University of Virginia Library

Preface.

Brief is our life here, precious is the time, and great the work to do, and a few thoughts in print has the possibility of a longer life than a man. “The night cometh when no man can work.”

How sweet, if it might be, that when the day is ended, we may have left some watch words still ringing in the ears of those who come after us. And I may be permitted to hope that these meditations may have such power, in their modest way. They will be easily passed by but may have a message for hearts that will look and listen.

There is, certainly in this age, a want of writing that shall rest and brace the mind. It is well to extend natural and spontaneous thoughts, especially that which the heart has laid by in store. We must be militant here on earth, militant against every form of error.

If, during the period of American Slavery, any Anglo-Saxon raised his voice or moved his pen in the interest of the stolen and oppressed African, that man was marked, reviled and ostracised as if he was affected with the leprosy. No historian could write a true record

of the sons of Ham in the hope of finding a market for his book. The press, the pulpit, the writer and publisher were all against the Negro and suppressed the fact of his ancient greatness. In those days the white man wrote for the white man, and now the black man must write for the black man, and give them proper and merited rank among the historic people of earth. It requires quite an amount of courage for a colored man to write, standing with his heels rubbing against the hardships and degradations of slavery while his toes are leading off into ostracism, prejudice, mob violence and the blood-chilling horrors of southern lynching. But we must build up breastworks for the coming generations. To do that we must swell the list of Coopers, Harpers, Wells-Barretts, Simmons, Majors and other Negro authors.

A few poems now offered differ from other works of natural sentiment, in asmuch as it is not a compilation but a collection original. These may be but little worthy of appreciation, yet have that value which the simple philosophy recognizes: “A poor thing, sir, but mine own.”