“While my brother worked at his musical setting, I paced back and forth on the front porch, repeating the lines over and over to myself, going through all the agony and ecstasy of creating. As I worked through the opening and middle lines of the last stanza, I could not keep back the tears, and made no effort to do so. I was experiencing the transports of the poet’s ecstasy. Feverish ecstasy was followed by that contentment — that sense of serene joy — which makes artistic creation the most complete of all human experiences. When I had out the last stanza down on paper, I at once recognized the Kiplingesque touch in the two longer lines; but I knew that in the stanza the American Negro was, historically and spiritually, immanent; and I decided to let it stand as written.”