Free Verse · Life
The Negro Speaks of Rivers
by Langston Hughes · 1921
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.
This poem is in the public domain. First published in The Crisis, 1921.
“The Negro Speaks of Rivers” by Langston Hughes — quilloak.com/poems/the-negro-speaks-of-rivers
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