Benjamin Griffith Brawley, "The Battleground" (1903)
When youth is full, let me know men and grow
Into the knowledge of their pulsing souls.
Not on some distant height wherein the veil
Fame tapers and the siren temples blaze,
May my days pass, but on a lower ground,
Where men of might brave dubious circumstance,
Where sorrow wears the heart, would lose the soul,
Where earnest life demands the high ideals.
In lusty labor and the fight with fire,
Or sin, unlovable benightedness,
May I know men, and knowing learn to love,
And loving learn to help them in their toil.
Published in Colored American Magazine, January 1903