My Hero
(To Robert Gould Shaw )
Flushed with the hope of high desire,
He buckled on his sword,
To dare the rampart ranged with fire,
Or where the thunder roared;
Into the smoke and flame he went,
For God’s great cause to die—
A youth of heaven’s element,
The flower of chivalry.
This was the gallant faith, I trow,
Of which the sages tell;
On such devotion long ago
The benediction fell;
And never nobler martyr burned,
Or braver hero died,
Than he who worldly honor spurned
To serve the Crucified.
And Lancelot and Sir Bedivere
May pass beyond the pale,
And wander over moor and mere
To find the Holy Grail;
But ever yet the prize forsooth
My hero holds in fee;
And he is Blameless Knight in truth,
And Galahad to me.
From The Book of American Negro Poetry (Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1922), edited by James Weldon Johnson. This poem is in the public domain.
Benjamin Brawley
Benjamin Griffith Brawley was born in Columbia, South Carolina, on April 22, 1882 and was raised in Petersburg, Virginia. Brawley was the second eldest of nine children born to Margaret Saphronia (née Dickerson) and Edward McKnight Brawley. The elder Brawley was born in Charleston, South Carolina and was the first African American to earn a degree from Bucknell University. He was also the first president of Morris College in South Carolina and, later, served as president of Selma University in Alabama.