Langston Hughes - The Dream Keeper and Other Poems

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

Text copyright 1932 by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.
Copyright renewed 1960 by Langston Hughes
Compilation copyright 1994 by The Estate of Langston Hughes
Introduction copyright 1994 by Lee Bennett Hopkins
Illustrations copyright 1994 by Brian Pinkney
A Personal Note copyright 1986 by Augusta Baker

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Childrens Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., in 1932. Subsequently published with an introduction by Augusta Baker (retitled here as A Personal Note) by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., in 1986. This edition was revised to include additional poetry, new illustrations, and a new introduction in 1994 and was published by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Childrens Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., for permission to reprint In Time of Silver Rain, Stars, Dream Dust, Snail, Merry-Go-Round, Daybreak in Alabama, and Color from Collected Poems of Langston Hughes by Langston Hughes, edited by Arnold Rampersad with David Roessel, associate editor, copyright 1994 by The Estate of Langston Hughes. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The dream keeper and other poems / by Langston Hughes ; illustrations by Brian Pinkney, with additional
poems by Langston Hughes.
p. cm.
SUMMARY : A collection of sixty-six poems, selected by the author for young readers, including lyrical
poems, songs, and blues, many exploring the black experience.
eISBN: 978-0-307-80315-3
[1. Childrens poetry, American. 2. Afro-AmericansJuvenile poetry.] I. Pinkney, J. Brian, ill. II. Title. PS3515.U274D7 1993
811.52dc20
92-10240

The artwork for this book was done in scratchboard, a technique in which a white board is covered with black ink. The ink is then scratched off with a sharp tool to reveal white underneath.

v3.1

To My Brother L.H.

To the Children Who Dream B.P.

L ittle could he know that more than six decades after The Dream Keeper and Other Poems first appeared in 1932, his passionate, sensitive, strong, and mighty words would continue to be sung, shouted, whispered, hummedfrom farmlands to suburbs, from cities to countrysides all over the world.

Little could he know that his April Rain Song would continue to kiss us; that his Poem: I loved my friend would become an elegy for separation and loss; that his prayers and lullabies would echo within all our sleep-songs; that his syncopated blues would remind us of a time that was; that we would continue to be walkers with the dawn and morning, and have tomorrows bright before us like a flame.

Hopes, dreams, aspiration, life and love are embodied in his poetrypoems about his people, for his people, poems for each and every one of us, universalities that humankind of all ages and races have struggled for and will continue to strive for as long as we are on this earth.

James Mercer Langston Hughes was born on February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri, the son of James Nathaniel Hughes, a lawyer, and Carrie Mercer Langston, a teacher.

A year after his birth, his father left the family to settle in Mexico, leaving Langston to lead a nomadic life, moving around to a wide variety of places. Before he was twelve years old, he had lived in seven different American cities. By 1926, when his first book of poems, The Weary Blues, was published, he had already worked as a truck farmer, waiter, and a mess boy on a ship, and had traveled to places such as Mexico, Italy, France, Holland, and Africa.

The first edition of The Dream Keeper, his sole offering of verse for young readers, contained fifty-nine poems. This new edition, which includes seven additional works, is a fresh, long-awaited volume, enhanced by the artwork of Brian Pinkney, that will ring true for todays youth just as the earlier edition did for past generations.

Langston Hughes died on May 22, 1967, in his beloved Harlem, in New York City, leaving a legacy to African-American culture and to American literature.

Of the voluminous writing he produced during his lifetime, one of his most poignant messages is contained in Dreamsa mere eight-line versewhere he sagely told us to hold fast to dreams.

We must hold fast to dreamshis dreams, our dreams, the dreams of future generations.

Via the words of Langston Hughesthe dreamerhis gift to us of his strong voice will long and long live on.

Lee Bennett Hopkins
Scarborough, New York
1994

Bring me all of your dreams,
You dreamers,
Bring me all of your
Heart melodies
That I may wrap them
In a blue cloud-cloth
Away from the too-rough fingers
Of the world.

How thin and sharp is the moon tonight!
How thin and sharp and ghostly white
Is the slim curved crook of the moon tonight!

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

This little house is sugar.
Its roof with snow is piled,
And from its tiny window
Peeps a maple-sugar child.

Let the rain kiss you.