry in their eyes
Whose dreamy loveliness no sorrow dims,
And parted lips and eager, gleeful cries,
And perfect rhythm in their nimble limbs.
The gifts divine are theirs, music and laughter,
All other things, however great, come after.