McKay republished the volume in the United
States in 1922 under the new title of HARLEM
SHADOWS.There were plans to produce a simulta-
neous American version of the British manuscript,
but that did not occur. McKay had hoped that the
playwright George Bernard Shaw would contribute
a preface to the volume. Shaw demurred, however.
The influential British scholar I. A. Richards ulti-
mately provided the introduction to the volume
that was republished in expanded form as Harlem
Shadowsin the United States in 1922. In his intro-
duction, Richards provided brief autobiographical
details about McKay and developed an emphatic
assessment of the ways in which he deserved re-
spect as a powerful race writer. “Claude McKay is a
pure blooded Negro,” he wrote, “and though we
have recently been made aware of some of the
more remarkable achievements of African Art typ-
ified by the sculpture from Benin, and in music by
the ‘Spirituals,’ this is the first instance of success
in poetry with which we in Europe at any rate have
been brought into contact” (Maxwell, 307). The
revised version of the book that appeared in Amer-
ica received strong support from influential figures
of the day. JOELSPINGARNsupported McKay’s ef-
forts to publish the work, and the new volume
contained an enthusiastic preface by MAXEAST-
MAN, editor of the LIBERATORand one of McKay’s
longtime friends.
Spring in New Hampshireincluded a number of
poems inspired by McKay’s sojourn in the United
States. Among these were “Spring in New Hamp-
shire,” “Harlem Shadows,” “The Harlem Dancer,”
“The Lynching,” and “On Broadway.” The book also
included works such as “Reminiscences,” “Love
Song,” and “Sukee River,” which he had recently
published in the Summer 1920 issue of Cambridge
Magazine.“Reminiscences” was a tender poem, one
in which the speaker’s memories warm him during
winter “[w]hen the day is at its dimmest / And the
air is wild with snow, / And the city’s at its
grimmest.” The elements are unable to prevent the
speaker from remaking the landscape before him.
The winter scene is replaced by “an old world sugar-
mill / Where the southern sun is inking—/ Gold and
crimson—o’er the hill” and by a “white stream dash-
ing / Gay and reckless through the brake, / O’er the
root-entwined rocks washing / Swiftly, madly to the
lake.” The poem “Love Song” extended McKay’s
reveries about the power of the natural world. In the
two-stanza poem, he celebrated the richness of flow-
ers and the glories of the skies. Ultimately, however,
not even the “[h]eart of the saffron rose / Lines of
the lily red, / Gold of the buttercup, / Dew of the
daisies’ bed” or the “[r]ime of the silver morn / Fair
on the green of trees” and the “[s]cent of the coffee
blooms” could exceed the glories of his love affair.
The speaker confesses that such sights are “[r]are...
to see / But more than all and more / Is your fond
heart to me.” In “Sukee River,” McKay considered
themes that would recur in his later volumes.
“When from my early wandering I returned / did I
not promise to remain for aye,” muses the speaker
who is clearly dismayed by the powerful wanderlust
that prompts him to immediately contemplate leav-
ing once again. “Yet instantly for other regions
yearned / And wearied of thee in a single day,” he
confesses, “No wonder that my feet are faltering
ever,” he concludes, “I have been faithless to thee,
Sukee River.”
As biographer Wayne Cooper notes, the
poems in Spring in New Hampshire represent a
“heightened poetic creativity” (Cooper, 132).
McKay would preserve the creative momentum
that he began to realize in the volume and would
use it to full advantage when he returned to the
United States and began to establish himself as a
major literary figure in the Harlem Renaissance
community.Bibliography
Cooper, Wayne. Claude McKay: Rebel Sojourner in the
Harlem Renaissance.New York: Schocken Books,
1987.
Giles, James R. Claude McKay.Boston: Twayne Publish-
ers, 1976.
Maxwell, William J., ed. Complete Poems: Claude McKay.
Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004.“Spring of ’65, The”William Moore(1925)
A Civil War–era short story by William Moore
about the plot to assassinate President Abraham
Lincoln. Published in the February 1925 issue of
The Messenger,“The Spring of ’65” revolves around
a clandestine meeting in NEWYORKCITYof co-
conspirators. A man named Dick Jackson travels
to New York from WASHINGTON, D.C., to meet“Spring of ’65, The” 495