"the negro speaks of rivers"

“The Negro Speaks of Rivers”
By: Langston Hughes

I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy
bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

Imagine if our Earth could talk; what a story it would have to tell. It has come to my attention that this might have been the idea, which Langston Hughes was pondering when he created the remarkable poem, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”. He takes us back to a p...