The Negro Speaks of Rivers

By Langston Hughes

I’ve known rivers:

The speaker of this poem apparently exists outside of time—or he embodies a racial consciousness larger than individual experience. His ability to speak of ancient and recent past, of a time even before “the flow of human blood” contributes to the depth of soul he claims.

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.

Through the four mythic rivers he mentions, Hughes links the United States to the great civilizations of the Middle East and Africa—and implicitly links black people across the world in a diaspora.

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.

Rivers grow deeper by eroding the earth through which they move. Though the speaker’s depth of soul sounds like a positive growth, it also implies a wearing down or carving out parallel to the action of river on rock.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.