Langston Hughes
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- Sunday was the 103rd birthday of American author Langston Hughes. A Google doodle celebrated his life and work and resulted in a huge spike in traffic to his Wikipedia biography.
Article for improvement: Langston Hughes (1902-1967). This article on a key American author is only rated a B-class but with some work could easily reach good article status.
"What happens to a dream deferred?
- Does it dry up
- like a raisin in the sun?"
"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."
"Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,
Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,
- I heard a Negro play.
Down on Lenox Avenue the other night
By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light
- He did a lazy sway..."
"Landlord, landlord,
These steps is broken down.
When you come up yourself
It's a wonder you don't fall down."
"Samarkand! Green-curled Samarkand! City of Tamerlane, the Earth Shaker; before that city of Genghis Khan, leader of the Mongols; and before that the sporting ground of Alexander the Great, who murdered within its gates his old friend, Clitus, when both were drunk with wine three thousand years ago, Samarkand, flourishing center of Arabic culture in the twelfth century; seat of the ancient observatory of Ulug Beg; golden name to the Venetian merchants in those Middle Ages of silks from Cathay and spices from Samarkand; lovely song-city of the Oriental poets; city of the turquoise domes - Samarkand! Green-curled Samarkand."
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