The Negro Speaks of Rivers
The Negro Speaks of Rivers - Langston Hughes
The Negro Speaks of Rivers
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.
Reproduced by kind permission of the BBC - 'The Negro Speaks of Rivers', read by the author, recorded by the BBC for Radio and Broadcast 28th April, 1962. from The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes (Alfred A Knopf Inc, 1995 ) used by permission of David Higham Associates.