Countee Cullen’s poetry is one of the defining voices of the Harlem Renaissance, blending classical form with powerful reflections on race, identity, and human emotion. His work is deeply musical, elegant, and influenced by Romantic poets like Keats, yet rooted in the lived experiences of African Americans in early 20th-century America. This balance of tradition and modern struggle gives his poems a unique emotional intensity.
Cullen often explored themes of love, faith, injustice, and the painful contradictions of being Black in a racist society. In poems such as “Heritage”, he wrestles with questions of African identity and belonging, while works like “Yet Do I Marvel” express a profound spiritual questioning—why a just God allows suffering, especially the suffering of Black people. His language is lyrical and polished, yet beneath the smooth surface lies a sharp awareness of inequality and longing for dignity.
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| Countee cullen |
At the same time, Cullen celebrated beauty, romance, and the power of imagination. His poems avoid bitterness; instead, they reveal a deep compassion and a desire for universal human connection. Through grace, melody, and moral force, Countee Cullen created poetry that continues to resonate across generations, reminding readers of both the sorrow and the hope at the heart of the African American experience.
A Brown Girl Dead
With two white roses on her breasts,
White candles at head and feet,
Dark Madonna of the grave she rests;
Lord Death has found her sweet.
Her mother pawned her wedding ring
To lay her out in white;
She'd be so proud she'd dance and sing
to see herself tonight.
For A Lady I Know
She even thinks that up in heaven
Her class lies late and snores
While poor black cherubs rise at seven
To do celestial chores.
Saturday's Child
Some are teethed on a silver spoon,
With the stars strung for a rattle;
I cut my teeth as the black racoon—
For implements of battle.
Some are swaddled in silk and down,
And heralded by a star;
They swathed my limbs in a sackcloth gown
On a night that was black as tar.
For some, godfather and goddame
The opulent fairies be;
Dame Poverty gave me my name,
And Pain godfathered me.
For I was born on Saturday—
"Bad time for planting a seed,"
Was all my father had to say,
And, "One mouth more to feed."
Death cut the strings that gave me life,
And handed me to Sorrow,
The only kind of middle wife
Harlem Wine
This is not water running here,
These thick rebellious streams
That hurtle flesh and bone past fear
Down alleyways of dreams
This is a wine that must flow on
Not caring how or where
So it has ways to flow upon
Where song is in the air.
So it can woo an artful flute
With loose elastic lips
Its measurements of joy compute
Red
She went to buy a brand new hat,
And she was ugly, black, and fat:
"This red becomes you well," they said,
And perched it high upon her head.
And then they laughed behind her back
To see it glow against the black.
She payed for it with regal mien,
And walked out proud as any queen.
With blithe, ecstatic hips.
My folks could beg or borrow.
Song In Spite Of Myself
Never love with all your heart,
It only ends in aching;
And bit by bit to the smallest part
That organ will be breaking.
Never love with all your mind,
It only ends in fretting;
In musing on sweet joys behind,
too poignant for forgetting.
Never love with all your soul,
for such there is no ending;
though a mind that frets may find control,
and a shattered heart find mending.
Give but a grain of the heart's rich seed,
Confine some undercover,
And when love goes, bid him God-speed,
and find another lover.
The Wise
Dead men are wisest, for they know
How far the roots of flowers go,
How long a seed must rot to grow.
Dead men alone bear frost and rain
On throbless heart and heatless brain,
And feel no stir of joy or pain.
Dead men alone are satiate;
They sleep and dream and have no weight,
To curb their rest, of love or hate.
Strange, men should flee their company,
Or think me strange who long to be
Wrapped in their cool immunity.
To A Brown Girl
What if his glance is bold and free,
His mouth the lash of whips?
So should the eyes of lovers be
And so a lovers lips.
What if no puritanic strain
Confines him to the nice?
He will not pass this way or again
Or hunger for you twice.
Since in the end consort together
Magdalen and Mary,
Youth is the time for careless weather;
Later lass, be wary.
