Langston Hughes

Harlem Night Song

Roam the night together

Hughes repeats this invitation twice (opening and closing). The frame creates a song structure—the whole poem is an invitation that circles back, mimicking how jazz loops and returns to its themes.

Come,
Let us roam the night together

Roam the night together

Hughes repeats this invitation twice (opening and closing). The frame creates a song structure—the whole poem is an invitation that circles back, mimicking how jazz loops and returns to its themes.

Roam the night together

Hughes repeats this invitation twice (opening and closing). The frame creates a song structure—the whole poem is an invitation that circles back, mimicking how jazz loops and returns to its themes.

Singing.
I love you.

I love you (repeated)

Placed after the opening invitation and again after the night imagery—never attached to a specific moment. The declaration floats separately, suggesting love exists independent of the scene, or that the entire night *is* the love declaration.

Across
The Harlem roof-tops

Moon is shining / Night sky is blue

Notice the shift from action (roaming, singing) to static description. Hughes pauses the movement to catalog the night—a moment of stillness before returning to the invitation. The blue night sky is unusual; typically night skies are black or dark purple.

Moon is shining.
Night sky is blue.

Moon is shining / Night sky is blue

Notice the shift from action (roaming, singing) to static description. Hughes pauses the movement to catalog the night—a moment of stillness before returning to the invitation. The blue night sky is unusual; typically night skies are black or dark purple.

Moon is shining / Night sky is blue

Notice the shift from action (roaming, singing) to static description. Hughes pauses the movement to catalog the night—a moment of stillness before returning to the invitation. The blue night sky is unusual; typically night skies are black or dark purple.

Stars are great drops
Of golden dew.

Moon is shining / Night sky is blue

Notice the shift from action (roaming, singing) to static description. Hughes pauses the movement to catalog the night—a moment of stillness before returning to the invitation. The blue night sky is unusual; typically night skies are black or dark purple.

Jazz-band's playing

The cabaret appears exactly at the poem's center (line 13 of 16). This is the only specific Harlem location named—the jazz club anchors the romantic roaming in actual Harlem nightlife, not abstraction.

In the cabaret
The jazz-band's playing.

Jazz-band's playing

The cabaret appears exactly at the poem's center (line 13 of 16). This is the only specific Harlem location named—the jazz club anchors the romantic roaming in actual Harlem nightlife, not abstraction.

I love you (repeated)

Placed after the opening invitation and again after the night imagery—never attached to a specific moment. The declaration floats separately, suggesting love exists independent of the scene, or that the entire night *is* the love declaration.

I love you.
Come,

Roam the night together

Hughes repeats this invitation twice (opening and closing). The frame creates a song structure—the whole poem is an invitation that circles back, mimicking how jazz loops and returns to its themes.

Roam the night together

Hughes repeats this invitation twice (opening and closing). The frame creates a song structure—the whole poem is an invitation that circles back, mimicking how jazz loops and returns to its themes.

Let us roam the night together
Singing.

Roam the night together

Hughes repeats this invitation twice (opening and closing). The frame creates a song structure—the whole poem is an invitation that circles back, mimicking how jazz loops and returns to its themes.

Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

Harlem as Romance, Not Poverty

This poem inverts the 1920s white gaze on Harlem. While many outsider accounts treated the neighborhood as exotic spectacle or social problem, Hughes centers Harlem's own nightlife—the rooftops, the moon, the jazz—as the setting for intimate romance. The speaker isn't showing off Harlem to impress; he's inviting a lover to experience it as home.

The specific details matter: roof-tops (not streets), moon and stars (not electric lights), the cabaret (community space, not a tourist attraction). Hughes writes from inside Harlem, not about it. This is the difference between ethnographic description and lived experience.

Form as Jazz Repetition

The poem's structure mirrors jazz performance—themes repeat with variation rather than progressing linearly. The opening invitation returns identically at the end; "I love you" appears twice, unanchored; the night imagery cycles through different perspectives (rooftops, sky, stars, cabaret). This isn't a narrative arc; it's a riff.

Hughes wrote extensively about making poetry "jazz-like." Here, the repetition isn't filler—it's the form itself. A reader expecting linear development will miss the point. Instead, listen for how each repetition lands differently depending on what surrounds it. The final "Come, / Let us roam the night together / Singing" carries the weight of everything that came before.