And they pranced with their butterfly part

ners there,

Coal-black maidens with pearls in their

hair,

Knee-skirts trimmed with the jessamine

sweet,

And bells on their ankles and little black

feet.

And the couples railed at the chant and the

frown

Of the witch-men lean, and laughed them. down.

(O rare was the revel, and well worth while

That made those glowering witch-men smile.)

The cake-walk royalty then began

To walk for a cake that was tall as a man
To the tune of "Boomlay, boomlay, Booм,"
While the witch-men laughed, with a sin-
ister air,

And sang with the scalawags prancing

there :

"Walk with care, walk with care,

Or Mumbo-Jumbo, God of the Congo,
And all of the other

Gods of the Congo,

Mumble-Jumbo will hoo-doo you.
Beware, beware, walk with care,
Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, boom.
Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, boom,

With growing

speed and sharply marked dance-rhythm.

With a touch of negro dialect,

as rapidly as possible toward the end.

Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, boom,

Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay,

BOOM."

Oh rare was the revel, and well worth while Slow philoThat made those glowering witch-men smile.

sophic calm.

III. THE HOPE OF THEIR RELIGION

A good old negro in the slums of the town Heavy bass.

With a literal imitation of

ways,

camp-meeting racket, and trance.

Preached at a sister for her velvet gown.
Howled at a brother for his low-down
His prowling, guzzling, sneak-thief days.
Beat on the Bible till he wore it out,
Starting the jubilee revival shout.

And some had visions, as they stood on
chaïrs,

And sang of Jacob, and the golden stairs.
And they all repented, a thousand strong,
From their stupor and savagery and sin and
wrong

And slammed their hymn books till they
shook the room

With "Glory, glory, glory,"
And "Boom, boom, Booм."

THEN I SAW THE CONGO, CREEPING

THROUGH THE BLACK,

CUTTING THROUGH THE JUNGLE WITH A

GOLDEN TRACK.

And the gray sky opened like a new-rent veil
And showed the apostles with their coats

Exactly as in the first section.

of mail.

In bright white steel they were seated round
And their fire-eyes watched where the
Congo wound.

And the twelve apostles, from their thrones
on high,

Thrilled all the forest with their heavenly

cry:

"Mumbo-Jumbo will die in the jungle; Never again will he hoo-doo you, Never again will he hoo-doo you."

Then along that river, a thousand miles,
The vine-snared trees fell down in files.
Pioneer angels cleared the way

For a Congo paradise, for babes at play,
For sacred capitals, for temples clean.

Gone were the skull-faced witch-men lean.

Sung to the
tune of "Hark,
ten thousand
harps and
voices."

With growing deliberation and joy.

There, where the wild ghost-gods had a rather

wailed

A million boats of the angels sailed

With oars of silver, and prows of blue

And silken pennants that the sun shone through.

'Twas a land transfigured, 'twas a new

creation.

Oh, a singing wind swept the negro nation;
And on through the backwoods clearing

flew :

"Mumbo-Jumbo is dead in the jungle. Never again will he hoo-doo you, Never again will he hoo-doo you."

high key-as delicately as possible.

To the tune of "Hark, ten thousand harps and voices."

Redeemed were the forests, the beasts and

the men,

And only the vulture dared again

By the far, lone mountains of the moon
To cry, in the silence, the Congo tune:-
"Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you.
Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you,
Mumbo .. Jumbo . . . will . .

you."

Dying of
into a pene-
trating,

hoo-terrified
whisper.

Brian Hooker (1880

(William) Brian Hooker is a New Yorker born, graduated from Yale in 1902, A.M., 1904 (M.A., honoris causa, 1912). Till 1909 he instructed in English both at Columbia and Yale. He then became a Columbia lecturer and was also Literary Editor on the New York Sun, and has held other positions. Meanwhile he has written much, and variedly. He contributed many mediaeval short stories to the magazines, a vein in which he had few important rivals at the time in America. In 1908 he published his first novel, The Right Man, and wrote, with Wells Hastings, The Professor's Mystery in 1911. In 1911 his opera libretto Mona was awarded the prize in the Metropolitan Opera Company's competition, in conjunction with the music written for it by Horatio Parker. Mr. Hooker and Mr. Parker again won the first prize, this time from the American Opera Association, in 1915, with an opera, Fairyland. They wrote together Morven and the Grail in the same year. Mr. Hooker's Poems appeared in 1915 after his name had become familiar to many readers through his contributions to the magazines. "Ghosts" is one of the best of his sonnets. He is also expert in lyric meters.

GHOSTS *

THE dead return to us continually:

Not at the void of night, as fables feign,

In some lone spot where murdered bones have lain Wailing for vengeance to the passer by;

But in the merry clamour and full cry

Of the brave noon, our dead whom we have slain
And in forgotten graves have hidden in vain,

Rise up and stand beside us terribly.

From Poems, by Brian Hooker, and reprinted by permission of the Yale University Press.