The key to arriving at the meaning of the title and the text of Countee Cullen’s poem “Lines to My Father” does not become fully evident until the fourth of its five stanzas. The title is almost certainly misleading since Cullen has written about his actual father—his parent—in other poems. The observation “Yours is no fairy gift” is hardly the kind of thing one says to parent, however. The expanded context of this phrase in the lines which immediately follow situate its meaning as that sort of thing which is wished for in fairy tales. The speaker might just as easily have substituted “genie” for “fairy” without any alteration in meaning. By “fairy gift” the speaker is specifically referencing the idea of fairy tales in which wishes are granted without condition and requiring no intervention or labor or expectations upon the part of the recipient.
Before exploring that concept more fully, however, it is important to leap back to the opening imagery of the poem. The speaker begins with a philosophical metaphor: “The many sow, but only the chosen reap.” Literally speaking, this line is about raising crops and it would not be wrong to assume that the image speaks directly to the history of slavery. While “Lines to My Father” definitely can be interpreted within the narrow confines of Black history, that opening line immediately suggests a broader context. While literally describing the process of growing crops, the juxtaposition of “many” and “the chosen” speaks more directly to a general sense of inequality. As the poem proceeds, the imagery continues to build upon the literal quality of sowing and reaping crops with imagery of sweating in the fields resulting in paltry supply of food for those actually doing the work.
As with many of Cullen’s poems, it can be easy to get waylaid by the specificity. As in many of the poet’s work, however, the literal components of the text should be viewed as a gateway into the symbolic expansion lying in the subtext. Imagery of sweat in the fields thus become a broader metaphor for the inequality between those who labor and those profit from that labor. The “many” that are juxtaposed with “the chosen” expands far beyond the literal construction of slaves toiling in the dirt on plantations. Economic inequality exists beyond agriculture and is found in every industry. What the speaker creates across the first three stanzas of the poem seems to be a portrait of despondency and hopelessness engendered by circumstances of birth.
It is only with that arrival of the revelation that the “Father” to whom these lines are spoken that this dark vision is subverted. Directly addressing God as the Father, the speaker recognizes that the heritage to which the many are born—to toil in the labor of sowing which benefits the chosen few—comes with a gift from God. And what he means when declares it to be “no fairy gift” is that it is not some wish to be granted by a magician. It is not a conjurer’s trick, but a genuine gift by a creator deity to His creations that recognizes their value and rewards it with free will.
Ultimately, all the darkness at the beginning of the poem situated in the unfair economic inequality circumscribed by fate over which we have no control can be undone with this gift of God. It is the gift of improvement that is only tendered with the understanding that it will require even more toil and greater struggle and hardship and even the possibility of failure. But if one is willing to accept the gift on the terms God offers, it can become a dream to build upon. And if one uses their free will and commits to the work of pursuing that dream to force it into a reality, that dream becomes “impregnable” to all the forces capable of attacking it because nothing has the power to destroy a dream other than the dreamer.
