Harlem Renaissance Poems

THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE

Langton Hughes

Dreams

Langston Hughes, 1902 - 1967

Hold fast to dreams

For if dreams die

Life is a broken-winged bird

That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams

For when dreams go

Life is a barren field

Frozen with snow.

He seens to look very intelligent.

And that is why i picked this picture

Claude Mckay

Jean Toomer

If we must die, let it not be like hogs

Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,

While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,

Making their mock at our accursèd lot.

If we must die, O let us nobly die,

So that our precious blood may not be shed

In vain; then even the monsters we defy

Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!

O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!

Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,

And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!

What though before us lies the open grave?

Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack,

Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

He looks happy. Although things were hard for

african americans back then, he still keeps a smile on his face.

He want know how color is in life that what his poem mean.

The harlem renaissance

James Weldon Johnson

Paul laurence dunbar

I was not; now I am—a few days hence

I shall not be; I fain would look before

And after, but can neither do; some Power

Or lack of power says “no” to all I would.

I stand upon a wide and sunless plain,

Nor chart nor steel to guide my steps aright.

Whene’er, o’ercoming fear, I dare to move,

I grope without direction and by chance.

Some feign to hear a voice and feel a hand

That draws them ever upward thro’ the gloom.

But I—I hear no voice and touch no hand,

Tho’ oft thro’ silence infinite I list,

And strain my hearing to supernal sounds;

Tho’ oft thro’ fateful darkness do I reach,

And stretch my hand to find that other hand.

I question of th’ eternal bending skies

That seem to neighbor with the novice earth;

But they roll on, and daily shut their eyes

On me, as I one day shall do on them,

And tell me not the secret that I ask.

Langton Hughes-dreams

Claude Mckay-if e must die

James Welon Johnson-lift every voice

Countee Cullen-rendezvous with life

Alice Dunbar Nelson-i sit and sew

by: Niyah Berry

Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing

Lift ev'ry voice and sing,

Till earth and heaven ring,

Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;

Let our rejoicing rise

High as the list'ning skies,

Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.

Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,

Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;

Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,

Let us march on till victory is won.

Stony the road we trod,

Bitter the chast'ning rod,

Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;

Yet with a steady beat,

Have not our weary feet

Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?

We have come over a way that with tears has been watered.

We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,

Out from the gloomy past,

Till now we stand at last

Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

God of our weary years,

God of our silent tears,

Thou who hast brought us thus far on the way;

Thou who hast by Thy might,

Led us into the light,

Keep us forever in the path, we pray.

Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,

Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;

Shadowed beneath Thy hand,

May we forever stand,

True to our God,

True to our native land.

In this picture, he looks serious.

He looks intelligent enough to own

his own business.

I chose this picture because his poems talk about how the darkness of hear of a voice of his secret .

Countee Cullen

Langston Hughes

I have a rendezvous with Life,

In days I hope will come,

Ere youth has sped, and strength of mind,

Ere voices sweet grow dumb.

I have a rendezvous with Life,

When Spring's first heralds hum.

Sure some would cry it's better far

To crown their days with sleep

Than face the road, the wind and rain,

To heed the calling deep.

Though wet nor blow nor space I fear,

Yet fear I deeply, too,

Lest Death should meet and claim me ere

I keep Life's rendezvous.

He looks like he is serious in what he do.

He looks like he takes things serously.

Although it was tough for african americans

to graduate, he till made it.

Alice Dunbar Nelson

I sit and sew—a useless task it seems,

My hands grown tired, my head weighed down with dreams—

The panoply of war, the martial tred of men,

Grim-faced, stern-eyed, gazing beyond the ken

Of lesser souls, whose eyes have not seen Death,

Nor learned to hold their lives but as a breath—

But—I must sit and sew.

I sit and sew—my heart aches with desire—

That pageant terrible, that fiercely pouring fire

On wasted fields, and writhing grotesque things

Once men. My soul in pity flings

Appealing cries, yearning only to go

There in that holocaust of hell, those fields of woe—

But—I must sit and sew.

The little useless seam, the idle patch;

Why dream I here beneath my homely thatch,

When there they lie in sodden mud and rain,

Pitifully calling me, the quick ones and the slain?

You need me, Christ! It is no roseate dream

That beckons me—this pretty futile seam,

It stifles me—God, must I sit and sew?

She looks like she is successful .