By Georgia Douglas Johnson.
This ebook is the product of many hours of hard work by volunteers for Standard Ebooks, and builds on the hard work of other literature lovers made possible by the public domain.
This particular ebook is based on transcriptions from African American Poetry: A Digital Anthology and on digital scans from the HathiTrust Digital Library.
The source text and artwork in this ebook are believed to be in the United States public domain; that is, they are believed to be free of copyright restrictions in the United States. They may still be copyrighted in other countries, so users located outside of the United States must check their local laws before using this ebook. The creators of, and contributors to, this ebook dedicate their contributions to the worldwide public domain via the terms in the CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. For full license information, see the Uncopyright at the end of this ebook.
Standard Ebooks is a volunteer-driven project that produces ebook editions of public domain literature using modern typography, technology, and editorial standards, and distributes them free of cost. You can download this and other ebooks carefully produced for true book lovers at standardebooks.org.
Eyes like the violet—in them I see
All that is fair, that is holy to me!
Eyes that shed fragrance, so constant, so true,
Pure as a clear drop of morning dew.
Eyes like the violet, gently along
Lead me to vespers—to prayer and to song.
Eyes like the violet, let me I pray
Live within range of thy glances all day!
Through the land of tribulation,
O’er the river of despair,
When the taut heart snaps with tension,
Fame awaits you, smiling there.
After love has all been wasted,
After every song is sung;
Late—too late, the world will crown you,
Useless! Love and song are done.
I climbed the craggy hill of fame,
Heart-sore and wearily,
Stood on her gleaming goal at length,
And sighed in ecstasy.
“O God,” I cried, “what bliss”—when lo!
Came stealing like a pall,
The strains of Life’s Last Symphony,
In Prelude, to—the call.
Happy youth in joyous laughter,
Wafts me pensively alone
O’er the winding way, where sorrow
Claims the Mantled for her own.
I can hear their voices ringing
Down the corridor of years,
As they lift their twilight faces,
Through a mist of falling tears!
The heart of a woman goes forth with the dawn,
As a lone bird, soft winging, so restlessly on,
Afar o’er life’s turrets and vales does it roam
In the wake of those echoes the heart calls home.
The heart of a woman falls back with the night,
And enters some alien cage in its plight,
And tries to forget it has dreamed of the stars
While it breaks, breaks, breaks on the sheltering bars.
The dreams of the dreamer
Are life-drops that pass
The break in the heart
To the soul’s hour-glass.
The songs of the singer
Are tones that repeat
The cry of the heart
’Till it ceases to beat.
The peerless boon of innocence,
The first in nature’s list,
Is fading, ere the rising sun
The world awake has kist.
The early dew upon the grass,
The purity of morn,
The glint that lies in virgin cheek,
Frail cobwebs—of the dawn.
My joy leaps with your ecstasy,
In sympathy divine;
The smiles that wreathe upon your lips.
Find sentinels on mine:
Your lightest sigh I’m echoing,
I tremble with your pain,
And all your tears are falling
In my heart like bitter rain.
We stand mute!
No words can paint such fragile imagery,
Those prismic gossamers that roll
Beyond the sky-line of the soul;
We stand mute!
The breaking dead leaves ’neath my feet
A plaintive melody repeat,
Recalling shattered hopes that lie
As relics of a bygone sky.
Again I thread the mazy past,
Back where the mounds are scattered fast—
Oh! foolish tears, why do you start,
To break of dead leaves in the heart?
Trailing night’s sand-sifted stars,
Rainbows sweep, as day unbars,
Fragrant essences of morn,
Bathe humanity—new-born!
There are highways in the soul,
Heights like pyramids that rise
Far beyond earth-veilèd eyes,
Sweeping through the barless skies
O’er the line where daylight dies—
There are highways in the soul!
I rest me deep within the wood,
Drawn by its silent call,
Far from the throbbing crowd of men
On nature’s breast I fall.
My couch is sweet with blossoms fair,
A bed of fragrant dreams,
And soft upon my ear there falls
The lullaby of streams.
The tumult of my heart is stilled,
Within this sheltered spot,
Deep in the bosom of the wood,
Forgetting, and—forgot!
Minutes swiftly throb and pass,
Shadows cross the dial-glass,
Speeding ever to some call,
Weary world and shadows, all.
Down the closing aisles of day,
Tramping footsteps die away,
But no tidings thread the gloom,
From the hushed and silent tomb.
The phantom happiness I sought
O’er every crag and moor;
I paused at every postern gate,
And knocked at every door;
In vain I searched the land and sea,
E’en to the inmost core,
The curtains of eternal night
Descend—my search is o’er.
Our separate winding ways we trod,
Along the highways, unto God,
Unbonded by the clasp of hand,
Without a vow—we understand,
Estranged for aye, the fusing kiss,
Omnipotent, we bide in this—
They need no trammeling of bars
Whose souls were welded with the stars.
A wordless kiss, a stifled sigh,
A trembling lip, a downcast eye,
“Alas,” they say,
“A-day, a-day,”
The cruse has failed, the lamp must die!
When lone and solitaire within your chamber,
With lamp unlit, as evening shades unroll,
If you reveal the trail your thoughts are taking,
I then may read the riddle of your soul.
For it is then, the tired mind unveiling,
Drifts stark into the holy after-glow,
Within the hour of quiet meditation,
The tidal thoughts, like limpid waters, flow.
Nobody cares when I am glad,
I beat upon their hearts in glee,
“Drink, drink joy’s brimming cup with me,”
All echoless, my ecstasy—
Nobody cares when I am glad.
Nobody cares when I am sad,
Whene’er I seek compassion’s breast,
I falter wounded from my quest
Back! back into my heart, sore prest—
Nobody cares when I am sad.
Is she the sage who will not sip
The cup love presses to her lip?
Or she who drinks the mad cup dry,
And turns with smiling face—to die?
The rain is falling steadily
Upon the thirsty earth,
While dry-eyed, I remain, and calm
Amid my own heart’s dearth.
Break! break!! ye flood-gates of my tears
All pent in agony,
Rain, rain! upon my scorching soul
And flood it as the sea!!
Not for your tender eyes that shine,
Nor for your red lips pulsing wine,
I love you, dear: your soul divine,
In sweet captivity, holds mine!
The tender eyes have lost their glow,
The flagons of the lips run low,
The autumn trembles in the air—
A woman passes solitaire!
Winter—aback sweeps the inward eye,
Fleet o’er the trail to a rose-wreathed sky,
Girt by a cordon of dreams I dwell
Deep in the heart of the old-time spell.
Almost, the tones of your whispered word,
Almost! the thrill that your dear lips stirred,
Almost!! that wild pulsing throb again—
Almost!!!—
(’Tis winter, the falling rain).
Into the garden of sorrow,
Some day we all must roam,
If not to-day, then to-morrow,
Bow ’neath its purple dome,
Out from the musk-laden banqueting halls,
Doffing our mirth-spangled vestments like thralls,
Softly we wend to Gethsemane,
In the hour that sorrow calls!
Athwart the sky the great sun sails,
Through aeons thus, the daylight trails,
And man, living breath of the sod
Beholding, in his heart knows God.
Throughout the night’s long brooding deep,
Earth’s trustful children die-to-sleep,
But with the whisperings of morn
Awake, unto the day, new-born.
The mystery of earth untold,
The great infinite, none behold,
Forge ever new the spiral chain,
Revolving man to God again.
The silence of the brooding night,
Enfolds me with its eerie light;
I lie upon its shadowed breast
A pilgrim, wearying for rest.
Nightfall! thy sable curtains steep
My very soul in solace deep,
God sends thee with thy soothing balms,
That I may falter to thy arms.
Fragile, tiny, just a sprite,
Holding me a thrall bedight,
Stronger than a giant’s wand
Serves the word of your command.
Out from rushing worlds, though low
Should you whisper, I would know,
And would answer, though the breath
Be the gateway unto death.
The dew is on the grasses, dear,
The blush is on the rose,
And swift across our dial-youth,
A shifting shadow goes.
The primrose moments, lush with bliss,
Exhale and fade away,
Life may renew the Autumn time,
But nevermore the May!
There’s a soft rosy glow o’er the whole world to-day,
There’s a freshness and fragrance that trembles in May,
There’s a lilt in the music that vibrates and thrills
From the uttermost glades to the tops of the hills.
Oh! I am so happy, my heart is so light,
The shades and the shadows have vanished from sight,
This wild pulsing gladness throbs like a sweet pain—
O soul of me, drink, ere night falleth again!
Of what avail the tardy showers,
To the famished summer flowers?
All in vain the rain-drops cry,
Dead things never make reply.
Life’s belated cup of bliss,
Woo the weary lips to kiss,
When the singing is a sigh,
Pulses quivering, to die.
The fragile fabric of our dream
Drifts as a feather down life’s stream—
The long defile of empty days
Grim silhouetted, mock my gaze.
Though oft escapes the stifled sigh,
A desert ever broods my eye—
Since you have utterly forgot,
God grant that I remember not!
There are tears sweet, refreshing like dewdrops that rise,
There are tears far too deep for the lakes of the eyes.
There are kisses like thistledown, fitfully sped,
There are kisses that live in the hearts of the dead.
Alone! yes, evermore alone—isolate each his way,
Though hand is echoing to hand vain sophistries of clay,
Within that veilèd, mystic place where bides the inmost soul,
No twain shall pass while tides shall wax, nor changing seasons roll.
Enisled, apart our pilgrimage, despite the arms that twine,
Despite the fusing kiss that wields the magic charm of wine,
Despite the interplay of sigh, the surge of sympathy,
We tread in solitude remote, the trail of destiny!
I called you through the silent night
Across the brooding deep,
I sought you in the shadowland
From out the world—asleep;
No answer echoed to my call,
And now my way I thread
About the lowly mounds that rise
Among the silent dead.
Though voiceless, you will hear my call,
Your soul will heed my cry,
Will rise, and mock the prison where
Your bones recumbent lie.
I’m tired, days and nights to me
Drag on in slow monotony,
With not a single star in sight
To lend a gleam of cheering light.
I’m tired, there are none to care
That I am drifting to despair:
O shadows! take me to your breast
For I am tired—I would rest.
A woman with a burning flame
Deep covered through the years
With ashes. Ah! she hid it deep,
And smothered it with tears.
Sometimes a baleful light would rise
From out the dusky bed,
And then the woman hushed it quick
To slumber on, as dead.
At last the weary war was done
The tapers were alight,
And with a sigh of victory
She breathed a soft—good-night!
Fierce is the conflict—the battle of eyes,
Sure and unerring, the wordless replies,
Challenges flash from their ambushing caves—
Men, by their glances, are masters or slaves.
There’s nothing in the world that clings
As does a memory that stings;
While happy hours fade and pass,
Like shadows in a looking-glass.
The petals of the faded rose
Commingle silently,
One with the atoms of the dust,
One with the chaliced sea.
The essence of my fleeting youth
Caught in the web of time,
Exhales within the springing flowers
Or breathes in love sublime.
Love’s roses I gathered, all dewy, in May,
My heart holds the breath of their attar to-day;
And now, while the blasts of the winter winds ring,
I hear not the tempest, I’m dreaming of Spring.
Oh, my fancy teems with a world of dreams—
They revolve in a glittering fire,
How they twirl and go with the tunes that flow
On the breath of my soul-strung lyre.
Walk within thy own heart’s temple, child, and rest,
What you seek abides forever in thy breast,
Closer than thy folded arm
Is the soul-renewing-balm,
Walk within thy own heart’s temple, child, and rest.
Her life was dwarfed, and wed to blight,
Her very days were shades of night,
Her every dream was born entombed,
Her soul, a bud—that never bloomed.
Whene’er I lift my eyes to bliss,
I stagger blind with pain,
Afar into the folding night
The silence, and the rain.
Whene’er I feel the urge of Spring,
A throbbing, unknown woe
Enfolds me; I am desolate
When love is calling low.
The curtains of twilight are drawn in the west
And vespers are sweet on the air,
While I, through my leafless, ungarlanded way
But pause at the gates of despair.
Good-bye to the hopes that were never fulfilled,
Good-bye to the fond dreams that failed,
Good-bye to my dead that has never been born,
Good-bye to love’s ship that ne’er sailed.
When I am dead, withhold, I pray, your blooming legacy;
Beneath the willows did I bide, and they should cover me;
I longed for light and fragrance, and I sought them far and near,
O, it would grieve me utterly, to find them on my bier!
The fairest lips are those we kiss,
With greatest ecstasy and bliss;
The brightest eyes, are those that shine,
Unchangingly through changing time;
The greatest love is that we know,
When life is just an afterglow.
With the first blush of morning, my soul is awing,
Away o’er the phantom lands free, wandering,
I seek thee in hamlet, in woodland, and hall,
Till night-shades, enfolding my tired heart, fall.
Yet ever and alway, like the thrush in a tree,
My heart lifts its preluding love-song to thee;
I call through the days, through the long weary years,
And slumber at night-fall, refreshed by my tears.
Roses after rain,
Pleasure after pain,
Happiness will soothe the sigh,
Smiles await the tear-dimmed eye—
Bloom will follow blight,
Daylight trails the night,
Life is sweeter
Love is deeper
In the heart’s twilight!
Behold! the living thrilling lines
That course the blood like madd’ning wines,
And leap with scintillating spray
Across the guards of ecstasy.
The flame that lights the lurid spell
Springs from the soul’s artesian well,
Its fairy filament of art
Entwines the fragments of a heart.
What need have I for memory,
When not a single flower
Has bloomed within life’s desert
For me, one little hour.
What need have I for memory
Whose burning eyes have met
The corse of unborn happiness
Winding the trail regret?
I breathe the lyric of my love
Across the twilit way,
The gentle echoes bear it on
Beyond the edge of day:
All vibrant is the melody
The silences repeat,
My song is but my longing heart
Pulsated with its beat.
It winds amid the dusky ways
Where far mysteries shine,
To find amid God’s trackless space,
One answering song to mine.
A little hour of sunshine,
A little while of joy,
We winnow in our harvesting
From all the world’s alloy.
None, none, are so benighted,
Who journey up life’s hill,
But have some treasured memory,
Which lives all vibrant still.
Who hath not built his castles in the free and open air?
Who hath not dreamed his rosy dreams, more fair than all the fair?
Who hath not seen his castles fall, all scattered to the ground?
Who bears his dream unshattered, from the dream-land where they’re found?
Smiles do not always echo cheer,
Nor tear-drops measure grief,
For sorrow seeks a gilded mask,
And joy in tears, relief.
When life is young, without a care,
Alone we walk, and free:
The world, a splendid merry round
Of rhythmic melody.
Before the end, grim sorrow calls
Into each mortal ear,
When friendship fades to memories,
And love lies in its bier.
Then, then it is that sympathy
Is holden close and dear;
Ah, then life’s consolation comes
Commingled with a tear.
O love, you have shorn me, and rifled my heart,
You have torn down the shrine from the innermost part,
And through it now rushes a grief, sadly-wild,
That breaks as the plaint of a sorrowing child.
All deep there stirs the throb of Spring,
Its vital pulse I’m answering,
Swift to its dominant I merge,
One with its undulating surge;
My heart awakes to virile tone
And breaks—unanswered, and alone.
The shades of the gloaming around me are stealing,
The lure of the dusk through the silences call,
While blossoming incense comes mutely appealing,
And choiring wood-voices, vespering, fall.
Immersed in the deep of my dim sylvan-bower,
Upborne on the breast of its emerald tide,
I drift with the gleam of the vanishing hour
Afar—where my uttermost longings abide.
I have swung to the uttermost reaches of pain,
’Mid the echo of sighs, and a deluge of rain,
But ah! I rebound to the limits of bliss,
On the rapturous swing of an infinite kiss.
A whisper at twilight, a sigh through the night,
A strain of soft music, a perfume so light,
Will sweep as a feather the bulwark of years,
To surges of rapture, or rivers of tears.
Love’s kisses spurned so long ago,
Dead as the years, that o’er them flow;—
And now, my gilded treasuries
Would I might give—for memories.
O come while youth’s bright rosy veil
Beguiles your eyes and mine,
Let’s tread the asphodel of bliss,
And drink life’s magic wine:
Soon time will rend the gossamer,
To wisdom’s cruelty,
While we are blind, my love, be kind,
For soon, too soon, we see!
Again we meet—a flashing glance,
And then, to scabbard, goes the lance,
While thoughts troop on in cavalcade
Adown the wide aisles time has made.
Back in the glow of yesterday,
With tender troth you rode away,
The sheen of rainbows in our eyes,
That swept the rim of other skies.
And now a writhing worm am I,
Beneath a doomed love’s lensing eye,
Let me but stagger, far from sight,
To hide my anguish, in the night.
Sweeter far than lyric rune
Is my baby’s cooing tune;
Brighter than the butterflies
Are the gleams within her eyes;
Firmer than an iron band
Serves the zephyr of her hand;
Deeper than the ocean’s roll
Sounds her heart-beat in my soul.
I’m folding up my little dreams
Within my heart tonight,
And praying I may soon forget
The torture of their sight.
For time’s deft fingers scroll my brow
With fell relentless art—
I’m folding up my little dreams
Tonight, within my heart.
And they shall rise and cast their mantles by,
Erect and strong and visioned, in the day
That rings the knell of Curfew o’er the sway
Of prejudice—who reels with mortal cry
To lift no more her leprous, blinded eye,
Reft of the fetters, far more cursed than they
Which held dominion o’er human clay,
The spirit soars aloft where rainbows lie.
Like joyful exiles swift returning home—
The rhythmic chanson of their eager feet,
While voices strange to ecstasy, long dumb,
Break forth in major rhapsodies, full sweet.
Into the very star-shine, lo! they come
Wearing the bays of victory complete!
Their gaze uplifting from shoals of despair
Like phantoms groping enswathed from the light
Up from miasmic depths, children of night,
Surge to the piping of Hope’s dulcet lay,
Souled like the lily, whose splendors declare
God’s mazèd paradox—purged of all blight,
Out from the quagmire, unsullied and fair.
Life holds her arms o’er the festering way,
Smiles, as their faith-sandalled rushes prevail,
Slowly the sun rides the marge of the day,
Wine to the lips sorely anguished and pale;
On, ever on, do the serried ranks sway
Charging the ultimate, rending the veil.
Come, brothers all!
Shall we not wend
The blind-way of our prison-world
By sympathy entwined?
Shall we not make
The bleak way for each other’s sake
Less rugged and unkind?
O let each throbbing heart repeat
The faint note of another’s beat
To lift a chanson for the feet
That stumble down life’s checkered street.
Let me not lose my dream, e’en though I scan the veil with eyes unseeing through their glaze of tears,
Let me not falter, though the rungs of fortune perish as I fare above the tumult, praying purer air,
Let me not lose the vision, gird me, Powers that toss the worlds, I pray!
Hold me, and guard, lest anguish tear my dreams away!
Let me not hate, although the bruising world decries my peace,
Gives me no quarter, hounds me while I sleep;
Would snuff the candles of my soul and sear my inmost dreamings.
Let me not hate, though girt by vipers, green and hissing through the dark;
I fain must love. God help me keep the altar-gleams that flicker wearily, anon,
On down the world’s grim night!
The right to make my dreams come true
I ask, nay, I demand of life,
Nor shall fate’s deadly contraband
Impede my steps, nor countermand.
Too long my heart against the ground
Has beat the dusty years around,
And now, at length, I rise, I wake!
And stride into the morning-break!
Ope! ye everlasting doors, unto my soul’s demand,
I would go forward, fare beyond these dusty boulevards,
Faint lights and fair allure me all insistently
And I must stand within the halls resplendent, of my dreams.
Hear their viol-voices ringing
Down the corridor of years,
As they lift their twilight faces
Through a mist of falling tears!
All day the world’s mad mocking strife,
The venomed prick of probing knife,
The baleful, subtle leer of scorn
That rims the world from morn to morn,
While reptile-visions writhe and creep
Into the very arms of sleep
To quench the fitful burnished gleams:
A crucifixion in my dreams!
These fell miasmic rings of mist, with ghoulish menace bound,
Like noose-horizons tightening my little world around,
They still the soaring will to wing, to dance, to speed away,
And fling the soul insurgent back into its shell of clay:
Beneath incrusted silences, a seething Etna lies,
The fire of whose furnaces may sleep—but never dies!
This spirit-choking atmosphere
With deadly serpent-coil
Entwines my soaring-upwardness
And chains me to the soil,
Where’er I seek with eager stride
To gain yon gleaming height,
These noisesome fetters coil aloft
And snare my buoyant flight.
O, why these aspirations bold,
These rigours of desire,
That surge within so ceaselessly
Like living tongues of fire?
And why these glowing forms of hope
That scintillate and shine,
If naught of all that burnished dream
Can evermore be mine?
It cannot be, fate does not mock,
And man’s untoward decree
Shall not forever thus confine
My life’s entirety,
My every fibre fierce rebels
Against this servile role,
And all my being broods to break
This death-grip from my soul!
My heart is pregnant with a great despair
With much beholding of my people’s care,
’Mid blinded prejudice and nurtured wrong,
Exhaling wantonly the days along:
I mark Faith’s fragile craft of cheering light
Tossing imperiled on the sea of night,
And then, enanguished, comes my heart’s low cry,
“God, God! I crave to learn the reason why!”
Again, in spirit loftily I soar
With wingèd vision through earth’s outer door,
In such an hour, it is mine to see,
In frowning fortune smiling destiny!
Oh, black man, why do you northward roam, and leave all the farm lands bare?
Is your house not warm, tightly thatched from storm, and a larder replete your share?
And have you not schools, fit with books and tools the steps of your young to guide?
Then what do you seek, in the north cold and bleak, ’mid the whirl of its teeming tide?
I have toiled in your cornfields, and parched in the sun, I have bowed ’neath your load of care,
I have patiently garnered your bright golden grain, in season of storm and fair,
With a smile I have answered your glowering gloom, while my wounded heart quivering bled,
Trailing mute in your wake, as your rosy dawn breaks, while I curtain the mound of my dead.
Though my children are taught in the schools you have wrought, they are blind to the sheen of the sky,
For the brand of your hand, casts a pall o’er the land, that enshadows the gleam of the eye,
My sons, deftly sapped of the brawn-hood of man, self-rejected and impotent stand,
My daughters, unhaloed, unhonored, undone, feed the lust of a dominant land.
I would not remember, yet could not forget, how the hearts beating true to your own,
You’ve tortured, and wounded, and filtered their blood ’till a budding Hegira has blown.
Unstrange is the pathway to Calvary’s hill, which I wend in my dumb agony,
Up its perilous height, in the pale morning light, to dissever my own from the tree.
And so I’m away, where the sky-line of day sets the arch of its rainbow afar,
To the land of the north, where the symbol of worth sets the broad gates of combat ajar!
Swift melting into yesterday,
The tortured hordes of ebon-clay;
No more is heard the plaintive strain,
The rhythmic chaunting of their pain.
Their mounded bodies dimly rise
To fill the gulf of sacrifice,
And o’er their silent hearts below
The mantled millions softly go.
Some few remaining still abide,
Gnarled sentinels of time and tide,
Now mellowed by a chastened glow
Which lighter hearts will never know.
Winding into the silent way,
Spent with the travail of the day,
So royal in their humble might
These uncrowned Pilgrims of the Night!
One drop of midnight in the dawn of life’s pulsating stream
Marks her an alien from her kind, a shade amid its gleam;
Forevermore her step she bends insular, strange, apart—
And none can read the riddle of her wildly warring heart.
The stormy current of her blood beats like a mighty sea
Against the man-wrought iron bars of her captivity.
For refuge, succor, peace and rest, she seeks that humble fold
Whose every breath is kindliness, whose hearts are purest gold.
(To You—Everywhere! Dedicated)
They seem to smile as others smile, the masquerader’s art
Conceals them, while, in verity, they’re eating out their heart,
Betwixt the two contending stones of crass humanity
They lie, the fretted fabric of a dual dynasty.
A single drop, a sable strain debars them from their own—
The others—fold them furtively, but God! they are alone,
Blown by the fickle winds of fate far from the traveled mart
To die, when they have quite consumed the morsel of their heart.
When man shall lift his lowered eyes to meet the moon of truth,
Shall break the shallow shell of pride and wax in ways of ruth,
He cannot hate, for love shall reign untrammelled in the soul,
While peace shall spread a rainbow o’er the earth from pole to pole.
Nor shall I in sorrow repine,
But offer a paean of praise
To the infinite God of my days
Who marshals the pivoting spheres
Through the intricate maze of the years,
Who loosens the luminous flood
That lightens the purlieus of men,
I shall not in sorrow repine
To break the eternal Amen!
The mother soothes her mantled child
With incantation sad and wild;
A deep compassion brims her eye
And stills upon her lips, the sigh.
Her thoughts are leaping down the years,
O’er branding bars, through seething tears,
Her heart is sandaling his feet
Adown the world’s corroding street.
Then, with a start she dons a smile
His tender yearnings to beguile,
And only God will ever know
The wordless measure of her woe.
Proud?
Perhaps—and yet
I cannot say with surety
That I am happy thus to be
Responsible for this young life’s embarking.
Is he not thrall to prevalent conditions?
Does not the day loom dark apace
To weave its cordon of disgrace
Around his lifted throat?
Is not this mezzotint enough and surfeit
For such prescience?
Ah, did I dare
Recall the pulsing life I gave,
And fold him in the kindly grave!
Proud?
Perhaps—could I but ever so faintly scan
The broad horizon of a man
Swept fair for his dominion—
So hesitant and half-afraid
I view this babe of sorrow!
Don’t knock at my door, little child,
I cannot let you in,
You know not what a world this is
Of cruelty and sin.
Wait in the still eternity
Until I come to you,
The world is cruel, cruel, child,
I cannot let you in!
Don’t knock at my heart, little one,
I cannot bear the pain
Of turning deaf-ear to your call
Time and time again!
You do not know the monster men
Inhabiting the earth,
Be still, be still, my precious child,
I must not give you birth!
The infant eyes look out amazed upon the frowning earth,
A stranger, in a land now strange, child of the mantled-birth;
Waxing, he wonders more and more; the scowling grows apace;
A world, behind its barring doors, reviles his ebon face:
Yet from this maelstrom issues forth a God-like entity,
That loves a world all loveless, and smiles on Calvary!
Shall I say, “My son, you’re branded in this country’s pageantry,
By strange subtleties you’re tethered, and no forum sets you free?”
Shall I mark the young lights fading through your soul-enchannelled eye,
As the dusky pall of shadows screen the highway of your sky?
Or shall I, with love prophetic, bid you dauntlessly arise,
Spurn the handicap that clogs you, taking what the world denies,
Bid you storm the sullen fortress wrought by prejudice and wrong
With a faith that shall not falter, in your heart and on your tongue!
I hear you singing happily,
My boy of tarnished mien,
Lifting your limpid, trustful gaze
In innocence serene.
A thousand javelins of pain
Assault my heaving breast
When I behold the storm of years
That beat without your nest.
O sing, my lark, your matin song
Of joyous rhapsody,
Distil the sweetness of the hours
In gladsome ecstasy.
For time awaits your buoyant flight
Across the bar of years,
Sing, sing your song, my bonny lark,
Before it melts in tears!
That dusky child upon your knee
Is breath of God’s eternity;
Direct his vision to the height—
Let naught obscure his royal right.
Although the highways to renown
Are iron-barred by fortune’s frown,
’Tis his to forge the master-key
That wields the locks of destiny!
God grant you wider vision, clearer skies, my son,
With morning’s rosy kisses on your brow;
May your wild yearnings know repose,
And storm-clouds break to smiles
As you sweep on with spreading wings
Unto a waiting sunset!
The very acme of my woe,
The pivot of my pride,
My consolation, and my hope
Deferred, but not denied.
The substance of my every dream,
The riddle of my plight,
The very world epitomized
In turmoil and delight.
Go forth, my son,
Winged by my heart’s desire!
Great reaches, yet unknown,
Await
For your possession.
I may not, if I would,
Retrace the way with you,
My pilgrimage is through,
But life is calling you!
Fare high and far, my son,
A new day has begun,
Thy star-ways must be won!
I believe in the ultimate justice of Fate;
That the races of men front the sun in their turn;
That each soul holds the title to infinite wealth
In fee to the will as it masters itself;
That the heart of humanity sounds the same tone
In impious jungle, or sky-kneeling fane.
I believe that the key to the life-mystery
Lies deeper than reason and further than death.
I believe that the rhythmical conscience within
Is guidance enough for the conduct of men.
Through the moil and the gloom they have issued
To the steps of the upwinding hill,
Where the sweet, dulcet pipes of tomorrow
In their preluding rhapsodies trill.
With a thud comes a stir in the bosom,
As there steals on the sight from afar,
Through a break of a cloud’s coiling shadow
The gleam of a bright morning star!
Long have I beat with timid hands upon life’s leaden door,
Praying the patient, futile prayer my fathers prayed before,
Yet I remain without the close, unheeded and unheard,
And never to my listening ear is borne the waited word.
Soft o’er the threshold of the years there comes this counsel cool:
The strong demand, contend, prevail; the beggar is a fool!
Frail children of sorrow, dethroned by a hue,
The shadows are flecked by the rose sifting through,
The world has its motion, all things pass away,
No night is omnipotent, there must be day.
The oak tarries long in the depth of the seed,
But swift is the season of nettle and weed,
Abide yet awhile in the mellowing shade,
And rise with the hour for which you were made.
The cycle of seasons, the tidals of man
Revolve in the orb of an infinite plan.
We move to the rhythm of ages long done,
And each has his hour—to dwell in the sun!
Not wholly this or that,
But wrought
Of alien bloods am I,
A product of the interplay
Of traveled hearts.
Estranged, yet not estranged, I stand
All comprehending;
From my estate
I view earth’s frail dilemma;
Scion of fused strength am I,
All understanding,
Nor this nor that
Contains me.
How deftly does the gardener blend
This rose and that
To bud a new creation,
More gorgeous and more beautiful
Than any parent portion,
And so,
I trace within my warring blood
The tributary sources,
They potently commingle
And sweep
With new-born forces!
Some day
I shall be glad that it was mine to be
A dark fore-runner of a race burgeoning;
I then shall know
The secret of life’s Calvary,
And bless the thorns
That wound me!
When I rise above the earth,
And look down on the things that fetter me,
I beat my wings upon the air,
Or tranquil lie,
Surge after surge of potent strength
Like incense comes to me
When I rise up above the earth
And look down upon the things that fetter me.
The faint lose faith
When in the tomb their all is laid,
And there returns
No echoing of weal or woe.
The strong hope on,
They see the clods close over head,
The grass grow green,
No word is said,
And yet—
A little world within the world
Are we,
Daily our hearts’ high yearnings fade,
Are buried!
New ones are made—
Are crucified!
And yet—
The hour is big with sooth and sign, with errant men at war,
While blood of alien, friend, and foe imbues the land afar,
And we, with sable faces pent, move with the vanguard line,
Shod with a faith that Springtime keeps, and all the stars opine.
Though I should weep until the judgment,
How would it serve—
Brave men are fighting, women speed them,
’Tis a day
Of crucial conflict!
My son, sometimes it seems I’d rather hold
You safe beneath my heart
Than send you forth!
But lo! The sun is red and weaker children go!
Though I should weep until the judgment,
How would it serve!
I’ll close my eyes and smile, O Son of Mine,
Your cause is kingly!
Step proud and confident, worthy your mother;
Be firm and brave, O Son of Mine, be strong,
For terror waxeth,
Speed swift away,
Though I should weep until the judgment …
There’s music in the measured tread
Of those returning from the dead
Like scattered flowers from a plain
So lately crimson, with the slain.
No more the sound of shuffled feet
Shall mark the poltroon on the street,
Nor shifting, sodden, downcast eye
Reveal the man afraid to die.
They shall have paid full, utterly
The price of peace across the sea,
When, with uplifted glance, they come
To claim a kindly welcome home.
Nor shall the old-time daedal sting
Of prejudice, their manhood wing,
Nor heights, nor depths, nor living streams
Stand in the pathway of their dreams!
They are embosomed in the sod,
In still and tranquil leisure,
Their lives they’ve cast like trifles down,
To serve their country’s pleasure.
Nor bugle call, nor mother’s voice,
Nor moody mob’s unreason,
Shall break their solace and repose
Through swiftly changing season.
O graves of men who lived and died
Afar from life’s high pleasures,
Fold them in tenderly and warm
With manifold fond measures.
Peace on a thousand hills and dales,
Peace in the hearts of men
While kindliness reclaims the soil
Where bitterness has been.
The night of strife is drifting past,
The storm of shell has ceased,
Disrupted is the cordon fell,
Sweet charity released.
Forth from the shadow, swift we come
Wrought in the flame together,
All men as one beneath the sun
In brotherhood forever.
Where are the brave men, where are the strong men?
Pygmies rise
And spawn the earth.
Weak-kneed, weak-hearted, and afraid,
Afraid to face the counsel of their timid hearts,
Afraid to look men squarely,
Down they gaze—
With fatal fascination
Down, down—
Into the whirling maggot sands
Of prejudice.
The woes of flesh are naught
To one who knows
The agony of soul!
’Twere but the thud of wind and rain
Upon the roof.
The woes of flesh are naught
To one who knows!
Many cages round me,
Bar on bar
Stand grim, forbidding!
Ghostly pressures
Clutch my heart.
I gaze with eyes unseeing—
Whereunto may I wander free?
Alas, alas!
My garden walks lie inwardly!
With but one life full certified,
And that of every gleam denied
My portion,
Close to the unrelenting sod,
E’en as my fathers dumbly trod,
I’ve slumbered;
But now a surging, wild unrest
Uproots the poppies from my breast,
My soul awake, erect! anew!
I stand and face the star-swept blue,
And swear to make my dreams come true!
Aflounder the uncompassed darkness of doubt
In search of the path to the goal
That lies at the end of our transient day,
The ultimate bourne of the soul;
I grasp into nothingness, feebly essay
To clasp but a willow, a stone,
And grope through the stepless, unechoing gloom
Unanswered, unsuccored, alone!
The verdure sleeps in winter,
Awakes with April rain,
The sun swings low—’tis night—ascends,
And lo! ’tis morn again:
The world spins on triumphant
Across a trackless sky,
And man seeks evermore in vain
The primal reason why.
O whither are we rushing?
And wherefrom were we torn?
We breathe from out the silences,
And breathless, back are borne.
Deep in the soul are voices
Returning this reply:
It took a God to make us,
Only God can answer why!
Forever and forevermore,
Across the heights, the deeps,
Spurred by an ever-flaming zeal
That slumbers not, nor sleeps—
We chase the furtive form of fame
Beyond the edge of dusk,
To bear within our arms at length,
An empty mocking, husk!
The long, grim years with iron tread
Move down the shuttered isle
Of time’s unrecking labyrinth
Paved with forgotten dead.
And I, a feather in their wake,
Gaze long and tremblingly
Into these sunless corridors,
Praying the light to break!
We’re wending the trail of the vanishing road,
With a song and a shout, just to lighten the load,
That lies in the heart, filled with queries and cares,
For never a traveler knows where he fares.
But on with a jest, and rollicksome cheer,
With laughter that leaps, as a veil, for the tear;
The world’s weary caravan finds that abode
That lies at the end of the vanishing road.
When we count out our gold at the end of the day,
And have filtered the dross that has cumbered the way,
Oh, what were the hold of our treasury then
Save the love we have shown to the children of men?
O sacrificial throng whose lives
Build up the yawning deeps
O’er which we pass reflectively
To broader lights and sweeps.
Know, that we hold with reverence
The signal price you paid,
And all our trophies, one by one,
Upon your bier are laid.
We lift a song to you across the day
Which bears through travailing the seed you spread
In terror’s morning, flung with fingers red
In blood of tyrants, who debarred the way
To Freedom’s dawning. Hearken to the lay
Chanted by dusky millions, soft and mellow-keyed,
In minor measure, Martyr of the Freed,
A song of memory across the day.
Truth cannot perish though the earth erase
The royal signals, leaving not a trace,
And time still burgeoneth the fertile seed,
Though he is crucified who wrought the deed:
O Alleghanies, fold him to your breast
Until the judgment! Sentinel his rest!
Within the temple of our heart
Your sacred memory dwells apart,
Where ceaselessly a censor swings
Alight with fragrant offerings;
Nor time, nor tide, nor circumstance
Can dim this grand remembrance,
And all the blood of Afric hue
Beats in one mighty tide—for you!
When time has rocked the present age to sleep,
And lighter hearts are lilting to the sway
Of rhythmic poesy’s enhanced lay,
Recurring sequences shall fitly keep
Your fame eternal, as they lightly sweep
Aside the curtain to that potent day
When you in primal fervor led the way
Unto Apollo’s narrow winding steep.
None shall forget your travail, utter, sore,
That oped the golden avenue of song,
When, like a knight, so errantly you bore
The mantled children valiantly along,
Their homage as a rising incense sweet
Shall permeate the heavens at your feet!
Grandly isolate as the god of day—
Blazing an orbit through the dank and gloom
Of misty morning, far and fair you loom,
Flooding the dimness with your golden ray—
Cheering the mantled on the thorn-set way,
Teaching of Faith and Hope o’er the tomb,
Where both, though buried, spring to newer bloom—
Strengthened and sweet from the mound of decay.
Soft! strains of Sanctus we lift on the air,
Ere Nunc Dimittus at last shall be sung,
Sing we our Sanctus to fitly declare
Blessings that well up from hearts sorely wrung.
Lead, lead us on o’er the furthermost stair—
Light of our impotence! Joy of our tongue!
All hail! fair vistas break upon the view,
The gates swing wide and free with clanging sound,
Rejoice! a mighty champion is found,
Son of the morning, prescient and true.
Upon the threshold of a cycle new
He stands, and sentinels its virgin ground,
Seer in his poet-visioning profound,
Presaging vaster reaches—skies more blue.
Lifting their misty glances to the day,
The prismic children pass the erstwhile bars,
Exultant, swiftly, boundingly they stray,
Awhile forgetful of deep, hidden scars
Thus, as a golden legend time shall tell
Of him who wrought so mightily and well!
Son of a race, whose dusky visage shows
The heel of fortune, those who walk unfree
Though cradled in the hold of liberty,
Whose shackled spirit every gamut knows
Of Hate’s cadenza, through whose warm blood flows
The royal ransom of love’s dynasty,
Scion of these, he strides to meet his foes.
Erect, unbending, note his sable brow,
The rugged furrows where deep feelings plough,
The step of vigor and the noble air,
The subtle halo of his wintry hair,
Up from the furnace of the Earth’s red sea
A man is fashioned for the years to be!
Strange to a sensing motherhood,
Loved as a toy—not understood,
Child of a dusky father, bold;
Frail little captive, exiled, cold.
Oft when the brooding planets sleep,
You through their drowsy empires creep,
Flinging your arms through their empty space,
Seeking the breast of an unknown face.
Far from the seried ranks you sway,
Firm in your own believing
In that frail brotherhood, who stray
Sore anguishing, sore grieving.
Such hands as yours, adown the years
Enchain a faith unbroken,
They stay the dreary waste of tears,
And lift to Hope a token!
Quite firmly did you stand, and unafraid
Before that haughty bar that sought to hold
You fettered, lest you strengthen and grow bold
To break a clearing through that fetid glade
Which their benighted prejudice had made;
They taunted you with darkling hints of gold,
Preferring you were bought as you had sold,
They weaved their webs like spiders in the shade.
But as a giant in the falling night
Of storm, you forged afore with ruthless tread,
To offer up your heart’s blood in the fight,
Forgetting self, unmindful, unafraid,
Nor pausing until thrice acclaimed the right
To rally in the tents of those you led.
A pioneer, she blazed a trail of light
Through murky shadows, with a lithesome tread
Unto those forums, where Hope’s beams are shed:
Straight through the mighty cordon of the night,
Rapt with a vision, soul-born, clear and bright,
Leaving the South of frigid wrong, she sped
Into the North, where hearts glow warm instead,
A people’s tragedy to there recite.
Hope’s liquid pipings lift their tender lay,
Morning is waking, flushed with rosy gleam,
Night with its shadow winds with yesterday
Adown the world-way as an inky stream,
Seed time and harvest deftly interplay,
And Life’s fruition is its vital dream!
You saw the vision in the face of clay,
And fixed it through the magic of a hand
Obedient unto the will’s command,
In forms impervious to Time’s decay:
Historian of bloods that interplay
Confusedly within a cryptic land,
You’ve chiseled, and your work of art shall stand
To gem the archives of a better day.
Alone, far from the touch of kindred mind,
You’ve mounted with a grim, determined zeal,
Despite environment austere, unkind,
Or frozen-fingers clenched to your appeal,
You’ve held the ardor of your first ideal,
Robed in a queenly majesty, resigned.
Folded in silent veils of sleep,
You calmly rest,
For God hath spoken, should we weep?
He knoweth best.
But rather let us garner still
While yet we may,
And meet you in His Holy Hill
On that Great Day!
Pass down the aisle of buried years to-night,
And stand uncovered in that holy place
Where noble structures lift their hallowed height
Beneath a bending Heaven’s chaste embrace,
The fruit of those who scorned the path of ease,
To buckle on the armaments of care
Like to the Son of Man Himself, were these
Who gave themselves for brother men—less fair.
Before the blinding footlights of to-day
We man our parts within Life’s tragic play,
Full mindful of the earnest love and care
That keeps eternal watch and vigil there;
Nor do they need fair monuments and scrolls—
Their memories are deathless in our souls.
Life’s little hour is fleet, so fleet
But love’s is fleeter still,
So let us lift the chalice dear
And drink, and drink until
The shadows lengthen to repose
And fierce desires still,
Then may our souls view tranquilly
The low-light o’er the hill!
O what a privilege to be—
Breath of The Breath Eternal;
To have the life,
To have the strife
Of that dark mystery
A son of Africa, whose blood
Holds nations all in fee,
Commanding by one sultry drop
The whole identity;
She whispers at the gate of birth
And lo! the rainbow on the earth.
I’ve learned of life this bitter truth:
Hope not between the crumbling walls
Of mankind’s gratitude to find repose,
But rather,
Build within thy own soul
Fortresses!
Lend me a candle by whose light
I may discern the road
Which winds into that magic path
That leads to love’s abode.
In your deep autumnal eyes
Mystery’s dark shadow lies,
None may pass unchallenged there,
Something vestal,
Something rare
Stays the plunging, pagan tread—
One hesitates,
One bows the head.
Stronger than man-made bars, the chain,
That rounds your life’s arena,
Deeper than hell the anchor sweeps
That stills your young desires;
Darker than night the inward look
That meditation offers,
Redder than blood the future years
Roll down the hills of torture!
But ah! you were not made for this,
And life is but preluding—
The major theme shall hold its sway
When full awake, not dreaming,
Your ebon foot shall press the sod
Where immortelles are blooming;
Beyond the glaze of fevered years
I see—the day is coming!
Ho: my brother,
Pass me not by so scornfully
I’m doing this living of being black,
Perhaps I bear your own life-pack,
And heavy, heavy is the load
That bends my body to the road.
But I have kept a smile for fate,
I neither cry, nor cringe, nor hate,
Intrepidly, I strive to bear
This handicap: The planets wear
The Maker’s imprint, and with mine
I swing into their rhythmic line;
I ask—only for destiny,
Mine, not thine.
Shadows, shadows,
Hug me round
So that I shall not be found
By sorrow:
She pursues me
Everywhere,
I can’t lose her
Anywhere.
Fold me in your black
Abyss,
She will never look
In this—
Shadows, shadows,
Hug me round
In your solitude
Profound.
White men’s children spread over the earth—
A rainbow suspending the drawn swords of birth,
Uniting and blending the races in one
The world man—cosmopolite—everyman’s son!
He channels the stream of the red blood and blue,
Behold him! A Triton—the peer of the two;
Unriddle this riddle of “outside in”
White men’s children in black men’s skin.
Something has died when the lily lifts
The shaft of its God-turned head,
Something has faded and perished that now
Lies under the lily’s door dead.
Something has died when the heart exhales
Its attar of roses rare;
Bow at the tomb when the soul leaps forth
A flame on the midnight air!
Last night you lost the rarest thing
Life ever gave to you.
It was a friendship that was deep,
Unvarying and true.
I’m sorry that you have it not
Because you need it so;
When one has killed the flower’s root
How can it ever grow?
You deck my doby lavishly,
I’m sleek and overfed;
And yet my soul is perishing,
Denied of daily bread.
You make a plaything of my life,
My every trust betray,
And when I would be penitent,
You kiss my prayers away.
If you can laugh along the road,
Although you bend beneath a load
Of sorrow,
Your hope-lit eyes shall surely see
A rainbow sweep eternity
Tomorrow.
The world is dark,
I cannot see my way!
Eternal clouds
Obscure the light of day—
I seek a break, a rift, a little space,
There to behold
One God-illumined place!
No, never quite alone am I.
Of ill why should I borrow?
No matter where my footsteps bend
There also follows sorrow.
And she has taught my lips to sing
A rapt and dauntless measure
While all the world goes envying
My mellow noted treasure.
No, I have never walked alone!
And as I face tomorrow,
If I am bereft of joy
I know there will be sorrow.
I do not ask for love—ah! no,
Nor friendship’s happiness,
These were relinquished long ago
I search for something less.
I seek a little, tranquil bark
In which to drift at ease
Awhile, and then quite silently
To sink in quiet seas.
Swift-footed Time, how eagerly you go
Across the swaying summer grasses bed
As on in breathless haste you hurry me
To Winter with its chilling winds and snow.
The noontide hour is fading—in my hair
The furtive shadows caper and recline.
I tell my beads of amethyst and gold
So near at end, so passing dear and fair.
America, here is your son, born of your iron heel,
Black blood and red and white contend along this frame of steel.
The thorns deep in his brow are set and yet he does not cower,
He goes with neither fears nor tears to crucifixion hour.
Nor yet does hatred blur his view of mankind’s frail parade,
From his commanding triple coign, all prejudices fade.
The ebbing nations coalesce in him and flow as one,
The bright shining rainbow sweeping back to God at set of sun!
Mark well the surety of tread, the new song high in air,
The new note in the nation’s throat, as permanent as prayer.
America, regard your son, The Cosmopolitan,
The pattern of posterity, The True American.
I’m tired of pacing the petty round of the ring of the thing I know—
I want to stand on the daylight’s edge and see where the sunsets go.
I want to sail on a swallow’s tail and peep through the sky’s blue glass.
I want to see if the dreams in me shall perish or come to pass.
I want to look through the moon’s pale crook and gaze on the moon-man’s face.
I want to keep all the tears I weep and sail to some unknown place.
Too late to roll the tangled skein
The knot is taut, what might have been
Passed with the pangs of yesterday—
The secret page of history.
Red blood and white and black combine—
Can you dissever yours from mine?
Such motifs are not thus undone,
Like prowess might command the sun.
Too late to roll the tangled skein,
At first perhaps, this might have been,
’Tis now too hard and passing late
To disentwine the threads of Fate!
I closed my shutters fast last night,
Reluctantly and slow,
So pleading was the purple sky
With all the lights hung low;
I left my lagging heart outside
Within the dark alone,
I heard it singing through the gloom
A wordless, anguished tone.
Upon my sleepless couch I lay
Until the tranquil morn
Came through the silver silences
To bring my heart forlorn,
Restoring it with calm caress
Unto its sheltered bower,
While whispering: “Await, await
Your golden, perfect hour.”
Passing ever, early, late,
No fond footsteps seek my gate,
But down the winding road they wend
To some other journey’s end.
Yet—I would not have them wait
Here within my guarded gate,
Certain footsteps I shall know,
And for them I listen low!
Oh night of love, your rapt ecstatic hours
Were mine, the languor of their pale perfume
Pervades me, kisses in a fountain-fire,
Surround me—fetter and consume.
Oh night of love, your groves of strange content
Project a thralldom over coming days;
Exalted, derelict, and blind I wend
Unmindfully along Life’s misty ways.
Believe me–when I say
That love like yours, at this belated hour,
Overwhelms me—
Stills the fount of thought!
I move as one new-born—
And strange to swift transitions
As from my prison door
I gaze
Into a blinding sunlight!
Your voice keeps ringing down the day
In accents soft and mild,
With which you have beguiled
And wooed me as a child.
Your presence bounds my every way
And thrills me in its fold
With phantom hands that hold
Like cherished chains of gold.
Within your pulsing day
There must be little space
For visions of my face
To lure your thoughts away.
Yet, I would have it so,
To bear alone the pain
That saddens love’s refrain.
Pray God you never know!
So like a boundless, soundless sea
The miracle of love to me,
With all the world a rosy dream
Sailing upon a silver stream,
While I, a fairy in mid-air,
Am dancing, dancing everywhere.
Hark! do you hear the thunder peal?
I care not what it would reveal,
Tomorrow will be yesterday
When I am shivering and gray:
I will not heed the prompter’s ring
Let others answer, I shall sing
And dance the merrier—away!
I’ll live and live and live—today!
Were you a leper bathed in wounds
And by the world denied,
I’d share your fatal exile
As a privilege, with pride.
You are the very sun, the moon,
The starlight of my soul,
The sounding motif of my heart
Its impetus and goal!
The days lie dark between our jeweled meetings
Like wintry burials.
My heart bows low before the cheerless hearth
Until your voice rings through the gloom
And bids me
Wake!
And live!
Let’s say “Good-bye”
Nor wait Love’s latest breath
Poised now so lightly on the wing of Death,
While yet within our eyes one fervent gleam
Remains to hallow this, a passing dream:
Yes, yes “Good-bye,”
For it is best to part
While Love’s low light still burns
Within the heart!
I know you love me better cold
Strange as the pyramids of old
Responselessly.
But I am frail, and spent and weak
With surging torrents that bespeak
A living fire.
So, like a veil, my poor disguise
Is draped to save me from your eyes’
Deep challenges.
Fain would I fling this robe aside
And from you, in your bosom hide
Eternally.
Alas! you love me better cold
Like frozen pyramids of old
Unyieldingly?
How my heart sinks when I behold the sad reflection of my face,
A wan and wistful wound, with oh, such meagre grace;
How can you hold me dear withal and conjure charms withdrawn.
Or does the Autumn twilight hold a charm unknown to dawn?
Hold! Do not speak! some day perchance, I’ll read the message dire
Within the ashes of the flame, the aftermath of fire,
Ere then perhaps I shall have found the highways of the soul
Where one may read uncrucified, the blood-words of the scroll.
Till then, uphold illusion’s veil before my gaze the while
That I may gather strength to fuse from agony, a smile!
Day by day the threads of white
Muliply, Oh! hour-glass!
How passing swift your bright sands pass,
Fain would I hold you,
Linger, bide
Until these surges shall subside,
That sweep me forward unto bliss,
Oh! charging sun, I bid you rest,
Break not your arrow in my breast!
Would I might mend the fabric of my youth
Which daily flaunts its tatters to my eyes,
Would I might compromise awhile with truth
Until love’s moon, now waxing, wanes and dies.
For I would go a further while with you
And draing this Cup of Joy so passing fair,
Which meets my parching lips like cooling dew
’Ere time has brushed cold fingers through my hair.
I fear my power impotent
To hold you leal and full content,
Some hapless look or word perchance
Dispels the glamour of romance;
I tremble lest some stranger fair
Arrest you—cause you to compare
The meagre charms which I possess
With some resplendent loveliness.
How far removed from Youth’s command
The trembling sceptre in my hand,
As miserly within the glass
I mark Love’s fleeting hours pass.
Oh! for the veils of my far-away youth,
Shielding my heart from the blaze of the truth;
Why did I stray from their foldings and grow
Into the sadness that follows—to know.
Impotent atom with desolate gaze
Treading Life’s treacherous, intricate maze—
Oh for the veils, for the veils of my youth
Shielding my heart from the blaze of the truth!
You came,
The tapestries of love
Were shining in the sun,
My wishes settled down content
About you as you stood.
I looked into your cryptic eyes
And thought I understood;
But no—
The splendor of your gaudy robe
Grew dimmer day by day,
I wondered,
Searched within my soul to seize the mystery.
The answer staggered me,
Aghast,
Like one at bay,
I gazed with open eyes of thought upon you,
God! ’twas true—
A mockery, a parody,
Had come to me—in you!
You gave me your hand,
I held it to be
The last word, the dear word,
The soul’s entity;
I cherished it, treasured it,
Only to find
I held but a gauntlet—
That I had been blind!
And now—
As one who closes up the house and goes uncaring where
He may forget the scenes of home ’mid foreign climes and air,
I bar the chamber of my heart and seal the past within
To wander down the city’s road amid the whirr and din.
The long years seem impassable, the morning has no smile,
With naught behind these barring doors and nothing else worth while,
Like some lone pilgrim without hope, I stumble on my way,
Who lifts no futile plea for sun, but asks for clouds less grey.
I looked death calmly in the face
And placed my hand within his hand
And said:
“Come, come, let us away
For I have lost the magic key
Opening the portals of desire—
My wishes cumber in the dust,
And life is stagnant
in
my
heart!
I am a woman
Which means
I am insufficient
I need—
Something to hold me
Or perhaps uphold.
I am a woman.
There’s nothing certain, nothing sure
Save sorrow. Fragile happiness
Was never fashioned to endure;
For joy repels the perfect claim
And answers to no certain name;
How furtively we scan the mist
Perchance amid the gloom to find
Some moments rare and rapture-kist.
Good-bye dear day of sunshine, rain
In flooding torrents pours
Its liquid footsteps on my roof,
Its fingers on my doors.
While I sit tranquilly within
And tell my beads of joy,
Holding a peace within my heart
Which nothing can destroy.
Fire—tears—
And the torture-chamber,
With the last maddening turn of the screw—
Only thus
Is one precious drop distilled
Of the attar of rose
Of the heart.
Oh the sad little dreams of the dim yesteryear
Lying cold, still and stark in the dust of their bier,
How the heart hurries back, all the long weary way,
Just to bid them good-night at the close of the day.
I wonder—
as I see them pass unheeded down the way,
(The women who were once beloved, imperious and gay)
Holding with frail, pale hands the cup
Of Life’s discarded wine
If memories
Are bliss enough
To make the dregs—divine!
All the pretty baubles spread
Are not the answer to my need,
These tinseled trappings but beguile
This journeying, while deep within
A want unspeakable resides,
That throbs and throbs unceasingly—
So hungering—no banquet spread
Can tempt it, and no golden wine
Make it forget: I balance it—
The world flies upward in the scale!
Always, unsoothed, unquieted,
It aches and aches across the days
And sears the nights that sum my life.
In the silence and the dark
I fought with dragons;
I was battered, beaten sore
But rose again;
On my knees I fought still rising
In my pain:
In the dark I fought with dragons.
Weary tears
Cease your flowing,
Even now the dawn appears!
Mute-lipped—
unquestioning grim-visaged Fate,
I cleave the shadows toward the Western Gate;
And yet—
my lagging heart still holds
Mute-arms outstretched
Unto earth’s gleaming folds.
Who knows?
perhaps Hope’s blossoms spray
In lush profusion
O’er the edge of day!
What matters though love’s dream shall pass,
Since from the throbbing hour-glass
One golden-throated moment prest
Its attared incense to my breast.
Since I have known the purple gleam
That lifts above me—can I deem
The way unlighted—when I go
Encircled by love’s afterglow?
After all—
mine is the joy
Which naught can lessen or destroy.
For love has led my flying feet
Where immortelles are springing sweet,
And everlasting skies of gold
Are memories, when earth is cold
And though our future paths should lie
Estranged, as star-ways, through the sky,
I shall not look reproof, nor find
Within this pass a charge unkind,
And lightly sorrow shall be met
For I can never know regret.
Again it is the vibrant May,
The bursting buds, the leafing trees,
The fragrant, undulating breeze,
Call to my heart in subtlest way:
Come! Come! it is a holiday.
The streamlet with unending song,
Beneath its silver veil of mist
Seems flowing, flowing, to some tryst,
While I—with inner surges strong,
Find incomplete the day, and long.
I know my love is seeing me
As restless rivers seek the sea,
Across the night, across the days
That snare the intervening ways.
I know my love is seeking me
As Time must seek Eternity,
When nights are very still I hear
His footsteps, coming, coming near!
Love calls me tonight
In the beat of the rain
Through the cold little drops
On my bare window-pane;
Calls and calls through the dark
Like a whispered refrain
Tapping soft on my heart
Through the bare window pane.
I want to die while you love me,
While yet you hold me fair,
While laughter lies upon my lips
And lights are in my hair.
I want to die while you love me
And bear to that still bed
Your kisses—turbulent, unspent,
To warm me when I’m dead.
I want to die while you love me
Oh, who would care to live,
’Til love has nothing more to ask
And nothing more to give.
Not less than this, beloved,
This beaming, highmost ray
That sweeps in royal splendor
Across our perfect day.
Not less than this—far rather
That we should say “adieu,”
With every rose in Eden
Abloom for me and you.
With kisses I’ll awake you love
So tenderly at morn,
The pledges of my fealty
Diunally reborn.
We’ll thread life’s way together love,
And when the fading light
Dips softly over western hills
I’ll kiss your eyes good-night.
Your eyes—
Dark pools, so calm and deep,
A thousand ages in them sleep,
A dreaming world within them lies,
And all my hopes
Of paradise!
Kiss me!
And let the hours bloom triumphantly
Before life’s little sun has set
And I am old.
Love me!
The day is fleet
And I …
Am far too passionate
To die!
When love’s triumphant day is done,
Go forward! leave me to the night
Beneath the coldly staring stars,
The waiting winter and its blight.
For I would never hold the heart
That mutely quivers to be free,
Unfurl your restless wings—away!
And leave the emptiness to me.
I lived in Hell the other day
Its fires wrapt me angrily,
But now their horrors fall and fade
Like ghosts that memory has made.
I lived in Hell even today,
How swift the fierce flames die away—
Submerged with kisses, I forget,
With tears upon my pillows yet.
Ah! love!
I shall not seek to penetrate
Your webbed gauze
Nor tease my heart
By queries deep,
But hold you tenderly;
The day is evening,
And I must cull my flowers
’Ere dark.
Dead days of rapture and despair
I would your hours exhume,
Renew their wildness once again
Their rigors and perfume.
Break, break my heart
For love is done,
The pale light trails the dying sun—
And night awaits—no hope—no stars
Darkness
Hide my scars!
From worshipping I now arise
Stunned and aghast, with open eyes
I see the real, the little you
I thought so gallant, brave and true.
A pity yet is mine, I fear,
Since wherefore comes this falling tear,
For none among your fawning throng
Will love you well, nor love you long.
When I was young
I used to say:
Romance will come riding by
And I shall surely smile
And play with him awhile.
When I grew older
then I said:
Romance may come riding by
I wonder shall I smile
And play with him awhile?
But now—
Alas! I only say:
Romance never will come by
And I shall never smile
He has been dead the while!
Confusion, desuetude and gloom,
The travailing of sound,
Fell desolation in my soul,
And agony profound;
The gods are falling heavily
And for all time to be,
And never more my heart shall know
A shrine to Deity!
You cannot hurt me any more
For I am armored now
And I can look into your face
With cool, unfevered brow.
The tranquil river meets the sea,
My life flows on at rest,
Unurged, untorn, but oh, my God!
I love the old way best!
Your lightest breath may fan my cheek
Your whisper stir me when you speak,
And yet—
The teeming planets play
Between your heart—and mine
Today.
Now,
Like the pines intoning
Though some solitary gloom,
My errant throughts go pattering
About love’s ancient tomb,
And though no breath of incense rare
Lies round the shattered cup,
A banquet weird, the fragments
Where the ghost of love
May sup.
Just a bit of ashes
Grey, grey ashes—spent—
God! how fierce the fires burned
Down to this content.
Just a bit of ashes,
Not a single spark
Lives in this residuum
Crumbling cold and dark.
Just a bit of ashes—
To the judgment day,
I go with my memories—
Pray, sweet virgin, pray!
Where is the love that might have been
Flung to the far ends of Earth?
In my body stamping around,
In my body like a hound
Leashed and restless—
Biding time!
I seek no tokens of you dear
I only ask to give
The purple flower of my heart
And you will let it live.
I ask no fealty or plight,
I only pray that you
May find earth’s barren places bright
Perhaps, because it grew.
And when for you the final sun
Moves toward the darkening West,
I shall be lingering to place
Love’s flower on your breast.
Some day I shall be dead, and pride
Which kept me from your feet,
Shall be the burden of the song
My cold lips shall repeat.
And some day when you too shall find
A pillow in the sod,
Would you then spurn an hour with me
Above—where daisies nod?
Consider me a memory—a dream
That passed away,
Or yet, a flower that has blown and shattered—
In a day;
For passion sleeps, alas, and keeps no vigil
With the years,
And wakens to no conjuring
Of orison or tears.
Consider me a melody
That served its simple turn,
Or but the residue of fire
That settles in the urn,
For love defies pure reasoning
And undeterred flows
Within—without
The vassal heart!
Its reasoning—
Who knows?
I have mounded the corpse of my sorrow
And wreathed it with roses fair
That none who may pass on the morrow
May know what lies buried there.
When one has lived
’Tis not so hard
To fold the hands,
To say, “Good-night,”
And creep away
Behind the dark;
But ’tis not strange
The heart rebels
When sounds of night
Ring down the day
That was a weary, joyless way
From early dawn
To setting sun:
How eagerly we trail the light
For crumbs of happiness we fend,
And struggle, struggle—to the end!
Through you I entered heaven and hell,
Knew rapture and despair,
I flitted o’er the plains of earth
And scaled each shining stair:
Drank deep the waters of content,
And drained the cup of gall,
Was regal and was impotent,
Was suzerain and thrall.
Now, by Reflection’s placid pool
On evening’s mellowed brow,
I smile across the backward way
And pledge anew my vow;
For every glancing, golden gleam,
I offer gladly—pain!
And I would give a thousand world
To live it all again!
Poetry
was compiled from poems published between 1905 and 1928 by
Georgia Douglas Johnson.
This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Weijia Cheng,
and is based on transcriptions from
African American Poetry: A Digital Anthology
and on digital scans from the
HathiTrust Digital Library.
The cover page is adapted from
Leaves,
a painting completed in 1909 by
William N. Buckner.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
The League of Moveable Type.
The first edition of this ebook was released on
December 12, 2024, 9:06 p.m.
You can check for updates to this ebook, view its revision history, or download it for different ereading systems at
standardebooks.org/ebooks/georgia-douglas-johnson/poetry.
The volunteer-driven Standard Ebooks project relies on readers like you to submit typos, corrections, and other improvements. Anyone can contribute at standardebooks.org.
May you do good and not evil.
May you find forgiveness for yourself and forgive others.
May you share freely, never taking more than you give.
Copyright pages exist to tell you that you can’t do something. Unlike them, this Uncopyright page exists to tell you that the writing and artwork in this ebook are believed to be in the United States public domain; that is, they are believed to be free of copyright restrictions in the United States. The United States public domain represents our collective cultural heritage, and items in it are free for anyone in the United States to do almost anything at all with, without having to get permission.
Copyright laws are different all over the world, and the source text or artwork in this ebook may still be copyrighted in other countries. If you’re not located in the United States, you must check your local laws before using this ebook. Standard Ebooks makes no representations regarding the copyright status of the source text or artwork in this ebook in any country other than the United States.
Non-authorship activities performed on items that are in the public domain—so-called “sweat of the brow” work—don’t create a new copyright. That means that nobody can claim a new copyright on an item that is in the public domain for, among other things, work like digitization, markup, or typography. Regardless, the contributors to this ebook release their contributions under the terms in the CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication, thus dedicating to the worldwide public domain all of the work they’ve done on this ebook, including but not limited to metadata, the titlepage, imprint, colophon, this Uncopyright, and any changes or enhancements to, or markup on, the original text and artwork. This dedication doesn’t change the copyright status of the source text or artwork. We make this dedication in the interest of enriching our global cultural heritage, to promote free and libre culture around the world, and to give back to the unrestricted culture that has given all of us so much.