Paul Laurence Dunbar AUL LAURENCE DUNBAR was born in 1872 at Dayton, Ohio, the son of Negro slaves. He was, before and after he began to write his verse, an elevator-boy. He tried newspaper work unsuccessfully and, in 1899, was given a position in the Library of Congress at Washington, D. C. Although Dunbar wrote several volumes of short stories and two novels, he was most at home in his verse. Even here, his best work is not those "literary English" pieces by which he set such store, but the racy rhymes written in Negro dialect, alternately tender and mocking. Dunbar's first collection, Lyrics of Lowly Life (1896), contains many of his most characteristic poems. In an introduction, in which mention was made of the octoroon Dumas and the great Russian poet Pushkin, who was a mulatto, William Dean Howells wrote, "So far as I could remember, Paul Dunbar was the first man of pure African blood and of American civilization to feel the Negro life esthetically and express it lyrically. . . . His brilliant and unique achievement was to have studied the American Negro objectively, and to have represented him as he found him—with humor, with sympathy, and yet with what the reader must instinctively feel to be entire truthfulness." Dunbar was the precursor of those Negro poets who, turning away from sentimentality, genuinely expressed the Negro, even though Dunbar avoided anything which seemed "controversial." Lyrics of the Hearthside (1899) and Lyrics of Love and Laughter (1903) are two other volumes full of folk-stuff. Though the final Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow (1905) is less original, being crowded with echoes of all kinds of poetry from the songs of Robert Burns to the childhood rhymes of J. W. Riley, it contains a few of Dunbar's least known but keenest interpretations. Dunbar died in his birthplace, Dayton, Ohio, February 9, 1906. THE TURNING OF THE BABIES IN THE BED Woman's sho' a cur'ous critter, an' dey ain't no doubtin' dat. I don' mean to be complainin', but I's jes' a-settin' down In de ve'y hea't o' midnight, w'en I's sleepin' good an' soun', I kin hyeah a so't o' rustlin' an' somebody movin' 'roun'. An' I say, "Lize, whut yo' doin'?" But she frown an' shek huh haid, "Don' yo' know a chile gits restless, layin' all de night one way? So she shakes 'em, an' she twists 'em, an' she tu'ns 'em 'roun' erbout, W'en hit's mos' nigh time fu' wakin' on de dawn o' jedgement day, A COQUETTE CONQUERED Yes, my ha't's ez ha'd ez stone- Phiny loves you true an' deah? Got a present! What you got? Gin it to me; whut you say? Tell me, is you talkin' true, Come back, Sam; now whah's you gwine? DISCOVERED Seen you down at chu'ch las' night, Guess you thought you's awful keen; Nevah min', Miss Lucy. Say now, honey, wa'd he say?— Guy Wetmore Carryl UY WETMORE CARRYL, son of Charles Edward Carryl, author of Davy and the Goblin and The Admiral's Caravan, was born in New York City, March 4, 1873. He was graduated from Columbia University in 1895, was editor of Munsey's Magazine, 1895-6, and, during the time he lived abroad (from 1897 to 1902), was the foreign representative of various American publications. As a writer of prose he was received with no little acclaim; his stories, The Transgression of Andrew Vane (1902) and Zut and Other Parisians (1903), held the attention of a restless reading public. But it was as a writer of light verse that Carryl became preëminent. Inheriting a remarkable technical gift from his father, young Carryl soon surpassed him as well as other rivals in the field of brilliantly rhymed, adroitly turned burlesques. Although he wrote several serious poems which were collected in the posthumously published The Garden of Years (1904), Carryl's most characteristic work is to be found in his perversions of the parables of Aesop, Fables for the Frivolous (1898); the topsy-turvy interpretations of nursery rhymes, Mother Goose for Grownups (1900); and the fantastic variations on fairy tales in Grimm Tales Made Gay (1903)—all of them with a surprising (and punning) Moral attached. Even those who scorn the gymnastics of most light verse usually succumb to the ease with which Carryl overcomes seemingly impossible hazards in the rhyme-leaping fable of the fox and the raven or the appalling pun-juggling in the new version of Puss-in-Boots. He lacked only a Sullivan-and a sense of satire-to be called the Gilbert of America. This extraordinary versifier died, before reaching the height of his power, at the age of thirty-one, in the summer of 1904.. HOW JACK FOUND THAT BEANS MAY GO BACK ON A CHAP Without the slightest basis For hypochondriasis A widow had forebodings which a cloud around her flung, And with expression cynical For half the day a clinical Thermometer she held beneath her tongue. Whene'er she read the papers She suffered from the vapors, At every tale of malady or accident she'd groan; In every new and smart disease, From housemaid's knee to heart disease, She recognized the symptoms as her own! She had a yearning chronic To try each novel tonic, Elixir, panacea, lotion, opiate, and balm; And from a homeopathist Would change to an hydropathist, And back again, with stupefying calm! She was nervous, cataleptic, And anemic, and dyspeptic: Though not convinced of apoplexy, yet she had her fears. Upon a twinge rheumatical, And said she had a buzzing in her ears! Now all of this bemoaning And this grumbling and this groaning The mind of Jack, her son and heir, unconscionably bored. His heart completely hardening, He gave his time to gardening, For raising beans was something he adored. Each hour in accents morbid This limp maternal bore bid Her callous son affectionate and lachrymose good-bys. She never granted Jack a day Without some long "Alackaday!" Accompanied by rolling of the eyes. But Jack, no panic showing, Just watched his beanstalk growing, And twined with tender fingers the tendrils up the pole. At all her words funereal He smiled a smile ethereal, Or sighed an absent-minded "Bless my soul!" That hollow-hearted creature Would never change a feature: No tear bedimmed his eye, however touching was her talk. She never fussed or flurried him, The only thing that worried him Was when no bean-pods grew upon the stalk! But then he wabbled loosely His head, and wept profusely, And, taking out his handkerchief to mop away his tears, Exclaimed: "It hasn't got any!" He found this blow to botany Was sadder than were all his mother's fears. The Moral is that gardeners pine THE SYCOPHANTIC FOX AND THE GULLIBLE RAVEN A raven sat upon a tree, And not a word he spoke, for His beak contained a piece of Brie, We'll make it any kind you please At all events it was a cheese. Beneath the tree's umbrageous limb "J'admire," said he, "ton beau plumage," Two things there are, no doubt you know, A rooster that is bound to crow, A crow that's bound to roost; He tells the most unblushing lies. "Sweet foul," he said, "I understand Pray render with your liquid tongue This subtle speech was aimed to please He thought no bird in all the trees In flattery completely doused, He gave the "Jewel Song" from "Faust." But gravitation's law, of course, I blush to add that when the bird He said one brief, emphatic word, The fox was greatly startled, but The Moral is: A fox is bound To be a shameless sinner. And also: When the cheese comes round You know it's after dinner. But (what is only known to few) HOW A CAT WAS ANNOYED AND A POET WAS BOOTED A poet had a cat. There was nothing odd in that— |