RPO -- Langston Hughes : The Negro Speaks of Rivers

Langston Hughes (1902-1967)

The Negro Speaks of Rivers

1I've known rivers:

2I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.

3My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

4I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.

5I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.

6I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.

7I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

8I've known rivers:

9Ancient, dusky rivers.

10My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

Notes

4] Euphrates: river flowing from Turkey to unite with the Tigris to make the Shatt-al-Arab.

5] Congo: Zaire river flowing from central Africa into the Atlantic.

Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.

Original text: The Weary Blues (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1926). PS H874w Victoria College Library.
First publication date: June 1921
Publication date note: Crisis (June 1921): 71
RPO poem editor: Ian Lancashire
RP edition: RPO 1999.
Recent editing: 2:2002/3/7

Rhyme: unrhyming

Other poems by Langston Hughes