dreams that “bring... rubies from remote con-
fines” and “throw conditions to the winds.” His in-
tense personification of dreams suggests that
imagination is a vital defense against potential
overwhelming realism. Each of the four stanzas
ends with the assertion that “Dreams are the work-
man’s friends.” The speaker shares his fascination
with dreams and their ability to mobilize and stimu-
late dreamers who might otherwise be stymied by
work and depravity. As the speaker notes, dreams
“can awake [the workman’s] spirits better than old
wines; / To ’waken him to beauty is their plan.”
Other poems, such as “That Poison, Late Sleep,”
which appeared in the September 1925 Messenger,
offered engaging narratives about the plight of
overworked and bullied employees. The six-line
stanzas, made up of three pairs of rhyming lines, in-
troduce a besieged but resilient young man whose
late nights and romantic adventures negatively af-
fect his ability to work. “T’was the time I was
spending my wages on Loue,” he confesses before
outlining the end of one relationship and the start
of another. “O that poison, sweet sleep, surely fixed
me that day. / It, in one way was bully, but Lord! did
it pay? / Why the break with my Loue was some
blow to my heart. —My! I dote on my Kate when
the wound starts to smart.”
Henry’s considerations of the working man are
complemented by his tributes to the successful writ-
ers of the day. “Countee Cullen,” published in the
October 1924 Messenger,for instance, paid high
tribute to the poet who was on the verge of publish-
ing his first volume of poems. Henry regarded
Cullen like a quintessential mythological figure.
“On Pegasus you’ve flown into a sheen— / A glori-
ous passion has possessed your tongue,” the narra-
tor declares in the opening lines of the poem. He
goes on to imagine Cullen as a modern-day version
of the Romantic poet Byron or like the pioneering
writer Paul Laurence Dunbar. By the end of the
Italian sonnet, Henry declares himself a “patient” of
the writer, one who benefits from the “tonic” and
“songs like meat, like medicine, like wine.”
Henry’s investment in a heroic black literary
tradition also imbues one of his most passionate
Crisisessays. In “Old School of Negro ‘Critics’
Hard on Paul Laurence Dunbar,” published in the
October 1924 Messenger,Henry bemoans the hard-
ships that poets face. “This land is as far from
being a friend to poets as it is to being a friend to
grace,” he states forthrightly. He critiques The Cri-
sisfor failing to republish works by Dunbar, who
died in 1906, and lays the fault for this oversight at
the feet of the “three gentlemen who sit in the
judgement seats for The Crisisat present... Dr.
DUBOIS,Mr. BRAITHWAITEand Mr. JAMESWEL-
DONJOHNSON.” After making a case for Dunbar’s
renaissance, Henry closes with a series of dramatic
pronouncements on CLAUDEMCKAY, the poet
whom cultural critics most often compared to
Dunbar. Henry suggested that while “McKay’s
poems have more blood and thunder in them than
any other Negro’s verse,” it would be some time
before the much celebrated “Jamaica poet” would
“reach [Dunbar] in some particular.”
Thomas Henry’s modest set of publications
during the Harlem Renaissance explains his rela-
tive obscurity. The passion and engagement of the
work, however, contribute much to the ever-in-
creasing sense of the period’s diversity of talent
and critical opinion.Bibliography
Wilson, Sondra. The Messenger Reader: Stories, Poetry,
and Essays fromThe Messenger Magazine.New
York: Modern, 2000.
Yenser, Thomas. Who’s Who in Colored America: A Bio-
graphical Dictionary of Notable Living Persons of
African Descent in America.New York: Thomas
Yenser, 1937.HerEulalie Spence(1927)
A one-act play by EULALIESPENCE, a prolific and
prize-winning New York–based playwright. Spence
completed the drama during the especially impres-
sive years of her theatrical debut. Her first public
works emerged in connection with W. E. B.
DUBOIS,REGINA ANDREWS, and the KRIGWA
PLAYERS, a dramatic troupe based in the 135th
Street Branch of the NEWYORKPUBLICLIBRARY.
In the mid to late 1920s, she captured several
awards for her works including second prize in the
National Little Theatre Tournament and second
place in the 1926 drama contest sponsored by the
Krigwa Players and THECRISIS.
Unfortunately, the play is one of several
Spence plays for which there is no extant script.Her 233