The Negro Speaks of Rivers - Langston Hughes

Illustrator: E. B. Lewis
For: Absolutely everyone!
Published: Jan. 2009
Rating 5
Read: Jan, 2009 (Library book)
Endpapers: Bright mustard
"Dedicated to the heroes of the civil rights movement - E.B.L."

My first 2009 copyrighted picture book - and it's a winner. Langston Hughes wrote this poem in 1920, when he was 18, and the watercolor illustrations that E. B. Lewis has created make me want to cry, they're so beautiful. One line per double-page spread - and each one is a breath-taking painting on its own.

The Negro Speaks of Rivers

I've known rivers:
I've know 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 up the Nile and raised 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.

---Langston Hughes