No figure became more synonymous with the Harlem Renaissance than Langston Hughes. Poems like “The Weary Blues” (1926) and “I, Too, Sing America” (1925) simultaneously gave voice to the historical anxieties that African Americans faced and celebrated the roles of blacks in the arts. Hughes also wrote penetrating essays, such as “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain” (1925), which explored how African Americans might best present their art. In this early poem, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” Hughes ponders his relationship to Africa.
I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of
human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I 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.
I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
Source: The Crisis, June 1921, 17.