what does this poem by jean toomer from the Harlem renaissance mean and what does it have to do with equality?
970897
the poet is trying to say that people naturally judge people by the color of their skin rather than their character qualities. he ends the poem with a plea to everyone to not think superficially about a person by his color but to look deeper, because behind the skin color is a human person just like everyone else in the world. \n\nso it means that everywhere everyone should treat each other like equals because everyone is just human like everyone else. there are bad people all over the world; there are also friendly people all over the world.
151071
"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."\nMartin Luther King Jr, US civil rights leader (1929-1968)
938670
It is not a poem. It is originally from the novel by Charles Dickens,  A Tale of Two Cities.  It is the opening sentence to the novel.  The actual quote is: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.   It is one of the most famous lines in all of literature and quoted very often.  I believe the sentence concerns the French Revolution.
371303
In the poem "Music I Heard", written by Conrad Aiken, the love expressed is different. The character of the poem is a man, that is speaking about his loved one. Full of memories, he has flashbacks of when the loved one was around him and his belongings. After the loved person left, he is lonely. The memories are coming back to him in the quote (line #5), " Your hands one touched this table and this silver". He misses her and the good times they had together. He wants to have her come back to him. She is now only in his heart full of past memories.\n\nThe feeling that love brings in this poem is sadness. The sadness of missing the loved one is great. He is lonely and full of memories that still light up his hopes for having her come back. He remembers her actions and what she touched, but only the memories are left. The sadness is expressed in this quote (line # 3-4) by the character. "Now that I am without you all is desolate;/ and all that was once so beautiful is dead." He misses her a lot, and does not like things that much as he did when she was around.
480078
To me, it signifies racism. It signifies ongoing support of the Southern Confederacy and the way of life for which they chose to fight, that of plantations living off the backs of slaves. It feels to me like the person flying it is sending the message that they still support the south (in reference to the Civil War, not just fond feelings of home...)and wish that the south would have won the war so that slavery could continue.  It signifies a smoldering resentment that AfroAmericans are now free to mingle in society. I'm sure plenty others will disagree, but that's what it signifies to me. By the way, I am white, if that affects how you interpret my response.
700551
I believe it refers to death.  The term is the title of a poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson, about dying.  You can read it at the url below.
129860
The poem is talking about the futility and uselessness of war.  The bitter irony is that comrades and the enemy are for the most part ordinary people, not that different from each other.  If he met one of each on the street, he could not tell which is which.  The soldier chose to fight, no one forced him to, and in his last moments he is questioning the sense of that decision.   He realizes that in the end this fighting and sacrifice is not going to change much for the ordinary person, so in many ways it is a waste, a waste of life.  He can't turn back the clock, and his destiny awaits him in "the clouds", heaven, the afterlife.\n\nI hope this helps.
502529
It's a sonnet by William Wordsworth...The title is generally accepted as being\n\nSonnet: The world is too much with us
1129
"This too shall pass" is the title of a poem by Helen Steiner Rice. \n\nThe almost identical phrase: "And this, too, shall pass away" has been traced to an Abraham Lincoln speech. \n\nIt could just be a deliberate reference to the Bible: "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away." (Matthew 24:35 and elsewhere). \n\nApparently it was old Persian proverb and a Hebrew parable: \n\n... written three Hebrew letters on the gold band: gimel, zayin, yud, which began the words "Gam zeh ya'avor" -- "This too shall pass."
522025
An interesting and sometimes-lovely poem. It's an acknowledgment of where and how the writer connects to his origins.\nPoetry doesn't need to make sense.  Like religion, it is often irrational.
360959
read it\n\n"I Have A Dream" \nby Martin Luther King, Jr,\n---------------------------------------------------\n\nDelivered on the steps at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. on August 28, 1963. Source: Martin Luther King, Jr: The Peaceful Warrior, Pocket Books, NY 1968 \n\nFive score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity. But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free. \n\nOne hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. \n\nSo we have come here today to dramatize an appalling condition. In a sense we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. \n\nThis note was a promise that all men would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check which has come back marked "insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. \n\nSo we have come to cash this check -- a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God's children. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. \n\nIt would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment and to underestimate the determination of the Negro. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. \n\nThe whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges. But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. \n\nWe must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. we must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. \n\nThe marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to distrust
983580
Self rightoues people has basta d the word so much and used it to supress minorities..\n\nRead this from a old definition where the slaves was supressed.\n\n(MARRIAGE - A contract made in due form of law, by which a free man and a free woman reciprocally engage to live with each other during their joint lives, in the union which ought io exist between husband and wife. By the terms freeman and freewoman in this definition are meant, not only that they are free and not slaves, but also that they are clear of all bars to a lawful marriage)\n\nas you read, it is used to keep a group as a minority and to supress.\n\n(no it is not a union between man and woman, originally it meant combining together, as chefs use the word quite frequently in combining ingredients)\n\nany self rightoues person proclaiming to protect the institue of marriage (the word), is suppressing a minority group, building hatared, and thinking it is underminding there institute of marriage, which it is not)\n\nOnce again as this debate should not be happening, it is.\n\n(as all groups should be treated equally, as the constitution says we have the right to persue happiness)\n\nWhat brings happiness to some, only gives others the right to discriminate.\n\nI also have a dream.......
310938
A poem that gives artistic representation of an abstract quality or idea as a person.
447734
I found the poem at this website:\n\nhttp://www.pbs.org/now/arts/nyepoems1.html\n\nThere are links above the poem that can take you to an interview with the poet done by Bill Moyers and lesson plans about the poem and others by this poet.\n\nI hope this helps you.
1094258
The full inscription on the Statue of Liberty is a poem entitled "New Collusus" by Emma Lazarus:\n\n    Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,\n    With conquering limbs astride from land to land;\n    Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand\n    A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame\n    Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name\n    Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand\n    Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command\n    The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.\n\n    "Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she\n    With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,\n    Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,\n    The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.\n    Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,\n    I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" \n\nI haven't been to hell, but if you are referring to Dante's hell, the inscription reads: Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.  Dante wrote in Italian, so feel free to translate.
399338
This poem is basically indicating that african americans are denied rights that are talked about highly and very educatedly but that they are only for white people.
949527
It is actually from a Lord Alfred Tennyson poem who was England's Poet Laureate after Wordsworth. \n\nFrom Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem 'In Memoriam:27', 1850:\n\n    I hold it true, whate'er befall;\n    I feel it, when I sorrow most;\n    'Tis better to have loved and lost\n    Than never to have loved at all.\n\n\nTennyson married, but I guess that doesn't give us a clear indication if he ever actually found love.