THE NEGRO SPEAKS OF RIVERS

THE NEGRO SPEAKS OF RIVERS
By Langston Hughes

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.




Hughes captures the African American's historical journey to America in what
is perhaps his signature poem, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers." Dedicated to W E. B. Du Bois
and using water or the river as a metaphor for the source of life.
Hughes's poem, published first in The Crisis in June, 1921, heralded the existence of a mystic union of Negroes in every country and every age. It pushed their history back to the creation of the world, and credited them with possessing a wisdom no less profound than that of the greatest rivers of civilization , from the Euphrates to the Nile and from the Congo to the Mississippi.