pression for its innermost emotions, their attempts have been,
for the most part, divisible into two classes. In the first of these may
be grouped the verses in which the lyrist put forth sentiments common to
all mankind and in no wise specifically those of his own race; and from
the days of Phyllis Wheatley to the present the most of the poems
written by men who were not wholly white are indistinguishable from the
poems written by men who were wholly white. Whatever their merits might
be, these verses cast little or no light upon the deeper racial
sentiments of the people to whom the poets themselves belonged. But in
the lyrics to be grouped in the second of these classes there was a
racial quality. This contained the dialect verses in which there was an
avowed purpose of recapturing the color, the flavor, the movement of
life in "the quarters," in the cotton field and in the canebrake. Even
in this effort, white authors had led the way; Irvin Russell and Joel
Chandler Harris had made the path straight for Paul Laurence Dunbar,
with his lilting lyrics, often infused with the pathos of a down-trodden
folk.

In the following pages Mr. James Weldon Johnson conforms to both of
these traditions. He gathers together a group of lyrics, delicate in
workmanship, fragrant with sentiment, and phrased in pure and
unexceptionable English. Then he has another group of dialect verses,
racy of the soil, pungent in flavor, swinging in rhythm and adroit in
rhyme. But where he shows himself a pioneer is the half-dozen larger
and bolder poems, of a loftier strain, in which he has been nobly
successful in expressing the higher aspirations of his own people. It
is in uttering this cry for recognition, for sympathy, for
understanding, and above all, for justice, that Mr. Johnson is most
original and most powerful. In the superb and soaring stanzas of
"Fifty Years" (published exactly half-a-century after the signing of
the Emancipation Proclamation) he has given us one of the noblest
commemorative poems yet written by any American,--a poem sonorous in
its diction, vigorous in its workmanship, elevated in its imagination
and sincere in its emotion. In it speaks the voice of his race; and
the race is fortunate in its spokesman. In it a fine theme has been
finely treated. In it we are made to see something of the soul of the
people who are our fellow citizens now and forever,--even if we do not
always so regard them. In it we are glad to acclaim