Post 3 Elegy - Jasa Harris

 Frederick Douglass

BY ROBERT HAYDEN

When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful

and terrible thing, needful to man as air,   

usable as earth; when it belongs at last to all,   

when it is truly instinct, brain matter, diastole, systole,   

reflex action; when it is finally won; when it is more   

than the gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians:   

this man, this Douglass, this former slave, this Negro   

beaten to his knees, exiled, visioning a world   

where none is lonely, none hunted, alien,   

this man, superb in love and logic, this man   

shall be remembered. Oh, not with statues’ rhetoric,   

not with legends and poems and wreaths of bronze alone,

but with the lives grown out of his life, the lives   

fleshing his dream of the beautiful, needful thing.

Hayden, Robert. "Frederick Douglass." Poetry

Foundation. Poetry Foundation, n.d. Web. 23 Sept. 2014. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/175757

This poem recognizes the life of one of the great figures in American history, but it isn’t a traditional elegy. Robert Hayden does not express great lament in his poem. He opens by describing everything that Frederick Douglass has tirelessly fought to accomplish in his life. There is a hint of sadness expressed by Robert Hayden as he shares how his goals are not yet accomplished and this is disappointing, but it isn’t so much grief as saddening to see a strong man go out without finishing what was started. Hayden continues and spends the majority of the poem reflecting on the adversity that Douglass faced and how this made him a strong man worth admiring. He tells of his background: “this former slave, this Negro beaten to his knees, exiled.” These words demonstrate the troubles that Douglass faced in his lifetime. He was beaten, but he bore the lashes to chase after a goal that he believed he deserved, but he knew he had no entitlement to because of his standing. This fight was remarkable and respectable and that is how Hayden wanted Douglass to be remembered. And finally, the poem ends with solace as Hayden realizes that although Frederick Douglass has died, his dream has not. Douglass was so pervasive that he touched everyone and Hayden notes that statues will not do him justice, but the lives he touched with his fight, chase and vision will as they grow and bring his dream to fruition. And that is the message of the poem—that lives lost are not really “gone”, they are shown through the ones that are still living. Hayden comments on loss, but not in the sad way that most would, he views it as more of an event that can give one strength. We should not be grief-stricken that Douglass died, we should be grateful that he lived.