Langston Hughes

Poem (Hughes)

Night/faces parallel

Hughes equates darkness with beauty twice—first the night sky, then Black skin. He's reversing the Western tradition that uses 'dark' as negative metaphor.

The night is beautiful,
So the faces of my people.

Night/faces parallel

Hughes equates darkness with beauty twice—first the night sky, then Black skin. He's reversing the Western tradition that uses 'dark' as negative metaphor.

Stars/eyes structure

The comparison moves from distant (stars) to intimate (eyes). Notice 'of my people'—the eyes belong to his community, making the cosmic personal.

The stars are beautiful,
So the eyes of my people.

Stars/eyes structure

The comparison moves from distant (stars) to intimate (eyes). Notice 'of my people'—the eyes belong to his community, making the cosmic personal.

Beautiful, also, is the sun.

'Beautiful, also'

That comma after 'Beautiful' creates a pause—an emphasis. 'Also' adds souls to an existing list of beautiful things, as if it should be obvious.

Beautiful, also, are the souls of my people.
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

The Litany Structure

Hughes wrote this around 1923, during the Harlem Renaissance, when he was redefining what Black poetry could sound like. The poem is a litany—a form of prayer with repeated phrases. Black churches used call-and-response; spirituals repeated refrains. Hughes takes that structure and makes it a declaration.

The repetition isn't ornamental. When you repeat the entire poem word-for-word, you're insisting. You're saying: *I meant that. Hear it again.* In 1923, equating Black faces with the beauty of night wasn't poetic convention—it was defiance. The poem's structure performs its argument: this truth bears repeating.

Notice what Hughes *doesn't* do. No metaphors of struggle. No dialect. No explanation or justification. Just assertion. The poem assumes its own authority—the same way a psalm assumes God's existence without proving it first.

The 'So' Construction

That word 'So' is doing unusual work. It's not 'like' (simile) or 'is' (metaphor). 'So' means 'in the same way' or 'equally.' The night is beautiful. In the same way, Black faces are beautiful. The syntax treats both as established facts.

Hughes builds from universal to specific: night → faces, stars → eyes, sun → souls. Everyone agrees the night sky is beautiful. If you accept that premise, Hughes says, you must accept the conclusion. It's structured like a logical proof.

The move from 'faces' to 'eyes' to 'souls' also deepens. First, what you see from a distance. Then, what you see up close. Finally, what you can't see at all but must recognize anyway. The poem argues that Black beauty exists at every level—surface, intimate, spiritual—just as cosmic beauty does.