Countee Cullen Quotes

24 Sourced Quotes

For we must be one thing or the other, an asset or a liability, the sinew in your wing to help you soar, or the chain to bind you to earth.

Countee Cullen
My poetry has become the way of my giving out what music is within me.

Countee Cullen
Jesus of the twice-turned cheek,
Lamb of God, although I speak With my mouth thus, in my heart Do I play a double part.
Even at Thy glowing altar
Must my heart grow sick and falter
Wishing He I served were black.

Countee Cullen
What is last year's snow to me,
Last year's anything? The tree
Budding yearly must forget
How its past arose or set

Countee Cullen
Give but a grain of the heart's rich seed, Confine some under cover, And when love goes, bid him God-speed. And find another lover.

Countee Cullen
Whatever lives is granted breath But by the grace and sufferance of Death.

Countee Cullen
Until I die my burthen be;
How Cavalry in Palestine,
Extending down to me and mine,
Was but the first leaf in a line
Of trees on which a Man should swing
World without end, in suffering
For all men's healing, let me sing.

Countee Cullen
Death cut the strings that gave me life,
And handed me to Sorrow,
The only kind of middle wife
My folks could beg or borrow.

Countee Cullen
Now I was eight and very small
And he was no whit bigger,
And so I smiled, but he poked out
His tongue, and called me, "Nigger."

Countee Cullen
Dame Poverty gave me my name,
And Pain godfathered me.

Countee Cullen
If I am going to be a poet at all, I am going to be POET and not NEGRO POET.

Countee Cullen
"Lord, being dark," I said, "I cannot bear
The further touch of earth, the scented air;
Lord, being dark, forewilled to that despair
My color shrouds me in, I am as dirt
Beneath, my brother's heel; there is a hurt
In all the simple joys which to a child
Are sweet; they contaminate, defiled."

Countee Cullen
The key to all strange things is in thy heart..../ My spirit has come home, that sailed the doubtful seas.

Countee Cullen
Not for myself I make this prayer, But for this race of mine That stretches forth from shadowed places Dark hands for bread and wine.

Countee Cullen
She even thinks that up in heaven
Her class lies late and snores,
While poor black cherubs rise at seven
To do celestial chores.

Countee Cullen
Lord, I fashion dark gods, too,
Daring even to give You
Dark despairing features

Countee Cullen
Quaint, outlandish heathen gods
Black men fashion out of rods

Countee Cullen
The loss of love is a terrible thing; They lie who say that death is worse.

Countee Cullen
The night whose sable breast relieves the stark,
White stars, is no less lovely being dark

Countee Cullen
All day long and all night through, One thing only must I do: Quench my pride and cool my blood, Lest I perish in the flood.

Countee Cullen
Some are teethed on a silver spoon,
With the stars strung for a rattle;
I cut my teeth as the black raccoon—
For implements of battle.

Countee Cullen
Not yet has my heart or head In the least way realized They and I are civilized.

Countee Cullen
Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:
To make a poet black, and bid him sing!

Countee Cullen
One three centuries removed From the scenes his fathers loved, Spicy grove, cinnamon tree, What is Africa to me?

Countee Cullen