Margaret Bonds had a close friendship with Langston Hughes, and in 1942 she arranged one of his most famous poems, The Negro Speaks of Rivers. Hughes composed the poem when he was a teenager, in 1920. It was published in The Crisis the next year. The musical adaptation of Hughes's poem became one of Bonds's most renowned works.

I've known rivers:/I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the/
flow of human blood in human veins./My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
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
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.
I've known rivers: Ancient, dusky rivers. My soul has grown deep like the rivers.