This poem appears under the title "Three Sonnets" in The Literary Digest October 28, 1922 [‡] Claude McKay Outcast Three Sonnets The Literary Digest October 28, 1922 75 4 33 with two other sonnets, "America" and "Home Thoughts."
For From‡ the dim regions whence my fathers came
My spirit, bondaged by the body, longs.
Words felt, but never heard, my lips would frame;
My soul would sing forgotten jungle songs.
I would go back to darkness and to peace,
But the great western world holds me in fee,
And I may never hope for full release
While to its alien gods I bend my knee.
Something in me is lost, forever lost,
Some vital thing has is‡ gone out of my heart,
And I must walk the way of life a ghost
Among the sons of earth, a thing apart;
For I was born, far from my native clime,
Under the white man's menace, out of time.