| Frederick Douglass | |
Poem By: Robert Hayden | Views: 198 | Word Count: 113 | View PDF | Print View |
|
|
|
When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful
and terrible thing, needful to man as air,
usable as earth; when it belongs at last to all,
when it is truly instinct, brain matter, diastole, systole,
reflex action; when it is finally won; when it is more
than the gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians:
this man, this Douglass, this former slave, this Negro
beaten to his knees, exiled, visioning a world
where none is lonely, none hunted, alien,
this man, superb in love and logic, this man
shall be remembered. Oh, not with statues' rhetoric,
not with legends and poems and wreaths of bronze alone,
but with the lives grown out of his life, the lives
fleshing his dream of the beautiful, needful thing.
| If you enjoyed this famous poem, rate it! Currently Rated: 4.00 |
About the Author Robert Hayden (1913 - 1980), born Asa Bundy Sheffey in Detroit, Michigan, was raised in a slum called Paradise Valley. Hayden's parents separated soon after his birth and he became the foster child of Sue Ellen Westerfield... Read Robert Hayden's Full Biography
More Poems By Robert Hayden
3: Full Moon
7: Perseus
9: Soledad
10: The Prisoners
+ View All Robert Hayden Poems
