Loading...
Loading...
Loading revision…
Loading poetry…
Claude McKay (Harlem Shadows, 1922) · Eduqas Poetry Anthology
Eduqasby Claude McKay
Claude McKay (about 1890-1948) was born in the hill country of Jamaica. His first books of poems, published in Jamaica, were written in Jamaican dialect.
In 1912 he went to the United States to study agriculture, meaning at first to go home and farm. He stayed, became a writer in New York, and was one of the leading figures of the Harlem Renaissance, the flowering of Black American writing, music and art in 1920s Harlem. He never went back to Jamaica.
I Shall Return is in his collection Harlem Shadows (1922). The poem never names the place it longs for, but read alongside McKay’s life it is a poem of exile: an emigrant’s memory of the home he left. McKay wrote it as a sonnet, a traditional English form, and filled it with the colours and music of that home.
“I shall return again; I shall return”
The vow is made twice in the first line. "shall" expresses determination, and the repetition sounds like someone convincing himself as much as the reader.
“To laugh and love and watch with wonder-eyes”
Return means joy: laughing, loving and seeing with "wonder-eyes", like a child. The repeated "and" piles up the pleasures he has been missing.
“Wafting their blue-black smoke to sapphire skies”
Rich, precise colour: "blue-black" smoke against a "sapphire" sky. Even smoke from a fire is beautiful in memory, and "sapphire" makes the sky a precious stone.
“That bathe the brown blades of the bending grasses”
The alliteration of "bathe", "brown", "blades" and "bending" gives the line a soft, flowing sound, and "bathe" makes the streams tender. The landscape is not just seen but felt.
“And realize once more my thousand dreams”
"realize" means to make real: his "thousand dreams" of home will come true. The number shows how often he has dreamed of it while away.
“That stir the hidden depths of native life”
The village music reaches "the hidden depths" of a life rooted in its place. "native" connects his identity to his birthplace: this is something his new life cannot give him.
“To ease my mind of long, long years of pain.”
The last line reveals what the beautiful images have been hiding: years of pain in exile. The repeated "long" stretches the line out, so it feels as long as the years it describes.
“I shall return again; I shall return”
The phrase opens each quatrain and the couplet, six times in fourteen lines. Its repetition turns a wish into a vow, and also shows how much the thought fills his mind.
“watch with wonder-eyes”
The coined compound makes the returning speaker see his home like a child seeing the world for the first time. The alliteration of "watch with wonder-eyes" adds to the line’s music.
“At golden noon the forest fires burn, / Wafting their blue-black smoke to sapphire skies.”
"golden", "blue-black" and "sapphire" paint the remembered landscape in rich colour. Memory makes the home brighter and more precious than everyday life.
“That bathe the brown blades of the bending grasses”
The repeated sound that opens "bathe", "brown", "blades" and "bending" is soft and rhythmic, like water lapping, and the feminine ending "grasses" lets the line fall gently away.
“I shall return to hear the fiddle and fife / Of village dances, dear delicious tunes”
The third quatrain moves from sight to sound. The music belongs to a community ("village dances"), so returning means belonging again, not only seeing.
“I shall return, I shall return again, / To ease my mind of long, long years of pain.”
The closing couplet turns from the beauty of home to the speaker’s own suffering. Held back until the last line, the "pain" reframes everything before it as the longing of exile.