The Negro Speaks of Rivers

(To W.E.B DuBois)

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.

(1920) 

by Langston Huges
​(1902 - 1967)