Page:Anthology of Magazine Verse (1921).djvu/116

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Up from the bed of the river
God scooped the clay;
And by the bank of the river
He knelt Him down;
And there the great God Almighty,
Who lit the sun and fixed it in the sky,
Who flung the stars to the most far corner of the night,
Who rounded the earth in the middle of His hand;
This Great God,
Like a mammy bending over her baby,
Kneeled down in the dust
Toiling over a lump of clay
Till He shaped it in His own image;

Then into it He blew the breath of life,
And man became a living soul.
Amen, Amen,

The FreemanJames Weldon Johnson


COSMOS FLOWERS
Grey clouds, with sudden lakes of blue—
A mournful, monotonous wind like wailing women—
And against the crumbling wall
Hundreds of cosmos flowers,
Startling, leopard-like, sensual,
Wave on their stalks of feathery green;
And above them the purple morning-glories,
A blare of glorious trumpets,
Cling to the yellowing wall;
And a negro, his torn white shirt
Revealing in jarred tears his ebony skin,
The gleaming muscles, the cat-like, strong
Animal body, labors on crooked knees,
Clearing the autumn garden of twigs and the flying leaves. . . .

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