Rain Music

On the dusty earth-drum

Beats the falling rain;

Now a whispered murmur,

Now a louder strain.

Slender silvery drumsticks,

On the ancient drum,

Beat the mellow music,

Bidding life to come.

Chords of earth awakened,

Notes of greening spring,

Rise and fall triumphant

Over everything.

Slender silvery drumsticks,

Beat the long tattoo—

God, the Great Musician,

Calling life anew.[1]

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[1] This poem is by Joseph Seamon Cotter, Jr. (1895-1919), poet, journalist, and forerunner of the African American cultural renaissance of the 1920s. He was born in Louisville, Kentucky, son of the poet Joseph Seamon Cotter, Sr. After graduation from Louisville Central High School in 1911, Joseph enrolled at Fisk University, where he worked on the Fisk Herald, a monthly published by the university literary societies. During his second year at Fisk, Cotter had to return home to Louisville due to the onset of tuberculosis.

Upon his return home, Joseph accepted a position as an editor and writer for the Louisville newspaper the Leader, and he began to establish his brief yet brilliant career as poet. Grief over his sister’s death inspired the early tribute To Florence; it is one of his most moving poems. Precluded from military service in World War I because of his deteriorating physical condition but stimulated by his own interest and by the war service of a close friend, Joseph produced a number of poems, including Sonnet to Negro Soldiers and O, Little David, Play on Your Harp, which place him among the best Great War poets.

Other notable poems of the Gideon collection include the title poem, which recalls the style of the traditional southern black preacher and seems to encode protest regarding the treatment of black World War I veterans. Among the best modernist free verse pieces are The Mulatto to His Critics and the provocative Is It Because I Am Black, which dramatically interrogates those who would dismiss or patronize the African American narrator. Joseph died at the age of 24.  (Source: answers.com)