Daniel B. Thompson, "A Query" (1907)
When evening's sun is sinking low,
Amid the landscape's ruddy glow,
And hear my spaniel's honest bark.
Brave, patient, faithful, gentle friend,
With pendent ears and snowy breast,
The shrine of feelings unexpressed,
My heart to you I would commend.
I look into your lustrous eyes,
As soft and clear as some limpid stream,
And wonder, can the inward gleam
Bespeak a soul that never dies?
The agony of feelings mute,
Of thoughts too deep for human tongue,
That mock all effort to be sung
Is this, too, shared by the stolid brute?
No stunted growths in Nature's schemes?
No cruel tyranny of Fate,
That fiction base of ancient date,
To cheat us of our golden dreams?
And he, "the brute of slight remove,"
Now sweetly called the Nation's "child,"
May he, too, hold a vision wild
A humble chance his worth to prove?
Why toss him, then, as a worthless toy?
His manhood rights from him why steal?
Why take from him fair Freedom's seal?
Why crush the soul of a Negro boy?
Published in The Voice of the Negro, January 1907