A Poem For Sunday

by Alice Quinn

From “The Colored Soldiers” by Paul Laurence Dunbar:

If the muse were mine to tempt it

And my feeble voice were strong,

If my tongue were trained to measures,

I would sing a stirring song.

I would sing a song heroic

Of those noble sons of Ham,

Of the gallant colored soldiers

Who fought for Uncle Sam!

In the early days you scorned them,

And with many a flip and flout

Said, “These battles are the white man’s,

And the whites will fight them out.”

Up the hills you fought and faltered,

In the vales you strove and bled,

While your ears still heard the thunder

Of the foes’ advancing tread.

Then distress fell on the nation,

And the flag was drooping low;

Should the dust pollute your banner?

No! the nation shouted, No!

So when War, in savage triumph,

Spread abroad his funeral pall—

Then you called the colored soldiers,

And they answered to your call.

And like hounds unleashed and eager

For the life blood of the prey,

Sprung they forth and bore them bravely

In the thickest of the fray.

And where’er the fight was hottest,

Where the bullets fastest fell,

There they pressed unblanched and fearless

At the very mouth of hell.

(From War Poems, selected and edited by John Hollander © by John Hollander 1999. Used by permission of Everyman Library. Photo of the men from Company E, 4th United States Colored Infantry, circa 1864, from Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)