Caroling Dusk/Morning Light

For works with similar titles, see Morning Light.

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Mary Effie Lee Newsome

Caroling Dusk (1927)
edited by Countee Cullen

Morning Light by Mary Effie Lee Newsome

Pansy

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Mary Effie Lee Newsome4749227Caroling Dusk — Morning Light1927Countee Cullen

MORNING LIGHT^[1]

(The Dew-Drier)

Brother to the firefly—For as the firefly lights the night,So lights he the morning—Bathed in the dank dews as he goes forthThrough heavy menace and mysteryOf half-waking tropic dawn,Behold a little boy,A naked black boy,Sweeping aside with his slight frameNight’s pregnant tears,And making a morning path to the lightFor the tropic traveler!

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Bathed in the blood of battle,Treading toward a new morning, May not his race—Its body long bared to the world’s disdain,Its face schooled to smile for a light to come—May not his race, even as the Dew Boy leads,Bear onward the world to a timeWhen tolerance, forbearance,Such as reigned in the heart of ONEWhose heart was goldShall shape the world for that fresh dawningAfter the dews of blood?

↑ (This poem, published in the CRISIS during the World War, was written after reading an account of the little African babies who are sent before the explorer into jungle grasses that tower many feet. The little boys, Dan Crawford says in his THINKING BLACK, who go out to tread down a path and by chance meet the lurking leopard or hyena are “Human Brooms,” and are called DEW-DRIERS.)

[1] (This poem, published in the CRISIS during the World War, was written after reading an account of the little African babies who are sent before the explorer into jungle grasses that tower many feet. The little boys, Dan Crawford says in his THINKING BLACK, who go out to tread down a path and by chance meet the lurking leopard or hyena are “Human Brooms,” and are called DEW-DRIERS.)

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