A Poem by Banjo Paterson

Far to the Northward there lies a land,
A wonderful land that the winds blow over,
And none may fathom or understand
The charm it holds for the restless rover;
A great grey chaos, a land half made,
Where endless space is and no life stirreth;
There the soul of a man will recoil afraid
From the sphinx-like visage that Nature weareth.
But old Dame Nature, though scornful, craves
Her dole of death and her share of slaughter;
Many indeed are the nameless graves
Where her victims sleep by the Grey Gulf-water.

Slowly and slowly those grey streams glide,
Drifting along with a languid motion,
Lapping the reed-beds on either side,
Wending their way to the North Ocean.
Grey are the plains where the emus pass
Silent and slow, with their dead demeanour;
Over the dead man’s graves the grass
Maybe is waving a trifle greener.
Down in the world where men toil and spin
Dame Nature smiles as man’s hand has taught her;
Only the dead men her smiles can win
In the great lone land by the Grey Gulf-water.

For the strength of man is an insect’s strength
In the face of that mighty plain and river,
And the life of a man is a moment’s length
To the life of the stream that will run for ever.
And so it comes that they take no part
In small world worries; each hardy rover
Rides like a paladin, light of heart,
With the plains around and the blue sky over.
And up in the heavens the brown lark sings
The songs the strange wild land has taught her;
Full of thanksgiving her sweet song rings,
And I wish I were back by the Grey Gulf-water.

A Poem by Countee Cullen

We shall not always plant while others reap
The golden increment of bursting fruit,
Not always countenance, abject and mute,
That lesser men should hold their brothers cheap;
Not everlastingly while others sleep
Shall we beguile their limbs with mellow flute,
Not always bend to some more subtle brute;
We were not made to eternally weep.

The night whose sable breast relieves the stark,
White stars is no less lovely being dark,
And there are buds that cannot bloom at all
In light, but crumple, piteous, and fall;
So in the dark we hide the heart that bleeds,
And wait, and tend our agonizing seeds.

A Poem by Jean Toomer

Black reapers with the sound of steel on stones
Are sharpening scythes. I see them place the hones   
In their hip-pockets as a thing that’s done,   
And start their silent swinging, one by one.   
Black horses drive a mower through the weeds,   
And there, a field rat, startled, squealing bleeds.   
His belly close to ground. I see the blade,   
Blood-stained, continue cutting weeds and shade.

A Poem by Angelina Weld Grimké

Sometimes it seems as though some puppet-player,
   A clenched claw cupping a craggy chin
Sits just beyond the border of our seeing,
   Twitching the strings with slow, sardonic grin.

A Poem by Claude McKay

I must not gaze at them although
   Your eyes are dawning day;
I must not watch you as you go
   Your sun-illumined way;

I hear but I must never heed
   The fascinating note,
Which, fluting like a river reed,
   Comes from your trembling throat;

I must not see upon your face
   Love’s softly glowing spark;
For there’s the barrier of race,
   You’re fair and I am dark.