Purportedly written by Langston Hughes while he was on a train crossing the Mississippi the year before-when he was seventeen- the poem has remained a landmark piece of the period and movement.
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.