When looking at “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” by Langston Hughes, the form of it clearly echoes the content of the poem. In the first stanza Hughes writes, “I’ve known the rivers:/ I’ve known the rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human/ blood in human veins” (ll.1-2). Hues starts the poem with a short first line, followed by line two that flows through the page like the rivers of which it speaks. He is the river of old to the“veins” of the earth running through the land long before human existence.
The second stanza continues with the flowing, lofty language as Hughes transports himself to Africa in the first half of the stanza writing “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” (ll. 4-6). Hughes is acknowledging his heritage here. He is saying that those rivers run through him, drawing him back to his roots. His soul is connected on a spiritual level to those rivers in the cradle of humanity. Hughes then transports his readers back to the US talking about the Mississippi river saying, “ 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” (ll. 7-8). As we learn from the footnote the abolition of slavery came from Lincoln’s visit to New Orleans.
Hughes ties the poem up with a couplet and a last line that reads “I have known rivers/ ancient dusky rivers/ my soul has grown deep like the rivers (ll.9-10). The last line of the poem (which was repeated earlier in the work) ties Hughes to those rivers. The are his connection with his past, present, and future