Palestinian women writers, like other women writers across the globe, did not have it easy, especially those who lived through the Nakba. This was the 1948 catastrophe when more than 700,000 Palestinians were displaced from historical Palestine (modern day Israel) to Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon.

Added to this displacement were societal pressure and cultural norms that put women at a disadvantage compared to their male peers.

Early life in Nablus

Fadwa Tuqan is now known as “the poetess of Palestine.” She was born in Nablus, a city in northern Palestine, in 1917, into an affluent family who lived in a large home inherited from their ancestors.

Fadwa grew up in a male-dominant household and society, and was shunned by her father — he was hoping his newborn would be a boy. Her mother tried to abort her and threw the “burden” of raising Fadwa onto their housemaid. Her mother took away all her dolls when she was eight, and when Fadwa shared stories using her imagination her mother would brush them off as “nonsense.”

. . . . . . . . . . .

House of Al-Bayk Tuquan, courtesy of Yalla Falasteen
. . . . . . . . . . .

Many of her writings described the environment and male-dominated society she grew up in, where “women were prisoners between walls.” Though her family was wealthy and could easily afford her schooling, her brother Yousef removed her from the education system while she was in elementary school due to “societal pressures;” he found out that a boy who was fond of Fadwa was following her home from school. 

Her brother Ibrahim went off to study literature at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon. After his graduation in 1929, he was determined to help his sister continue her studies. He taught Fadwa the art of rhyming in Arabic poetry. She began submitting her poems to literary magazines in Cairo and Beirut under pseudonyms, gaining self-confidence as her work was accepted and published. 

Ibrahim Tuqan, who became a reknowned Palestinian poet in his own right, writing the Arab national poem “Mawtini” (now the national anthem of Iraq), was the only one of her brothers that fully supported her.

. . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . .

In Jerusalem and London

In 1939, Fadwa left Nablus to live with Ibrahim in Jerusalem, where she finally broke free of the walls in which her family had confined her for so long. In Jerusalem, Fadwa was introduced to a society of poets, writers, and politicians, became active in literary and cultural clubs, and started going to the library and cinema. 

In A Mountainous Journey: A Poet’s Autobiography, Fadwa wrote about her difficult and unfair life, including how she contemplated suicide multiple times. In Jerusalem, she began taking English lessons at an evening school at the YMCA so that she could begin reading and self-studying English Literature.

In 1962, Fadwa moved to London for two years where she took courses in English and Literature at Oxford University continuing her self-development and learning journey. 

Upon returning from London, Fadwa decided to claim her autonomy, away from the confines of her family and the society in which she had grown up. She built her own house in the west of Nablus, where she continued to live independently.

As with her poetry, she knew her family would never accept her marriage to a stranger from another country. Her first love was Egyptian lyricist and poet Ibrahim Naja, about whom she had written some of her best poetry. Their relationship remains alive through her poetry for him and the love letters they had exchanged. 

. . . . . . . . . . .

Stamp commemorating Fadwa’s centenary
. . . . . . . . . . .

EXISTENCE
Translated by Michael R. Burch

In solitary life, I was a lost question;
In the encompassing darkness,
my answer was concealed.

You were a bright new star
radiating light from the darkness of the unknown,
revealed by fate.

The other stars rotated around you
—once, twice —
until it came to me,
your unique radiance.

Then the bleak blackness broke
And in the matching tremors
of our two hands
I found my missing answer.

Oh you! Oh you intimate, yet distant!
Don’t you remember the coalescence
Of your spirit in flames?
Of my universe with yours?
Of the two poets?
Despite our great distance,
Existence unites us – Existence!

Grieving a beloved brother; and the Nakba

Fadwa witnessed the Nakba in 1948 and didn’t remain silent. She was part of the Jordanian delegation for a peace conference organized by the World Peace Council in Stockholm and later delegations to Holland, the Soviet Union, and China. After the death of her beloved brother and mentor Ibrahim in 1941, her father urged her to write political and national poetry to steer her away from the emptiness she was feeling after losing Ibrahim.

But she resisted and instead published her first poetry collection in 1946, My Brother Ibrahim, as a way to grieve her loss. It was only after her father’s death in 1948 that she start writing nationalist and resistance poetry without anyone’s influence.

Her resistance poetry had such an impact that Moshe Dayan, commander of the Jerusalem front in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war said that Fadwa’s poetry was the equivalent of facing twenty enemy fighters.

MY SAD CITY
translated by Charlie Huntington

“On the day of Zionist occupation”
The day we saw the death and deception, 
The floods fell back, 
The windows to heaven closed, 
And the city held its breath. 
Day the waves retreated, day that 
The ugliness of the abyss 
Exposed its face to the light.
Hope burned 
As an agony of misfortune strangled 
My sad city. 
Gone are the children and songs;
Not a glimpse, not an echo
The sorrow in my city crawls shamefully,
Staining her steps. 
The silence in my city –
Silence like mountains at rest, 
Like a dark night, a painful silence
Burdened with the weight of death and defeat. 
Alas! Oh, my sad, silent city 
Are you thus at harvest time, 
Your crops and fruits aflame? 
Alas! Oh, what an end! 
Alas! Oh, what an end! 

Fadwa is considered a feminist of her time; although she was forced to leave elementary school and never completed her education with a degree, she fought her way through her life and career becoming the first Palestinian female poet, publishing eight poetry collections between 1946 and 2000.

Selections of her poetry have been translated into more than five languages, including Hebrew, and her two autobiographies, A Mountainous Journey and The Most Difficult Journey, were translated and published in English in 1990 and 1993 respectively.

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A Mountainous Journey is a compilation of all her journal entries until 1967. In The Most Difficult Journey she speaks of her life under the occupation after the Palestinian Nakba in 1948 and the 1967 Naksa. A documentary of her life was produced by Palestinian Novelist Liana Badr titled Fadwa: A Poetess from Palestine. Her life was featured on Al Jazeera Documentary, and Ilam Media also produced a short film about her after her death. You can watch it here with English subtitles.

On December 12, 2003, Fadwa passed away in her hometown of Nablus, leaving behind a legacy of political activism, literature, and a new path for Palestinian women writers to follow. 

. . . . . . . . .

Contributed by Lama Obeid, a writer from Palestine. Her poem “My Father a Refugee” has been published in the anthology To Lay Sun into a Forest, published by Sidhe Press. Lama enjoys experimenting with poetry and fiction, and hopes to become a published author of an anthology and a memoir in the future. Lama also publishes her writing on her Substack, I Come From There.

Further reading

• 7 Poems by Fadwa Tuqan
• Fadwa Tuqan’s Legacy as a Feminist Icon
• A Romantic Feminist Poet and Reluctant Political Witness

The post Fadwa Tuqan: From Societal Suppression to Poetess of Palestine appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.

Georgia was an important figure in the Harlem Renaissance movement of the 1920s. Presented here is the full text of An Autumn Love Cycle, her third collection, published in 1928.

Though Black women’s poetry was regularly featured in the era’s periodicals, an entire collection by one writer was a rarity. Georgia published three poetry collections in the span of six years; one more was to come decades later.

Her first collection, The Heart of a Woman (1918) featured poems both specific to Georgia’s life yet universal to the female experience, speaking of love, loneliness, and women’s constrained roles. Decades later, the title of this book (and its eponymous poem) would inspire Maya Angelou’s 1981 memoir of the same name.

The poems in Bronze (1922) more directly confronted themes of race and social justice. An Autumn Love Cycle (1928) returned to more personal themes of love, motherhood, and being a woman in a male-dominated world. Arguably Georgia Douglas Johnson’s most critically praised collection, it includes “I Want to Die While You Love Me,” her most widely reprinted poem. It was recited at her funeral.

More full texts of collections by Georgia Douglas Johnson

THE HEART OF A WOMAN (1918)
BRONZE (1922)

. . . . . . . . . .

An Autumn Love Cycle
by Georgia Douglas Johnson (1928)

Harold Vinal, Limited, New York 1928
This book is lovingly dedicated to Zona Gale whose appreciation, encouragement,
and helpful criticism have so heartened me

Privilege to reprint certain of these poems is through the courtesy of the editors of The Crisis, The Liberator, Telling Tales, The Sphinx, Music and Poetry, Messenger, Opportunity, and The Minaret. 

Foreword by Alain Locke

In the title of her first volume, The Heart of a Woman, Georgia Douglas Johnson chose with singular felicity, indeed with the felicity of instinct, her special domain in art. And as she proceeds with maturing power and courage of expression in this third volume, it becomes all the more apparent that the task which she has set herself is the documenting of the feminine heart.

Any poetic expression of life from this point of view that achieves a genuine authenticity and sincerity of emotion is as welcome as it is rare. For the emotions of woman, time-old though they be and hackneyed over as in a sense they really are, are still but half expressed. They have yet to be carried beyond the platitudes and the sentimentalizations of a man-made tradition.

Yet in the wholesome stripping off of mediaeval brocades and the laces of classic conceits, it has often occurred to us to question whether the imposition of futurist patterns and the cubist cut of the current intellectual modes has given us any more vital or adequate a revelation of the flesh and blood figure of the “eternal feminine.”

“Clothes are but clothes,” as Carlyle would say: modern feminist realism has but overlaid the vitally human with another convention, and interposed another cloak. How long shall we make a sphinx of woman, who herself now yearns to throw off along with the mystery, the psychological vestments of disguise. Our author puts it pointedly in “Paradox,”–

Alas! you love me better cold
Strange as the pyramids of old
Responselessly . . .
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.

Voicing this yearning of woman for candid self-expression, Mrs. Johnson invades the province where convention has been most tyrannous and inveterate,—the experience of love. And here she succeeds where others more doctrinally feminist than she have failed; for they in over-sophistication, in terror of platitudes and the commonplace, have stressed the bizarre, the exceptional, in one way or another have over-intellectualized their message nad overleapt the common elemental experience they would nevertheless express. Mrs. Johnson, on the contrary, in a simple declarative style, engages with an ingenuous declarative style, engages with ingenuous directness the moods and emotions of her themes. 

Through you I entered Heaven and Hell 
Knew rapture and despair.

Here is the requisite touch, certainly for the experiences of the heart. Greater sophistication would spoil the message. Fortunately, to the gift on a lyric style, delicate in touch, rhapsodic in [t]one, authentic in timbre, there has been added a temperamental endowment of ardent sincerity of emotion, ingenuous candor of expression, and, happies of all for the particular task, a naive and unsophisticated spirit. 

By way of a substantive message, Mrs. Johnson’s philosophy of life is simple, unpretentious, but wholesome and spiritually invigorating. On the one hand, she belongs with those who, under the leadership of Sara Teasdale, have been rediscovering the Sapphic cult of love as the ecstasy of life, that cult of enthusiasm which leaps over the dilemma of optimism and pessimism, and accepting the paradoxes, pulses in the immediacies of life and rejoices openly in th glory of experience.

In a deeper and somewhat more individual message, upon which she only verges, and which we believe will later be her most mature and original contribution, Mrs. Johnson probes under the experiences of love to the underlying forces of natural instinct which so fatalistically control our lives. [Especially is this evident in her suggestion of the tragic poignancy of Motherhood, where the consummation of love seems also the expiation of passion, and where, between the antagonisms of the dual role of Mother and Lover, we may suspect the real dilemma of womanhood to life.]

Whatever the philosophical yield, however, we are grateful for the prospect of such lyricism. Seeking a pure lyric gold, Mrs. Johnson has gone straight to the mine of the heart. She has dug patiently in the veins of her own subjective experience. What she has gleaned has been treasured for the joy of the search and for its own intrinsic worth, and not exploited for the values of show and applause.

Above all, her material has been expressed with a candor that shows that she brings to the poetic field what it lacks most,— the gift of the elemental touch. Few will deny that, with all its other excellences, the poetry of the generation needs just this touch to make it more vitally human and more spontaneously effective.  —ALAIN LOCKE. Washington, D.C. 

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THE CYCLE

I Closed My Shutters Fast Last Night
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, wait
Your golden, perfect hour.”

Footsteps
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
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 comind days;
Exalted, derelict, and blind I went
Unmindfully along Life’s misty ways. 

Autumn
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!

Thralldom
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. 


Separation
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 be alone the pain
That saddens love’s refrain.
Pray God you never know!

Proving
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!

Interim
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!

Good-Bye
Let’s say ‘Good-bye’
Nor wait Love’s latest breath
Poised now so lightly on the wing of Death,
While yet within our eye 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!

Love’s Miracle
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!

A Paradox
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
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! 

To Time
Day by day the threads of white
Multiply, 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!

Welt
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 draining this Cup of Joy so passing fair,
Which meets my parching lips like cooling dew
‘Ere time has brush cold fingers through my hair.

Review
I fear my power impotent
To hold you leal and full content,
Some hapless look or word perchance
Dispels the glamor 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. 

Illusion
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 vails of my youth
Shielding my heart from the blaze of the truth!

Parody
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!

Delusion
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!

Sunset
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.

Finis
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!

. . . . . . . . . . . .
CONTEMPLATION

Ivy 
I am a woman
Which means
I am insufficient
I need—
something to hold me
Or perhaps uphold.
I am a woman.

Joy
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.

One Day
God-by 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. 

Attar
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.

Youth’s Progeny
Oh the sad little dreams of the dime yesteryear
Lying cold, still and stark in the dust of their bier,
How the hear hurries back, all the long weary way,
Just to bid them good-night at the close of the day.

I Wonder
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!

Values
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.

Armageddon
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!

Le Soir
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!

Treasure
What matters though love’s dream shall pass,
Since from the throbbing hour-glass
One golden-throated moment pres’t
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?

Retrospection
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. 

. . . . . . . . . .
INTERMEZZI

Springtime
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.

Destiny
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!

Envoys
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

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
Till love has nothing more to ask
   And nothing more to give?

Ecstasy
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.

Pledge
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
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!

Amour
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!

Finality
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. 

In Love
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 sift the fierce flames die away—
Submerged with kisses, I forget,
With tears upon my pillows yet.

Fiction
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
Dead days of rapture and espair
   I would your hours exhume,
Renew their wildness once again
   Their rigors and perfume.

. . . . . . . . . . .
PENSEROSO

Break, Break My Heart
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!

Little King
From worshipping I now arise
Stunned and aghast, with opoen 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.

Romance
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!

Falling Gods
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!

Armour
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!

Divide
Your light’s breath may fan my cheek
Your whisper stir me when you speak,
And yet—
The teeming planets play
Between your heart—and mine
Today.

Return
Now, 
Like the pines intoning
Though some solitary gloom
My errant thoughts 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.

Song of the Sinner
Just a bit of ashes
Grey, grey ashes—spent—
God! how fierce the fires burned
Down to this continent.

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!

Celibacy
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!

. . . . . . . . . . .
CADENCE

Offering
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. 

Estrangement
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?

Recessional 
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 puring reasoning
And undeterred flows
Within—without 
The vassal heart!
Its reasoning—
Who knows? 

Sepulchre
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. 

Curtain 
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!

Afterglow
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!

FINIS

The post An Autumn Love Cycle by Georgia Douglas Johnson (1928; full text) appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.

She had been an outstanding student in her tiny Maine high school, and a star contributor to the popular children’s publication St. Nicholas Magazine. Once she had passed the age limit (eighteen) for submissions, she was left without an outlet for her poetry.

Fighting despair, she grasped that no one could save her but herself. “I must exert every atom of my will and lift myself body and soul — above my situation and my surroundings …”

Fortuitously, Vincent’s mother Cora, a traveling nurse, spotted an issue of Poetry, A Magazine of Verse in a wastebasket near the bed of a sleeping patient. Rescuing it from the trash, she saw an announcement that new poetry was being collection to be titled The Lyric Year. The magazine was sponsoring a contest with three cash prizes — a grand prize of $500, and $250 for the second and third-place winners.

What a difference $500 would make to the family! In today’s money, that equaled about $15,000. Equally important, if Vincent’s poetry was selected, the exposure would be priceless. Cora pleaded with her daughter, who was distracted by her first situationship with a young woman, to buckle down and finish the new poem. Working diligently over several weeks, it ended up at a whopping 214 lines. Vincent titled the poem “Renascence.” It began:

All I could see from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood;
I turned and looked another way,
And saw three islands in a bay.

The first few lines sound simple, but as the poem builds, it grows darker and more complex. On a mountaintop modeled on Vincent’s beloved Mount Battie (where the poem is now inscribed on a plaque at the spot that inspired it) the narrator is awed by nature. He or she (it’s never specified) suffers, experiences death, and is buried. After a refreshing rain, the narrator is reborn and is once again able to experience great joy.

Who is this mystery poet?

While sifting through more than ten thousand mostly mediocre poems, Mr. Earle, the Lyric Year contest’s director, was so moved by “Renascence” that he fired off a letter to “E. St. Vincent Millay, Esquire.” “Dear Sir,” it began, for Mr. Earle believed that such a poem could only have come from the pen of a middle-aged man who had seen much of life.

He informed the poet that “Renascence” was accepted for publication. He then added something he shouldn’t have — that he believed it would win the top cash prize. What he didn’t say was that it wasn’t only his decision to make. And in the end, Mr. Earle was outvoted. “Renascence” came in fourth — no award, no cash prize. Vincent was crushed, but what made it worse was that she’d never heard her mother cry so hard.

The first-prize winner was embarrassed by his award. The second and third-prize winners discussed giving Vincent their prize money (though they never did). If anything in the literary world could counted as a scandal, this certainly qualified.

. . . . . . . . . . .

A famous portrait of Vincent taken during her time at Vassar College
. . . . . . . . . . .

Winning fame and a college scholarship by losing

And, as it turns out, she won by losing the contest. The hoopla over the loss made her famous overnight — at least, in the literary world and among devoted poetry readers. Everyone believed that “E. Vincent Millay” had been robbed of the honor as well as the prize money. Gradually, it was revealed the creator of this mature, majestic poem, was a young woman not quite out of her teens.

Suddenly, literary magazines offered to publish her work. Now, well-known poets and other writers wrote to her with admiration for “Renascence.” Her replies to her new admirers were so charming that lifelong friendships (some of which later even became romances) were forged.

That summer, Vincent lucked into the opportunity to recite her new poem at the Whitehall Inn, an elegant hotel favored by wealthy visitors to the Maine coast. In her resonant voice, she recited “Renascence” by heart to the rapt audience. Vincent enjoyed the attention immensely. But even better, because of her performances that night, she’d caught the attention of two of the guests who would soon be offering her full scholarships to Vassar and Smith, two prestigious girls’ colleges.

She chose Vassar, mainly due to its easy access to New York City. Twenty-year-old Vincent arrived in New York City already a rising star in the literary world. She was invited to teas with well-known poets and given a reception by famous writers and editors in the city. She was getting paid for poems that were published in magazines. Still, becoming an official adult made her wistful. The day before her twenty-first birthday, she wrote: “Shall be grown-up tomorrow, oh, dear! I loved being twenty. Goodbye to this beautiful year. I somehow feel that twenty-one will be different.” And she was right.

There is lots more to Edna St. Vincent’s life story, but it can’t all be told here. She didn’t live a long life, and it was never uncomplicated but she did live.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Edna St. Vincent Millay and Eugen Jan Boissevain married in 1923. She and the kindhearted Dutch businessman had a warm, wonderful open marriage.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Renascence by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1912)

All I could see from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood;
I turned and looked another way,
And saw three islands in a bay.
So with my eyes I traced the line
Of the horizon, thin and fine,
Straight around till I was come
Back to where I’d started from;
And all I saw from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood.
Over these things I could not see;
These were the things that bounded me;
And I could touch them with my hand,
Almost, I thought, from where I stand.
And all at once things seemed so small
My breath came short, and scarce at all.
But, sure, the sky is big, I said;
Miles and miles above my head;
So here upon my back I’ll lie
And look my fill into the sky.
And so I looked, and, after all,
The sky was not so very tall.
The sky, I said, must somewhere stop,
And—sure enough!—I see the top!
The sky, I thought, is not so grand;
I ‘most could touch it with my hand!
And reaching up my hand to try,
I screamed to feel it touch the sky.
I screamed, and—lo!—Infinity
Came down and settled over me;
Forced back my scream into my chest,
Bent back my arm upon my breast,
And, pressing of the Undefined
The definition on my mind,
Held up before my eyes a glass
Through which my shrinking sight did pass
Until it seemed I must behold
Immensity made manifold;
Whispered to me a word whose sound
Deafened the air for worlds around,
And brought unmuffled to my ears
The gossiping of friendly spheres,
The creaking of the tented sky,
The ticking of Eternity.
I saw and heard, and knew at last
The How and Why of all things, past,
And present, and forevermore.
The Universe, cleft to the core,
Lay open to my probing sense
That, sick’ning, I would fain pluck thence
But could not,—nay! But needs must suck
At the great wound, and could not pluck
My lips away till I had drawn
All venom out.—Ah, fearful pawn!
For my omniscience paid I toll
In infinite remorse of soul.
All sin was of my sinning, all
Atoning mine, and mine the gall
Of all regret. Mine was the weight
Of every brooded wrong, the hate
That stood behind each envious thrust,
Mine every greed, mine every lust.
And all the while for every grief,
Each suffering, I craved relief
With individual desire,—
Craved all in vain! And felt fierce fire
About a thousand people crawl;
Perished with each,—then mourned for all!
No hurt I did not feel, no death
That was not mine; mine each last breath
That, crying, met an answering cry
From the compassion that was I.
All suffering mine, and mine its rod;
Mine, pity like the pity of God.
Ah, awful weight! Infinity
Pressed down upon the finite Me!
My anguished spirit, like a bird,
Beating against my lips I heard;
Yet lay the weight so close about
There was no room for it without.
And so beneath the weight lay I
And suffered death, but could not die.
Long had I lain thus, craving death,
When quietly the earth beneath
Gave way, and inch by inch, so great
At last had grown the crushing weight,
Into the earth I sank till I
Full six feet under ground did lie,
And sank no more,—there is no weight
Can follow here, however great.
From off my breast I felt it roll,
And as it went my tortured soul
Burst forth and fled in such a gust
That all about me swirled the dust.
Deep in the earth I rested now;
Cool is its hand upon the brow
And soft its breast beneath the head
Of one who is so gladly dead.
And all at once, and over all
The pitying rain began to fall;
I lay and heard each pattering hoof
Upon my lowly, thatched roof,
And seemed to love the sound far more
Than ever I had done before.
For rain it hath a friendly sound
To one who’s six feet underground;
And scarce the friendly voice or face:
A grave is such a quiet place.
The rain, I said, is kind to come
And speak to me in my new home.
I would I were alive again
To kiss the fingers of the rain,
To drink into my eyes the shine
Of every slanting silver line,
To catch the freshened, fragrant breeze
From drenched and dripping apple-trees.
For soon the shower will be done,
And then the broad face of the sun
Will laugh above the rain-soaked earth
Until the world with answering mirth
Shakes joyously, and each round drop
Rolls, twinkling, from its grass-blade top.
How can I bear it; buried here,
While overhead the sky grows clear
And blue again after the storm?
O, multi-colored, multiform,
Beloved beauty over me,
That I shall never, never see
Again! Spring-silver, autumn-gold,
That I shall never more behold!
Sleeping your myriad magics through,
Close-sepulchred away from you!
O God, I cried, give me new birth,
And put me back upon the earth!
Upset each cloud’s gigantic gourd
And let the heavy rain, down-poured
In one big torrent, set me free,
Washing my grave away from me!
I ceased; and through the breathless hush
That answered me, the far-off rush
Of herald wings came whispering
Like music down the vibrant string
Of my ascending prayer, and—crash!
Before the wild wind’s whistling lash
The startled storm-clouds reared on high
And plunged in terror down the sky,
And the big rain in one black wave
Fell from the sky and struck my grave.
know not how such things can be;
I only know there came to me
A fragrance such as never clings
To aught save happy living things;
A sound as of some joyous elf
Singing sweet songs to please himself,
And, through and over everything,
A sense of glad awakening.
The grass, a-tiptoe at my ear,
Whispering to me I could hear;
I felt the rain’s cool finger-tips
Brushed tenderly across my lips,
Laid gently on my sealed sight,
And all at once the heavy night
Fell from my eyes and I could see,—
A drenched and dripping apple-tree,
A last long line of silver rain,
A sky grown clear and blue again.
And as I looked a quickening gust
Of wind blew up to me and thrust
Into my face a miracle
Of orchard-breath, and with the smell,—
I know not how such things can be!—
I breathed my soul back into me.
Ah! Up then from the ground sprang I
And hailed the earth with such a cry
As is not heard save from a man
Who has been dead, and lives again.
About the trees my arms I wound;
Like one gone mad I hugged the ground;
I raised my quivering arms on high;
I laughed and laughed into the sky,
Till at my throat a strangling sob
Caught fiercely, and a great heart-throb
Sent instant tears into my eyes;
O God, I cried, no dark disguise
Can e’er hereafter hide from me
Thou canst not move across the grass
But my quick eyes will see Thee pass,
Nor speak, however silently,
But my hushed voice will answer Thee.
I know the path that tells Thy way
Through the cool eve of every day;
God, I can push the grass apart
And lay my finger on Thy heart!
The world stands out on either side
No wider than the heart is wide;
Above the world is stretched the sky,—
No higher than the soul is high.
The heart can push the sea and land
Farther away on either hand;
The soul can split the sky in two,
And let the face of God shine through.
But East and West will pinch the heart
That can not keep them pushed apart;
And he whose soul is flat—the sky.

. . . . . . . . . . .

You may also like …

• • 12 Iconic Poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay
  • 13 Love Poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay
  • Renascence: and Other Poems (1917) – full text
  • A Few Figs from Thistles: Poems and Sonnets (1920, 1921) – full text
  • Second April (1921) – full text
  • The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver (1922) – full text

The post How Losing a Poetry Competition Launched Edna St. Vincent Millay’s Career appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.

Presented here is the full text of Poems by Frances E.W. Harper, published in 1896. (Philadelphia:  George S. Ferguson Co.) She wrote prolifically from the time she published her first collection of poetry in 1845, at the age of twenty.

A freeborn African American from Baltimore, Maryland, she dedicated her life to social causes, including abolition, women’s suffrage, and the quest for equality.

Frances Harper became involved in anti-slavery societies in the early 1850s and was a conductor on the Underground Railroad. As she began lecturing on the subjects that she was passionate about, her skills as a compelling public speaker were widely praised.

Her 1854 collection Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects was one her most successful publications. Her heartbreaking poem “The Slave Mother” is arguably her best known. Much later, the novel Iola Leroy, or Shadows Uplifted (1892) was another critical and commercial success.

. . . . . . . . . .

Poems by Frances E.W. Harper (1896)    

Whereas thou hast been forsaken and hated, so that no man went through thee, I will make thee an eternal excellency, a joy of many generations.   ISAIAH 60:15.
  

MY MOTHER’S KISS
  My mother’s kiss, my mother’s kiss,
     I feel its impress now;
  As in the bright and happy days
     She pressed it on my brow.
  You say it is a fancied thing
     Within my memory fraught;
  To me it has a sacred place —
     The treasure house of thought.
  Again, I feel her fingers glide
     Amid my clustering hair;
  I see the love-light in her eyes,
     When all my life was fair.
  Again, I hear her gentle voice
     In warning or in love.
  How precious was the faith that taught
     My soul of things above.
  The music of her voice is stilled,
     Her lips are paled in death.
  As precious pearls I’ll clasp her words
     Until my latest breath.
  The world has scattered round my path
     Honor and wealth and fame;
  But naught so precious as the thoughts
     That gather round her name.
  And friends have placed upon my brow
     The laurels of renown;
  But she first taught me how to wear
     My manhood as a crown.
  My hair is silvered o’er with age,
     I’m longing to depart;
  To clasp again my mother’s hand,
     And be a child at heart.
  To roam with her the glory-land
     Where saints and angels greet;
  To cast our crowns with songs of love
     At our Redeemer’s feet.

  
A GRAIN OF SAND
  Do you see this grain of sand
  Lying loosely in my hand?
  Do you know to me it brought
  Just a simple loving thought?
  When one gazes night by night
  On the glorious stars of light,
  Oh how little seems the span
  Measured round the life of man.
  Oh! how fleeting are his years
  With their smiles and their tears;
  Can it be that God does care
  For such atoms as we are?
  Then outspake this grain of sand
  “I was fashioned by His hand
  In the star lit realms of space
  I was made to have a place.
  “Should the ocean flood the world,
  Were its mountains ‘gainst me hurled
  All the force they could employ
  Wouldn’t a single grain destroy;
  And if I, a thing so light,
  Have a place within His sight;
  You are linked unto his throne
  Cannot live nor die alone.
  In the everlasting arms
  Mid life’s dangers and alarms
  Let calm trust your spirit fill;
  Know He’s God, and then be still.”
  Trustingly I raised my head
  Hearing what the atom said;
  Knowing man is greater far
  Than the brightest sun or star.

 
 THE CROCUSES
  They heard the South wind sighing
     A murmur of the rain;
  And they knew that Earth was longing
     To see them all again.
  While the snow-drops still were sleeping
     Beneath the silent sod;
  They felt their new life pulsing
     Within the dark, cold clod.
  Not a daffodil nor daisy
     Had dared to raise its head;
  Not a fairhaired dandelion
     Peeped timid from its bed;
  Though a tremor of the winter
     Did shivering through them run;
  Yet they lifted up their foreheads
     To greet the vernal sun.
  And the sunbeams gave them welcome.
     As did the morning air
  And scattered o’er their simple robes
     Rich tints of beauty rare.
  Soon a host of lovely flowers
     From vales and woodland burst;
  But in all that fair procession
     The crocuses were first.
  First to weave for Earth a chaplet
     To crown her dear old head;
  And to beautify the pathway
     Where winter still did tread.
  And their loved and white haired mother
     Smiled sweetly ‘neath the touch,
  When she knew her faithful children
     Were loving her so much.

  
THE PRESENT AGE
  Say not the age is hard and cold —
     I think it brave and grand;
  When men of diverse sects and creeds
     Are clasping hand in hand.
  The Parsee from his sacred fires
     Beside the Christian kneels;
  And clearer light to Islam’s eyes
     The word of Christ reveals.
  The Brahmin from his distant home
     Brings thoughts of ancient lore;
  The Budd ist breaking bonds of caste
     Divides mankind no more.
  The meek-eyed sons of far Cathay
     Are welcome round the board;
  Not greed, nor malice drives away
     These children of our Lord.
  And Judah from whose trusted hands
     Came oracles divine;
  Now sits with those around whose hearts
     The light of God doth shine.
  Japan unbars her long sealed gates
     From islands far away;
  Her sons are lifting up their eyes
     To greet the coming day.
  The Indian child from forests wild
     Has learned to read and pray;
  The tomahawk and scalping knife
     From him have passed away.
  From centuries of servile toil
     The Negro finds release,
  And builds the fanes of prayer and praise
     Unto the God of Peace.
  England and Russia face to face
     With Central Asia meet;
  And on the far Pacific coast,
     Chinese and natives greet.
  Crusaders once with sword and shield
     The Holy Land to save;
  From Moslem hands did strive to clutch
     The dear Redeemer’s grave.
  A battle greater, grander far
     Is for the present age;
  A crusade for the rights of man
     To  brighten history’s page.
  Where labor faints and bows her head,
     And want consorts with crime;
  Or men grown faithless sadly say
     That evil is the time.
  There is the field, the vantage ground
     For every earnest heart;
  To side with justice, truth and right
     And act a  noble part.
  To save from ignorance and vice
     The  poorest, humblest child;
  To make our age the fairest one
     On which the sun has smiled;
  To plant the roots of coming years
     In mercy, love and truth;
  And bid our weary, saddened earth
     Again renew her youth.
  Oh! earnest hearts! toil on in hope,
     ‘Till darkness shrinks from light;
  To fill the earth with peace and joy,
     Let youth and age unite:
  To stay the floods of sin and shame
     That sweep from shore to shore;
  And furl the banners stained with blood,
     ‘Till war shall be no more.
  Blame not the age, nor think it full
     Of evil and unrest;
  But say of every other age,
     “This one shall be the best.”
  The age to brighten every path
     By sin and sorrow trod;
  For loving hearts to usher in
     The commonwealth of God.
  

DEDICATION POEM
[Dedication Poem on the reception of the annex to the home for aged colored people, from the bequest of Mr. Edward T. Parker.]

  Outcast from her home in Syria
     In the lonely, dreary wild;
  Heavy hearted, sorrow stricken,
     Sat a mother and her child.
  There was not a voice to cheer her
     Not a soul to share her fate;
  She was weary, he was fainting,
     And life seemed so desolate.
  Far away in sunny Egypt
     Was lone Hagar’s native land;
  Where the Nile in kingly bounty
     Scatters bread with gracious hand.
  In the tents of princely Abram
     She for years had found a home;
  Till the stern decree of Sarah
     Sent her forth the wild to roam.
  Hour by hour she journeyed onward
     From the shelter of their tent,
  Till her footsteps slowly faltered
     And the water all was spent;
  Then she veiled her face in sorrow,
     Feared her child would die of thirst
  Till  her eyes with tears so holden
     Saw a sparkling fountain burst.
  Oh! how happy was that mother,
     What a soothing of her pain;
  When she saw her child reviving,
     Life rejoicing through each vein
  Does not life repeat this story,
     Tell it over day by day?
  Of the fountains of refreshment
     Ever springing by our way.
  Here is one by which we gather,
     On this bright and happy day,
  Just to bask beside a fountain
     Making gladder life’s highway.
  Bringing unto hearts now aged
     Who have borne life’s burdens long,
  Such a gift of love and mercy
     As deserves our sweetest song.
  Such a gift that even heaven
     May rejoice with us below,
  If the pure and holy angels
     Join us in our joy and woe.
  May the memory of the giver
     In this home where age may rest,
  Float like fragrance through the ages,
     Ever blessing, ever blest.
  When the gates of pearl are opened
     May we there this friend behold,
  Drink with him from living fountains,
     Walk with him the streets of gold.
  When life’s shattered cords of music
     Shall again be sweetly sung;
  Then our hearts with life immortal,
     Shall be young, forever young.

  
A DOUBLE STANDARD
  Do you blame me that I loved him?
     If when standing all alone
  I cried for bread a careless world
     Pressed to my lips a stone.
  Do you blame me that I loved him,
     That my heart beat glad and free,
  When he told me in the sweetest tones
     He loved but only me?
  Can you blame me that I did not see
     Beneath his burning kiss
  The serpent’s wiles, nor even hear
     The deadly adder hiss?
  Can you blame me that my heart grew cold
     The tempted, tempter turned;
  When he was feted and caressed
     And I was coldly spurned?
  Would you blame him, when you draw from
        me
     Your dainty robes aside,
  If he with gilded baits should claim
     Your fairest as his bride?
  Would you blame the world if it should press
     On him a civic crown;
  And see me struggling in the depth
     Then harshly press me down?
  Crime has no sex and yet to-day
     I wear the brand of shame;
  Whilst he amid the gay and proud
     Still bears an honored name.
  Can you blame me if I’ve learned to think
     Your hate of vice a sham,
  When you so coldly crushed me down
     And then excused the man?
  Would you blame me if to-morrow
     The coroner should say,
  A wretched girl, outcast, forlorn,
     Has thrown her life away?
  Yes, blame me for my downward course,
     But oh! remember well,
  Within your homes you press the hand
     That led me down to hell.
  I’m glad God’s ways are not our ways
     He does not see as man;
  Within His love I know there’s room
     For those whom others ban.
  I think before His great white throne,
     His throne of spotless light,
  That whited sepulchres shall wear
     The hue of endless night.
  That I who fell, and he who sinned,
     Shall reap as we have sown;
  That each the burden of his loss
     Must bear and bear alone.
  No golden weights can turn the scale
     Of justice in His sight;
  And what is wrong in woman’s life
     In man’s cannot be right.

 
 OUR HERO
  Onward to her destination,
     O’er the stream the Hannah sped,
  When a cry of consternation
     Smote and chilled our hearts with dread.
  Wildly leaping, madly sweeping,
     All relentless in their sway,
  Like a band of cruel demons
     Flames were closing ’round our way
  Oh! the horror of those moments;
     Flames above and waves below —
  Oh! the agony of ages
     Crowded in one hour of woe.
  Fainter grew our hearts with anguish
     In that hour with peril rife,
  When we saw the pilot flying,
     Terror-stricken, for his life.
  Then a man uprose before us —
     We had once despised his race —
  But we saw a lofty purpose
     Lighting up his darkened face.
  While the flames were madly roaring,
     With a courage grand and high,
  Forth he rushed unto our rescue,
     Strong to suffer, brave to die.
  Helplessly the boat was drifting,
     Death was staring in each face,
  When he grasped the fallen rudder,
     Took the pilot’s vacant place.
  Could he save us? Would he save us?
     All his hope of life give o’er?
  Could he hold that fated vessel
     ‘Till she reached the nearer shore?
  All our hopes and fears were centered
     ‘Round his strong, unfaltering hand;
  If he failed us we must perish,
     Perish just in sight of land.
  Breathlessly we watched and waited
     While the flames were raging fast;
  When our anguish changed to rapture —
     We were saved, yes, saved at last.
  Never strains of sweetest music
     Brought to us more welcome sound
  Than the grating of that steamer
     When her keel had touched the ground.
  But our faithful martyr hero
     Through a fiery pathway trod,
  Till he laid his valiant spirit
     On the bosom of his God.
  Fame has never crowned a hero
     On the crimson fields of strife,
  Grander, nobler, than that pilot
     Yielding up for us his life.

THE DYING BONDMAN
  Life was trembling, faintly trembling
  On the bondman’s latest breath,
  And he felt the chilling pressure
  Of the cold, hard hand of Death.
  He had been an Afric chieftain,
  Worn his manhood as a crown;
  But upon the field of battle
  Had been fiercely stricken down.
  He had longed to gain his freedom,
  Waited, watched and hoped in vain,
  Till his life was slowly ebbing —
  Almost broken was his chain.
  By his bedside stood the master,
  Gazing on the dying one,
  Knowing by the dull grey shadows
  That life’s sands were almost run.
  “Master,” said the dying bondman,
  “Home and friends I soon shall see;
  But before I reach my country,
  Master write  that I am free;
  “For the spirits of my fathers
  Would shrink back from me in pride,
  If I told them at our greeting
  I a slave had lived and died;
  “Give to me the precious token,
  That my kindred dead may see —
  Master! write it, write it quickly!
  Master! write that I am free!”
  At his earnest plea the master
  Wrote for him the glad release,
  O’er his wan and wasted features
  Flitted one sweet smile of peace.
  Eagerly he grasped the writing;
  “I am free!” at last he said.
  Backward fell upon the pillow,
  He was free among the dead.

 
A LITTLE CHILD SHALL LEAD THEM
  Only a little scrap of blue
     Preserved with loving care,
  But earth has not a brilliant hue
     To me more bright and fair.
  Strong drink, like a raging demon,
     Laid on my heart his hand,
  When my darling joined with others
     The Loyal Legion * band.
  But mystic angels called away
     My loved and precious child,
  And o’er life’s dark and stormy way
     Swept waves of anguish wild.
     The Temperance Band,
  This badge of the Loyal Legion
     We placed upon her breast,
  As she lay in her little coffin
     Taking her last sweet rest.
  To wear that badge as a token
     She earnestly did crave,
  So we laid it on her bosom
     To wear it in the grave.
  Where sorrow would never reach her
     Nor harsh words smite her ear;
  Nor her eyes in death dimmed slumber
     Would ever shed a tear.
  “What means this badge?” said her father,
     Whom we had tried to save;
  Who said, when we told her story,
     “Don’t put it in the grave.”
  We took the badge from her bosom
     And laid it on a chair;
  And men by drink deluded
     Knelt by that badge in prayer.
  And vowed in that hour of sorrow
     From drink they would abstain;
  And this little badge became the wedge
     Which broke their galling chain.
  And lifted the gloomy shadows
     That overspread my life,
  And flooding my home with gladness,
     Made me a happy wife.
  And this is why this scrap of blue
     Is precious in my sight;
  It changed my sad and gloomy home
     From darkness into light.

 
 THE SPARROW’S FALL
  Too frail to soar — a feeble thing —
  It fell to earth with fluttering wing;
  But God, who watches over all,
  Beheld that little sparrow’s fall.
  ‘Twas not a bird with plumage gay,
  Filling the air with its morning lay;
  ‘Twas not an eagle bold and strong,
  Borne on the tempest’s wing along.
  Only a brown and weesome thing,
  With drooping head and listless wing;
  It could not drift beyond His sight
  Who marshals the splendid stars of night.
  Its dying chirp fell on His ears,
  Who tunes the music of the spheres,
  Who hears the hungry lion’s call,
  And spreads a table for us all.
  Its mission of song at last is done,
  No more will it greet the rising sun;
  That tiny bird has found a rest
  More calm than its mother’s downy breast
  Oh, restless heart, learn thou to trust
  In God, so tender, strong and just;
  In whose love and mercy everywhere
  His humblest children have a share.
  If in love He numbers ev’ry hair,
  Whether the strands be dark or fair,
  Shall we not learn to calmly rest,
  Like children, on our Father’s breast?

  
GOD BLESS OUR NATIVE LAND
  God bless our native land,
     Land of the newly free,
  Oh may she ever stand
     For truth and liberty.
  God bless our native land,
     Where sleep our kindred dead,
  Let peace at thy command
     Above their graves be shed.
  God help our native land,
     Bring surcease to her strife,
  And shower from thy hand
     A more abundant life.
  God bless our native land,
     Her homes and children bless,
  Oh may she ever stand
     For truth and righteousness.

DANDELIONS
  Welcome children of the Spring,
     In your garbs of green and gold,
  Lifting up your sun-crowned heads
     On the verdant plain and wold.
  As a bright and joyous troop
     From the breast of earth ye came
  Fair and lovely are your cheeks,
     With sun-kisses all aflame.
  In the dusty streets and lanes,
     Where the lowly children play,
  There as gentle friends ye smile,
     Making brighter life’s highway
  Dewdrops and the morning sun,
     Weave your garments fair and bright,
  And we welcome you to-day
     As the children of the light.
  Children of the earth and sun.
     We are slow to understand
  All the richness of the gifts
     Flowing from our Father’s hand.
  Were our vision clearer far,
     In this sin-dimmed world of ours,
  Would we not more thankful be
     For the love that sends us flowers?
  Welcome, early visitants,
     With your sun-crowned golden hair,
  With your message to our hearts
     Of our Father’s loving care.

  
THE BUILDING
  “Build me a house,” said the Master,
     “But not on the shifting sand,
  Mid the wreck and roar of tempests,
     A house that will firmly stand.
  “I will bring thee windows of agates,
     And gates of carbuncles bright,
  And thy fairest courts and portals
     Shall be filled with love and light.
  “Thou shalt build with fadeless rubies,
     All fashioned around the throne,
  A house that shall last forever,
     With Christ as the cornerstone.
  “It shall be a royal mansion,
     A fair and beautiful thing,
  It will be the presence-chamber
     Of thy Saviour, Lord and King.
  “Thy house shall be bound with pinions
     To mansions of rest above,
  But grace shall forge all the fetters
     With the links and cords of love.
  “Thou shalt be free in this mansion
     From sorrow and pain of heart,
  For the peace of God shall enter,
     And never again depart.”

  
HOME, SWEET HOME
  Sharers of a common country,
     They had met in deadly strife;
  Men who should have been as brothers
     Madly sought each other’s life.
  In the silence of the even,
     When the cannon’s lips were dumb,
  Thoughts of home and all its loved ones
     To the soldier’s heart would come.
  On the margin of a river,
     ‘Mid the evening’s dews and damps,
  Could be heard the sounds of music
     Rising from two hostile camps.
  One was singing of its section
     Down in Dixie, Dixie’s land,
  And the other of the banner
     Waved so long from strand to strand.
  In the land where Dixie’s ensign
     Floated o’er the hopeful slave,
  Rose the song that freedom’s banner,
     Starry-lighted, long might wave.
  From the fields of strife and carnage,
     Gentle thoughts began to roam,
  And a tender strain of music
  Rose with words of “Home, Sweet Home.”
  Then the hearts of strong men melted,
     For amid our grief and sin
  Still remains that “touch of nature,”
   Telling us we all are kin.
  In one grand but gentle chorus,
     Floating to the starry dome,
  Came the words that brought them nearer,
     Words that told of “Home, Sweet Home.”
  For awhile, all strife forgotten,
     They were only brothers then,
  Joining in the sweet old chorus,
     Not as soldiers, but as men.
  Men whose hearts would flow together,
     Though apart their feet might roam,
  Found a tie they could not sever,
     In the mem’ry of each home.
  Never may the steps of carnage
     Shake our land from shore to shore,
  But may mother, home and Heaven,
     Be our watchwords evermore.

  
THE PURE IN HEART SHALL SEE GOD
  They shall see Him in the crimson flush
     Of morning’s early light,
  In the drapery of sunset,
     Around the couch of night.
  When the clouds drop down their fatness,
     In late and early rain,
  They shall see His glorious footprints
     On valley, hill and plain.
  They shall see Him when the cyclone
     Breathes terror through the land;
  They shall see Him ‘mid the murmurs
     Of zephyrs soft and bland.
  They shall see Him when the lips of health,
     Breath vigor through each nerve,
  When pestilence clasps hands with death,
     His purposes to serve.
  They shall see Him when the trembling earth
     Is rocking to and fro;
  They shall see Him in the order
     The seasons come and go.
  They shall see Him when the storms of war
     Sweep wildly through the land;
  When peace descends like gentle dew
     They still shall see His hand.
  They shall see Him in the city
     Of gems and pearls of light,
  They shall see Him in his beauty,
     And walk with Him in white.
  To living founts their feet shall tend,
     And Christ shall be their guide,
  Beloved of God, their rest shall be
     In safety by His side.

  
HE “HAD NOT WHERE TO LAY HIS HEAD”
  The conies had their hiding-place,
     The wily fox with stealthy tread
  A covert found, but Christ, the Lord,
     Had not a place to lay his head.
  The eagle had an eyrie home,
     The blithesome bird its quiet rest,
  But not the humblest spot on earth
     Was by the Son of God possessed.
  Princes and kings had palaces,
     With grandeur could adorn each tomb,
  For Him who came with love and life,
     They had no home, they gave no room.
  The hands whose touch sent thrills of joy
     Through nerves unstrung and palsied
        frame,
  The feet that travelled for our need,
     Were nailed unto the cross of shame.
  How dare I murmur at my lot,
     Or talk of sorrow, pain and loss,
  When Christ was in a manger laid,
     And died in anguish on the cross.
  That homeless one beheld beyond
     His lonely agonizing pain,
  A love outflowing from His heart,
     That all the wandering world would gain.

GO WORK IN MY VINEYARD
  Go work in my vineyard, said the Lord,
     And gather the bruised grain;
  But the reapers had left the stubble bare,
     And I trod the soil in pain.
  The fields of my Lord are wide and broad,
     He has pastures fair and green,
  And vineyards that drink the golden light
     Which flows from the sun’s bright sheen.
  I heard the joy of the reapers’ song,
     As they gathered golden grain;
  Then wearily turned unto my task,
     With a lonely sense of pain.
  Sadly I turned from the sun’s fierce glare,
     And sought the quiet shade,
  And over my dim and weary eyes
     Sleep’s peaceful fingers strayed.
  I dreamed I joined with a restless throng,
     Eager for pleasure and gain;
  But ever and anon a stumbler fell,
     And uttered a cry of pain.
  But the eager crowd still hurried on,
     Too busy to pause or heed,
  When a voice rang sadly through my soul,
     You must staunch these wounds that bleed.
  My hands were weak, but I reached them out
     To feebler ones than mine,
  And over the shadows of my life
     Stole the light of a peace divine.
  Oh! then my task was a sacred thing,
     How precious it grew in my eyes!
  ‘Twas mine to gather the bruised grain
     For the “Lord of Paradise.”
  And when the reapers shall lay their grain
     On the floors of golden light,
  I feel that mine with its broken sheaves
     Shall be precious in His sight.
  Though thorns may often pierce my feet,
     And the shadows still abide,
  The mists will vanish before His smile,
     There will be light at eventide.

  
RENEWAL OF STRENGTH
  The prison-house in which I live
     Is falling to decay,
  But God renews my spirit’s strength,
     Within these walls of clay.
  For me a dimness slowly creeps
     Around earth’s fairest light,
  But heaven grows clearer to my view,
     And fairer to my sight.
  It may be earth’s sweet harmonies
     Are duller to my ear,
  But music from my Father’s house
     Begins to float more near.
  Then let the pillars of my home
     Crumble and fall away;
  Lo, God’s dear love within my soul
     Renews it day by day.

  JAMIE’S PUZZLE
  There was grief within our household
     Because of a vacant chair.
  Our mother, so loved and precious,
     No longer was sitting there.
  Our hearts grew heavy with sorrow,
     Our eyes with tears were blind,
  And little Jamie was wondering,
     Why we were left behind.
  We had told our little darling,
     Of the land of love and light,
  Of the saints all crowned with glory,
     And enrobed in spotless white.
  We said that our precious mother,
     Had gone to that land so fair,
  To dwell with beautiful angels,
     And to be forever there.
  But the child was sorely puzzled,
     Why dear grandmamma should go
  To dwell in a stranger city,
     When her children loved her so.
  But again the mystic angel
     Came with swift and silent tread,
  And our sister, Jamie’s mother,
     Was enrolled among the dead.
  To us the mystery deepened,
     To Jamie it seemed more clear;
  Grandma, he said, must be lonesome,
     And mamma has gone to her.
  But the question lies unanswered
     In our little Jamie’s mind,
  Why she should go to our mother,
     And leave her children behind;
  To dwell in that lovely city,
     From all that was dear to part,
  From children who loved to nestle
     So closely around her heart.
  Dear child, like you, we are puzzled,
     With problems that still remain;
  But think in the great hereafter
     Their meaning will all be plain.
  
TRUTH
  A rock, for ages, stern and high,
  Stood frowning ‘gainst the earth and sky,
  And never bowed his haughty crest
  When angry storms around him prest.
  Morn, springing from the arms of night,
  Had often bathed his brow with light.
  And kissed the shadows from his face
  With tender love and gentle grace.
  Day, pausing at the gates of rest,
  Smiled on him from the distant West,
  And from her throne the dark-browed Night
  Threw round his path her softest light.
  And yet he stood unmoved and proud,
  Nor love, nor wrath, his spirit bowed;
  He bared his brow to every blast
  And scorned the tempest as it passed.
  One day a tiny, humble seed —
  The keenest eye would hardly heed —
  Fell trembling at that stern rock’s base,
  And found a lowly hiding-place.
  A ray of light, and drop of dew,
  Came with a message, kind and true;
  They told her of the world so bright,
  Its love, its joy, and rosy light,
  And lured her from her hiding-place,
  To gaze upon earth’s glorious face.
  So, peeping timid from the ground,
  She clasped the ancient rock around,
  And climbing up with childish grace,
  She held him with a close embrace;
  Her clinging was a thing of dread;
  Where’er she touched a fissure spread,
  And he who’d breasted many a storm
  Stood frowning there, a mangled form;
  A Truth, dropped in the silent earth,
  May seem a thing of little worth,
  Till, spreading round some mighty wrong,
  It saps its pillars proud and strong,
  And o’er the fallen ruin weaves
  The brightest blooms and fairest leaves.
  

DEATH OF THE OLD SEA KING
  ‘Twas a fearful night — the tempest raved
     With loud and wrathful pride,
  The storm-king harnessed his lightning steeds,
     And rode on the raging tide.
  The sea-king lay on his bed of death,
     Pale mourners around him bent;
  They knew the wild and fitful life
     Of their chief was almost spent.
  His ear was growing dull in death
     When the angry storm he heard,
  The sluggish blood in the old man’s veins
     With sudden vigor stirred.
  “I hear them call,” cried the dying man,
     His eyes grew full of light;
  “Now bring me here my warrior robes,
     My sword and armor bright.
  “In the tempest’s lull I heard a voice,
     I knew ’twas Odin’s call.
  The Valkyrs are gathering round my bed
     To lead me unto his hall.
  “Bear me unto my noblest ship,
     Light up a funeral pyre;
  I’ll walk to the palace of the braves
     Through a path of flame and fire.”
  Oh! wild and bright was the stormy light
     That flashed from the old man’s eye,
  As they bore him from the couch of death
     To his battle-ship to die,
  And lit with many a mournful torch
     The sea-king’s dying bed,
  And like a banner fair and bright
     The flames around him spread.
  But they heard no cry of anguish
     Break through that fiery wall,
  With rigid brow and silent lips
     He was seeking Odin’s hall.
  Through a path of fearful splendor,
     While strong men held their breath,
  The brave old man went boldly forth
     And calmly talked with death.
 
 SAVE THE BOYS
  Like Dives in the deeps of Hell
  I cannot break this fearful spell,
  Nor quench the fires I’ve madly nursed,
  Nor cool this dreadful raging thirst.
  Take back your pledge — ye come too late!
  Ye cannot save me from my fate,
  Nor bring me back departed joys;
  But ye can try to save the boys.
  Ye bid me break my fiery chain,
  Arise and be a man again,
  When every street with snares is spread,
  And nets of sin where’er I tread.
  No; I must reap as I did sow.
  The seeds of sin bring crops of woe;
  But with my latest breath I’ll crave
  That ye will try the boys to save.
  These bloodshot eyes were once so bright;
  This sin-crushed heart was glad and light;
  But by the wine-cup’s ruddy glow
  I traced a path to shame and woe.
  A captive to my galling chain,
  I’ve tried to rise, but tried in vain —
  The cup allures and then destroys.
  Oh! from its thraldom save the boys.
  Take from your streets those traps of hell
  Into whose gilded snares I fell.
  Oh! freemen, from these foul decoys
  Arise, and vote to save the boys.
  Oh, ye who license men to trade
  In draughts that charm and then degrade,
  Before ye hear the cry, Too late,
  Oh, save the boys from my sad fate.
  
NOTHING AND SOMETHING
  It is nothing to me, the beauty said,
  With a careless toss of her pretty head;
  The man is weak if he can’t refrain
  From the cup you say is fraught with pain.
  It was something to her in after years,
  When her eyes were drenched with burning
        tears,
  And she watched in lonely grief and dread,
  And startled to hear a staggering tread.
  It is nothing to me, the mother said;
  I have no fear that my boy will tread
  In the downward path of sin and shame,
  And crush my heart and darken his name.
  It was something to her when that only son
  From the path of right was early won,
  And madly cast in the flowing bowl
  A ruined body and sin-wrecked soul.
  It is nothing to me, the young man cried:
  In his eye was a flash of scorn and pride;
  I heed not the dreadful things ye tell:
  I can rule myself I know full well.
  It was something to him when in prison he lay
  The victim of drink, life ebbing away;
  And thought of his wretched child and wife,
  And the mournful wreck of his wasted life.
  It is nothing to me, the merchant said,
  As over his ledger he bent his head;
  I’m busy to-day with tare and tret,
  And I have no time to fume and fret.
  It was something to him when over the wire
  A message came from a funeral pyre —
  A drunken conductor had wrecked a train,
  And his wife and child were among the slain.
  It is nothing to me, the voter said,
  The party’s loss is my greatest dread;
  Then gave his vote for the liquor trade,
  Though hearts were crushed and drunkards
        made.
  It was something to him in after life,
  When his daughter became a drunkard’s wife
  And her hungry children cried for bread,
  And trembled to hear their father’s tread.
  Is it nothing for us to idly sleep
  While the cohorts of death their vigils keep?
  To gather the young and thoughtless in,
  And grind in our midst a grist of sin?
  It is something, yes, all, for us to stand
  Clasping by faith our Saviour’s hand;
  To learn to labor, live and fight
  On the side of God and changeless light.

VASHTI
  She leaned her head upon her hand
     And heard the King’s decree —
  “My lords are feasting in my halls;
     Bid Vashti come to me.
  “I’ve shown the treasures of my house,
     My costly jewels rare,
  But with the glory of her eyes
     No rubies can compare.
  “Adorn’d and crown’d I’d have her come,
     With all her queenly grace,
  And, ‘mid my lords and mighty men,
     Unveil her lovely face.
  “Each gem that sparkles in my crown,
     Or glitters on my throne,
  Grows poor and pale when she appears,
     My beautiful, my own!”
  All waiting stood the chamberlains
     To hear the Queen’s reply.
  They saw her cheek grow deathly pale,
     But light flash’d to her eye:
  “Go, tell the King,” she proudly said,
     “That I am Persia’s Queen,
  And by his crowds of merry men
     I never will be seen.
  “I’ll take the crown from off my head
     And tread it ‘neath my feet,
  Before their rude and careless gaze
     My shrinking eyes shall meet.
  “A queen unveil’d before the crowd! —
     Upon each lip my name!—
  Why, Persia’s women all would blush
     And weep for Vashti’s shame!
  “Go back!” she cried, and waved her hand,
     And grief was in her eye:
  “Go, tell the King,” she sadly said,
     “That I would rather die.”
  They brought her message to the King;
     Dark flash’d his angry eye;
  ’Twas as the lightning ere the storm
     Hath swept in fury by.
  Then bitterly outspoke the King,
     Through purple lips of wrath—
  “What shall be done to her who dares
     To cross your monarch’s path?”
  Then spake his wily counsellors —
     “O King of this fair land!
  From distant Ind to Ethiop,
     All bow to thy command.
  “But if, before thy servants’ eyes,
     This thing they plainly see,
  That Vashti doth not heed thy will
     Nor yield herself to thee,
  “The women, restive ‘neath our rule,
     Would learn to scorn our name,
  And from her deed to us would come
     Reproach and burning shame.
  “Then, gracious King, sign with thy hand
     This stern but just decree,
  That Vashti lay aside her crown,
     Thy Queen no more to be.”
  She heard again the King’s command,
     And left her high estate;
  Strong in her earnest womanhood,
     She calmly met her fate,
  And left the palace of the King,
     Proud of her spotless name —
  A woman who could bend to grief,
     But would not bow to shame.

  
THANK GOD FOR LITTLE CHILDREN
  Thank God for little children,
     Bright flowers by earth’s wayside,
  The dancing, joyous lifeboats
     Upon life’s stormy tide.
  Thank God for little children;
     When our skies are cold and gray,
  They come as sunshine to our hearts,
     And charm our cares away.
  I almost think the angels,
     Who tend life’s garden fair,
  Drop down the sweet wild blossoms
     That bloom around us here.
  It seems a breath of heaven
     Round many a cradle lies,
  And every little baby
     Brings a message from the skies.
  Dear mothers, guard these jewels.
     As sacred offerings meet,
  A wealth of household treasures
     To lay at Jesus’ feet.
  
THE MARTYR OF ALABAMA
 
[Tim Thompson, a little negro boy, was asked to dance for the amusement of some white toughs. He refused, saying he was a church member. One of the men knocked him down with a club and then danced upon his prostrate form. He then shot the boy in the hip. The boy is dead; his murderer is still at large.—News Item]

  He lifted up his pleading eyes,
     And scanned each cruel face,
  Where cold and brutal cowardice
     Had left its evil trace.
  It was when tender memories
     Round Beth’lem’s manger lay,
  And mothers told their little ones
     Of Jesu’s natal day.
  And of the Magi from the East
     Who came their gifts to bring,
  And bow in rev’rence at the feet
     Of Salem’s new-born King.
  And how the herald angels sang
     The choral song of peace,
  That war should close his wrathful lips,
     And strife and carnage cease.
  At such an hour men well may hush
     Their discord and their strife,
  And o’er that manger clasp their hands
     With gifts to brighten life.
  Alas! that in our favored land,
     That cruelty and crime
  Should cast their shadows o’er a day.
     The fairest pearl of time.
  A dark-browed boy had drawn anear
     A band of savage men,
  Just as a hapless lamb might stray
     Into a tiger’s den.
  Cruel and dull, they saw in him
     For sport an evil chance,
  And then demanded of the child
     To give to them a dance.
  “Come dance for us,” the rough men said;
     “I can’t,” the child replied,
  “I cannot for the dear Lord’s sake,
     Who for my sins once died.”
  Tho’ they were strong and he was weak,
     He wouldn’t his Lord deny.
  His life lay in their cruel hands,
     But he for Christ could die.
  Heard they aright? Did that brave child
     Their mandates dare resist?
  Did he against their stern commands
     Have courage to insist?
  Then recklessly a man (?) arose,
     And dealt a fearful blow.
  He crushed the portals of that life,
     And laid the brave child low.
  And trampled on his prostrate form,
     As on a broken toy;
  Then danced with careless, brutal feet,
     Upon the murdered boy.
  Christians! behold that martyred child!
     His blood cries from the ground;
  Before the sleepless eye of God,
     He shows each gaping wound.
  Oh! Church of Christ arise! arise!
     Lest crimson stain thy hand,
  When God shall inquisition make
     For blood shed in the land.
  Take sackcloth of the darkest hue,
     And shroud the pulpits round;
  Servants of him who cannot lie
     Sit mourning on the ground.
  Let holy horror blanch each brow,
     Pale every cheek with fears,
  And rocks and stones, if ye could speak,
     Ye well might melt to tears.
  Through every fane send forth a cry,
     Of sorrow and regret,
  Nor in an hour of careless ease
     Thy brother’s wrongs forget.
  Veil not thine eyes, nor close thy lips,
     Nor speak with bated breath;
  This evil shall not always last,
     The end of it is death.
  Avert the doom that crime must bring
     Upon a guilty land;
  Strong in the strength that God supplies,
     For truth and justice stand.
  For Christless men, with reckless hands,
     Are sowing round thy path
  The tempests wild that yet shall break
     In whirlwinds of God’s wrath.
 

 THE NIGHT OF DEATH
  Twas a night of dreadful horror,—
     Death was sweeping through the land;
  And the wings of dark destruction
     Were outstretched from strand to strand
  Strong men’s hearts grew faint with terror,
     As the tempest and the waves
  Wrecked their homes and swept them downward,
  Suddenly to yawning graves.
  ‘Mid the wastes of ruined households,
     And the tempest’s wild alarms,
  Stood a terror-stricken mother
     With a child within her arms.
  Other children huddled ’round her,
     Each one nestling in her heart;
  Swift in thought and swift in action,
     She at least from one must part.
  Then she said unto her daughter,
     “Strive to save one child from death.”
  “Which one?” said the anxious daughter,
     As she stood with bated breath.
  Oh! the anguish of that mother;
     What despair was in her eye!
  All her little ones were precious;
     Which one should she leave to die?
  Then outspake the brother Bennie:
     “I will take the little one.”
  “No,” exclaimed the anxious mother;
     “No, my child, it can’t be done.”
  “See! my boy, the waves are rising,
     Save yourself and leave the child!”
  “I will trust in Christ,” he answered;
     Grasped the little one and smiled.
  Through the roar of wind and waters
     Ever and anon she cried;
  But throughout the night of terror
     Never Bennie’s voice replied.
  But above the waves’ wild surging
     He had found a safe retreat,
  As if God had sent an angel,
     Just to guide his wandering feet.
  When the storm had spent its fury,
     And the sea gave up its dead
  She was mourning for her loved ones,
     Lost amid that night of dread.
  While her head was bowed in anguish,
     On her ear there fell a voice,
  Bringing surcease to her sorrow,
     Bidding all her heart rejoice.
  “Didn’t I tell you true?” said Bennie,
     And his eyes were full of light,
  “When I told you God would help me
     Through the dark and dreadful night?”
  And he placed the little darling
     Safe within his mother’s arms,
  Feeling Christ had been his guardian,
     ‘Mid the dangers and alarms.
  Oh! for faith so firm and precious,
     In the darkest, saddest night,
  Till life’s gloom-encircled shadows
     Fade in everlasting light.
  And upon the mount of vision
     We our loved and lost shall greet,
  With earth’s wildest storms behind us,
     And its cares beneath our feet.
  
MOTHER’S TREASURES
  Two little children sit by my side,
     I call them Lily and Daffodil;
  I gaze on them with a mother’s pride,
     One is Edna, the other is Will.
  Both have eyes of starry light,
     And laughing lips o’er teeth of pearl.
  I would not change for a diadem
    My noble boy and darling girl.
  To-night my heart o’erflows with joy;
     I hold them as a sacred trust;
  I fain would hide them in my heart,
     Safe from tarnish of moth and rust.
  What should I ask for my dear boy?
     The richest gifts of wealth or fame?
  What for my girl? A loving heart
     And a fair and a spotless name?
  What for my boy? That he should stand
     A pillar of strength to the state?
  What for my girl? That she should be
     The friend of the poor and desolate?
  I do not ask they shall never tread
     With weary feet the paths of pain.
  I ask that in the darkest hour
     They may faithful and true remain.
  I only ask their lives may be
     Pure as gems in the gates of pearl,
  Lives to brighten and bless the world —
     This I ask for my boy and girl.
  I ask to clasp their hands again
     ‘Mid the holy hosts of heaven,
  Enraptured say: “I am here, oh! God,
     “And the children Thou hast given.”

  THE REFINER’S GOLD
  He stood before my heart’s closed door,
     And asked to enter in;
  But I had barred the passage o’er
     By unbelief and sin.
  He came with nail-prints in his hands,
     To set my spirit free;
  With wounded feet he trod a path
     To come and sup with me.
  He found me poor and brought me gold,
     The fire of love had tried,
  And garments whitened by his blood,
     My wretchedness to hide.
  The glare of life had dimmed my eyes,
     Its glamour was too bright.
  He came with ointment in his hands
     To heal my darkened sight.
  He knew my heart was tempest-tossed,
     By care and pain oppressed;
  He whispered to my burdened heart,
     Come unto me and rest.
  He found me weary, faint and worn,
     On barren mountains cold;
  With love’s constraint he drew me on,
     To shelter in his fold.
  Oh! foolish heart, how slow wert thou
     To welcome thy dear guest,
  To change thy weariness and care
     For comfort, peace and rest.
  Close to his side, oh! may I stay,
     Just to behold his face,
  Till I shall wear within my soul
     The image of his grace.
  The grace that changes hearts of stone
     To tenderness and love,
  And bids us run with willing feet
     Unto his courts above.
 

 A STORY OF THE REBELLION
  The treacherous sands had caught our boat,
     And held it with a strong embrace
  And death at our imprisoned crew
     Was sternly looking face to face.
  With anxious hearts, but failing strength,
     We strove to push the boat from shore;
  But all in vain, for there we lay
     With bated breath and useless oar.
  Around us in a fearful storm
     The fiery hail fell thick and fast;
  And we engirded by the sand,
     Could not return the dreadful blast.
  When one arose upon whose brow
     The ardent sun had left his trace,
  A noble purpose strong and high
     Uplighting all his dusky face.
  Perchance within that fateful hour
     The wrongs of ages thronged apace;
  But with it came the glorious hope
     Of swift deliverance to his race.
  Of galling chains asunder rent,
     Of severed hearts again made one,
  Of freedom crowning all the land
     Through battles gained and victories won.
  “Some one,” our hero firmly said,
     “Must die to get us out of this;”
  Then leaped upon the strand and bared
     His bosom to the bullets’ hiss.
  “But ye are soldiers, and can fight,
     May win in battles yet unfought;
  I have no offering but my life,
     And if they kill me it is nought.”
  With steady hands he grasped the boat,
     And boldly pushed it from the shore;
  Then fell by rebel bullets pierced,
     His life work grandly, nobly o’er.
  Our boat was rescued from the sands
     And launched in safety on the tide;
  But he our comrade good and grand,
     In our defence had bravely died.

  
BURIAL OF SARAH
  He stood before the sons of Heth,
     And bowed his sorrowing head;
  “I’ve come,” he said, “to buy a place
     Where I may lay my dead.
  “I am a stranger in your land,
     My home has lost its light;
  Grant me a place where I may lay
     My dead away from sight.”
  Then tenderly the sons of Heth
     Gazed on the mourner’s face,
  And said, “Oh, Prince, amid our dead,
     Choose thou her resting-place.
  “The sepulchres of those we love,
     We place at thy command;
  Against the plea thy grief hath made
     We close not heart nor hand.”
  The patriarch rose and bowed his head,
     And said, “One place I crave;
  ‘Tis at the end of Ephron’s field,
     And called Machpelah’s cave.
  “Entreat him that he sell to me
     For her last sleep that cave;
  I do not ask for her I loved
     The freedom of a grave.”
  The son of Zohar answered him,
     “Hearken, my lord, to me;
  Before our sons, the field and cave
     I freely give to thee.”
  “I will not take it as a gift,”
     The grand old man then said;
  “I pray thee let me buy the place
     Where I may lay my dead.”
  And with the promise in his heart,
     His seed should own that land,
  He gave the shekels for the field
     He took from Ephron’s hand.
  And saw afar the glorious day
     His chosen seed should tread,
  The soil where he in sorrow lay
     His loved and cherished dead.

  
GOING EAST
  She came from the East a fair, young bride,
     With a light and a bounding heart,
  To find in the distant West a home
     With her husband to make a start.
  He builded his cabin far away,
     Where the prairie flower bloomed wild;
  Her love made lighter all his toil,
     And joy and hope around him smiled.
  She plied her hands to life’s homely tasks,
     And helped to build his fortunes up;
  While joy and grief, like bitter and sweet,
     Were mingled and mixed in her cup.
  He sowed in his fields of golden grain,
     All the strength of his manly prime;
  Nor music of birds, nor brooks, nor bees,
     Was as sweet as the dollar’s chime.
  She toiled and waited through weary years
     For the fortune that came at length;
  But toil and care and hope deferred,
     Had stolen and wasted her strength.
  The cabin changed to a stately home,
     Rich carpets were hushing her tread;
  But light was fading from her eye,
     And the bloom from her cheek had fled.
  Slower and heavier grew her step,
     While his gold and his gains increased;
  But his proud domain had not the charm
     Of her humble home in the East.
  Within her eye was a restless light,
     And a yearning that never ceased,
  A longing to see the dear old home
     She had left in the distant East.
  A longing to clasp her mother’s hand,
     And nestle close to her heart,
  And to feel the heavy cares of life
     Like the sun-kissed shadows depart.
  Her husband was adding field to field,
     And new wealth to his golden store;
  And little thought the shadow of death
     Was entering in at his door.
  He had no line to sound the depths
     Of her tears repressed and unshed;
  Nor dreamed ‘mid plenty a human heart
     Could be starving, but not for bread.
  The hungry heart was stilled at last;
     Its restless, baffled yearning ceased.
  A lonely man sat by the bier
     Of a corpse that was going East.

  
THE HERMIT’S SACRIFICE
  From Rome’s palaces and villas
     Gaily issued forth a throng;
  From her humbler habitations
     Moved a human tide along.
  Haughty dames and blooming maidens,
     Men who knew not mercy’s sway,
  Thronged into the Coliseum
     On that Roman holiday.
  From the lonely wilds of Asia,
     From her jungles far away,
  From the distant torrid regions,
     Rome had gathered beasts of prey.
  Lions restless, roaring, rampant,
     Tigers with their stealthy tread,
  Leopards bright, and fierce, and fiery,
     Met in conflict wild and dread.
  Fierce and fearful was the carnage
     Of the maddened beasts of prey,
  As they fought and rent each other
     Urged by men more fierce than they.
  Till like muffled thunders breaking
     On a vast and distant shore,
  Fainter grew the yells of tigers,
     And the lions’ dreadful roar.
  On the crimson-stained arena
     Lay the victims of the fight;
  Eyes which once had glared with anguish,
     Lost in death their baleful light.
  Then uprose the gladiators
     Armed for conflict unto death,
  Waiting for the prefect’s signal,
     Cold and stern with bated breath.
  “Ave Caesar, morituri,
     Te, salutant,” rose the cry
  From the lips of men ill-fated,
     Doomed to suffer and to die.
  Then began the dreadful contest,
     Lives like chaff were thrown away,
  Rome with all her pride and power
     Butchered for a holiday.
  Eagerly the crowd were waiting,
     Loud the clashing sabres rang;
  When between the gladiators
     All unarmed a hermit sprang.
  “Cease your bloodshed,” cried the hermit,
     “On this carnage place your ban;”
  But with flashing swords they answered,
     “Back unto your place, old man.”
  From their path the gladiators
     Thrust the strange intruder back,
  Who between their hosts advancing
     Calmly parried their attack.
  All undaunted by their weapons,
     Stood the old heroic man;
  While a maddened cry of anger
     Through the vast assembly ran.
  “Down with him,” cried out the people,
     As with thumbs unbent they glared,
  Till the prefect gave the signal
     That his life should not be spared.
  Men grew wild with wrathful passion,
     When his fearless words were said
  Cruelly they fiercely showered
     Stones on his devoted head.
  Bruised and bleeding fell the hermit,
     Victor in that hour of strife;
  Gaining in his death a triumph
     That he could not win in life.
  Had he uttered on the forum
     Struggling thoughts within him born,
  Men had jeered his words as madness,
     But his deed they could not scorn.
  Not in vain had been his courage,
     Nor for naught his daring deed;
  From his grave his mangled body
     Did for wretched captives plead.
  From that hour Rome, grown more thoughtful,
     Ceased her sport in human gore;
  And into her Coliseum
     Gladiators came no more.

 SONGS FOR THE PEOPLE
  Let me make the songs for the people,
     Songs for the old and young;
  Songs to stir like a battle-cry
     Wherever they are sung.
  Not for the clashing of sabres,
     For carnage nor for strife;
  But songs to thrill the hearts of men
     With more abundant life.
  Let me make the songs for the weary,
     Amid life’s fever and fret,
  Till hearts shall relax their tension,
     And careworn brows forget.
  Let me sing for little children,
     Before their footsteps stray,
  Sweet anthems of love and duty,
     To float o’er life’s highway.
  I would sing for the poor and aged,
     When shadows dim their sight;
  Of the bright and restful mansions,
     Where there shall be no night.
  Our world, so worn and weary,
     Needs music, pure and strong,
  To hush the jangle and discords
     Of sorrow, pain, and wrong.
  Music to soothe all its sorrow,
     Till war and crime shall cease;
  And the hearts of men grown tender
     Girdle the world with peace.

  
LET THE LIGHT ENTER
  The dying words of Goethe.
  “Light! more light! the shadows deepen,
     And my life is ebbing low,
  Throw the windows widely open:
     Light! more light! before I go.
  “Softly let the balmy sunshine
     Play around my dying bed,
  E’er the dimly lighted valley
     I with lonely feet must tread.
  “Light! more light! for Death is weaving
     Shadows ’round my waning sight,
  And I fain would gaze upon him
     Through a stream of earthly light.”
  Not for greater gifts of genius;
     Not for thoughts more grandly bright,
  All the dying poet whispers
     Is a prayer for light, more light.
  Heeds he not the gathered laurels,
     Fading slowly from his sight;
  All the poet’s aspirations
     Centre in that prayer for light.
  Gracious Saviour, when life’s day-dreams
     Melt and vanish from the sight,
  May our dim and longing vision
     Then be blessed with light, more light.

  
AN APPEAL TO MY COUNTRYWOMEN
  You can sigh o’er the sad-eyed Armenian
     Who weeps in her desolate home.
  You can mourn o’er the exile of Russia
     From kindred and friends doomed to roam.
  You can pity the men who have woven
     From passion and appetite chains
  To coil with a terrible tension
     Around their heartstrings and brains.
  You can sorrow o’er little children
     Disinherited from their birth,
  The wee waifs and toddlers neglected,
     Robbed of sunshine, music and mirth.
  For beasts you have gentle compassion;
     Your mercy and pity they share.
  For the wretched, outcast and fallen
     You have tenderness, love and care.
  But hark! from our Southland are floating
     Sobs of anguish, murmurs of pain,
  And women heart-stricken are weeping
     Over their tortured and their slain.
  On their brows the sun has left traces;
     Shrink not from their sorrow in scorn.
  When they entered the threshold of being
     The children of a King were born.
  Each comes as a guest to the table
     The hand of our God has outspread,
  To fountains that ever leap upward,
     To share in the soil we all tread.
  When ye plead for the wrecked and fallen,
     The exile from far-distant shores,
  Remember that men are still wasting
     Life’s crimson around your own doors.
  Have ye not, oh, my favored sisters,
     Just a plea, a prayer or a tear,
  For mothers who dwell ‘neath the shadows
     Of agony, hatred and fear?
  Men may tread down the poor and lowly,
     May crush them in anger and hate,
  But surely the mills of God’s justice
     Will grind out the grist of their fate.
  Oh, people sin-laden and guilty,
     So lusty and proud in your prime,
  The sharp sickles of God’s retribution
     Will gather your harvest of crime.
  Weep not, oh my well-sheltered sisters,
     Weep not for the Negro alone,
  But weep for your sons who must gather
     The crops which their fathers have sown.
  Go read on the tombstones of nations
     Of chieftains who masterful trod,
  The sentence which time has engraven,
     That they had forgotten their God.
  ’Tis the judgment of God that men reap
     The tares which in madness they sow,
  Sorrow follows the footsteps of crime,
     And Sin is the consort of Woe.

  
THEN AND NOW
  “Build me a nation,” said the Lord.
  The distant nations heard the word,
  Build me a nation true and strong,
  Bar out the old world’s hate and wrong;
  For men had traced with blood and tears
  The trail of weary wasting years,
  And torn and bleeding martyrs trod
  Through fire and torture up to God.
  While in the hollow of his hand
  God hid the secret of our land,
  Men warred against their fiercest foes,
  And kingdoms fell and empires rose,
  Till, weary of the old world strife,
  Men sought for broader, freer life,
  And plunged into the ocean’s foam
  To find another, better home.
  And, like a vision fair and bright
  The new world broke upon their sight.
  Men grasped the prize, grew proud and strong,
  And cursed the land with crime and wrong.
  The Indian stood despoiled of lands,
  The Negro bound with servile bands,
  Oppressed through weary years of toil,
  His blood and tears bedewed the soil.
  Then God arose in dreadful wrath,
  And judgment streamed around his path;
  His hand the captive’s fetters broke,
  His lightnings shattered every yoke.
  As Israel through the Red sea trod,
  Led by the mighty hand of God,
  They passed to freedom through a flood,
  Whose every wave and surge was blood.
  And slavery, with its crime and shame,
  Went down in wrath and blood and flame
  The land was billowed-o’er with graves
  Where men had lived and died as slaves.
  Four and thirty years — what change since
        then!
  Beings once chattels now are men;
  Over the gloom of slavery’s night,
  Has flashed the dawn of freedom’s light.
  To-day no mother with anguish wild
  Kneels and implores that her darling child
  Shall not be torn from her bleeding heart,
  With its quivering tendrils rent apart.
  The father may soothe his child to sleep,
  And watch his slumbers calm and deep.
  No tyrant’s tread will disturb his rest
  Where freedom dwells as a welcome guest.
  His walls may be bare of pictured grace,
  His fireside the lowliest place;
  But the wife and children sheltered there
  Are his to defend and guard with care.
  Where haughty tyrants once bore rule
  Are ballot-box and public school.
  The old slave-pen of former days
  Gives place to fanes of prayer and praise.
  To-night we would bring our meed of praise
  To noble friends of darker days;
  The men and women crowned with light,
  The true and tried in our gloomy night.
  To Lundy, whose heart was early stirred
  To speak for freedom an earnest word;
  To Garrison, valiant, true and strong,
  Whose face was as flint against our wrong.
  And Phillips, the peerless, grand and brave,
  A tower of strength to the outcast slave.
  Earth has no marble too pure and white
  To enrol his name in golden light.
  Our Douglass, too, with his massive brain,
  Who plead our cause with his broken chain,
  And helped to hurl from his bloody seat
  The curse that writhed and died at his feet.
  And Governor Andrew, who, looking back,
  Saw none he despised, though poor and black;
  And Harriet Beecher, whose glowing pen
  Corroded the chains of fettered men.
  To-night with greenest laurels we’ll crown
  North Elba’s grave where sleeps John Brown,
  Who made the gallows an altar high,
  And showed how a brave old man could die.
  And Lincoln, our martyred President,
  Who returned to his God with chains he had rent.*
  And Sumner, amid death’s icy chill,
  Leaving to Hoar his Civil Rights Bill.
  And let us remember old underground,
  With all her passengers northward bound,
  The train that ran till it ceased to pay,
  With all her dividends given away.
  Nor let it be said that we have forgot
  The women who stood with Lucretia Mott;
  Nor her who to the world was known
  By the simple name of Lucy stone.
  A tribute unto a host of others
  Who knew that men though black were
        brothers,
  Who battled against our nation’s sin,
  Whose graves are thick whose ranks are thin.
  Oh, people chastened in the fire,
  To nobler, grander things aspire;
  In the new era of your life,
  Bring love for hate, and peace for strife;
  Upon your hearts this vow record
  That ye will build unto the Lord
  A nobler future, true and grand,
  To strengthen, crown and bless the land.
  A higher freedom ye may gain
  Than that which comes from a riven chain;
  Freedom your native land to bless
  With peace, and love and righteousness,
  As dreams that are past, a tale all told,
  Are the days when men were bought and sold;
  Now God be praised from sea to sea,
  Our flag floats o’er a country free.

  
MACEO
  Maceo dead! a thrill of sorrow
     Through our hearts in sadness ran
  When we felt in one sad hour
     That the world had lost a man.
  He had clasped unto his bosom
   The sad fortunes of his land —
  Held the cause for which he perished
     With a firm, unfaltering hand.
  On his lips the name of freedom
     Fainted with his latest breath.
  Cuba Libre was his watchword
     Passing through the gates of death.
  With the light of God around us,
     Why this agony and strife?
  With the cross of Christ before us,
     Why this fearful waste of life?
  Must the pathway unto freedom
     Ever mark a crimson line,
  And the eyes of wayward mortals
     Always close to light divine?
  Must the hearts of fearless valor
     Fail ‘mid crime and cruel wrong,
  When the world has read of heroes
     Brave and earnest, true and strong?
  Men to stay the floods of sorrow
     Sweeping round each war-crushed heart;
  Men to say to strife and carnage —
     From our world henceforth depart.
  God of peace and God of nations,
     Haste! oh, haste the glorious day
  When the reign of our Redeemer
     O’er the world shall have its sway.
  When the swords now blood encrusted,
     Spears that reap the battle field,
  Shall be changed to higher service,
     Helping earth rich harvests yield.
  Where the widow weeps in anguish,
     And the orphan bows his head,
  Grant that peace and joy and gladness
     May like holy angels tread.
  Pity, oh, our God the sorrow
     Of thy world from thee astray,
  Lead us from the paths of madness
     Unto Christ the living way.
  Year by year the world grows weary
     ‘Neath its weight of sin and strife,
  Though the hands once pierced and bleeding
     Offer more abundant life.
  May the choral song of angels
     Heard upon Judea’s plain
  Sound throughout the earth the tidings
     Of that old and sweet refrain.
  Till our world, so sad and weary,
     Finds the balmy rest of peace —
  Peace to silence all her discords —
     Peace till war and crime shall cease.
  Peace to fall like gentle showers,
     Or on parchéd flowers dew,
  Till our hearts proclaim with gladness:
     Lo, He maketh all things new.

“FISHERS OF MEN”
  I had a dream, a varied dream:
     Before my ravished sight
  The city of my Lord arose,
     With all its love and light.
  The music of a myriad harps
     Flowed out with sweet accord;
  And saints were casting down their crowns
     In homage to our Lord.
  My heart leaped up with untold joy,
     Life’s toil and pain were o’er;
  My weary feet at last had found
     The bright and restful shore.
  Just as I reached the gates of light,
     Ready to enter in,
  From earth arose a fearful cry
     Of sorrow and of sin.
  I turned, and saw behind me surge
     A wild and stormy sea;
  And drowning men were reaching out
     Imploring hands to me.
  And ev’ry lip was blanched with dread,
     And moaning for relief;
  The music of the golden harps
     Grew fainter for their grief.
  Let me return, I quickly said,
     Close to the pearly gate;
  My work is with these wretched ones,
     So wrecked and desolate.
  An angel smiled and gently said:
     This is the gate of life,
  Wilt thou return to earth’s sad scenes,
     Its weariness and strife,
  To comfort hearts that sigh and break,
     To dry the falling tear,
  Wilt thou forego the music sweet
     Entrancing now thy ear?
  I must return, I firmly said,
     The strugglers in that sea
  Shall not reach out beseeching hands
     In vain for help to me.
  I turned to go; but as I turned
     The gloomy sea grew bright,
  And from my heart there seemed to flow
     Ten thousand cords of light.
  And sin-wrecked men, with eager hands
     Did grasp each golden cord;
  And with my heart I drew them on
     To see my gracious Lord.
  Again I stood beside the gate.
     My heart was glad and free;
  For with me stood a rescued throng
     The Lord had given me.

  
THE LOST BELLS
  Year after year the artist wrought
     With earnest, loving care,
  The music flooding all his soul
     To pour upon the air.
  For this no metal was too rare,
     He counted not the cost;
  Nor deemed the years in which he toiled
     As labor vainly lost.
  When morning flushed with crimson light
     The golden gates of day,
  He longed to fill the air with chimes
     Sweet as a matin’s lay.
  And when the sun was sinking low
     Within the distant West,
  He gladly heard the bells he wrought
     Herald the hour of rest.
  The music of a thousand harps
     Could never be so dear
  As when those solemn chants and thrills
     Fell on his list’ning ear.
  He poured his soul into their chimes,
     And felt his toil repaid;
  He called them children of his soul,
     His home a’near them made.
  But evil days came on apace,
     War spread his banner wide,
  And from his village snatched away
     The artist’s love and pride.
  At dewy morn and stilly eve
     The chimes no more he heard;
  With dull and restless agony
     His spirit’s depths was stirred.
  A weary longing filled his soul,
     It bound him like a spell;
  He left his home to seek the chimes —
     The chimes he loved so well.
  Where lofty fanes in grandeur rose,
     Upon his ear there fell
  No music like the long lost chimes
     Of his beloved bell.
  And thus he wandered year by year.
     Touched by the hand of time,
  Seeking to hear with anxious heart
     Each well remembered chime.
  And to that worn and weary heart
     There came a glad surcease:
  He heard again the dear old chimes,
     And smiled and uttered peace.
  “The chimes! the chimes!” the old man cried,
     “I hear their tones at last;”
  A sudden rapture filled his heart,
     And all his cares were past.
  Yes, peace had come with death’s sweet calm,
     His journeying was o’er,
  The weary, restless wanderer
     Had reached the restful shore.
  It may be that he met again,
     Enfolded in the air,
  The dear old chimes beside the gates
     Where all is bright and fair;
  That he who crossed and bowed his head
     When Angelus was sung
  In clearer light touched golden harps
     By angel fingers strung.

  
“DO NOT CHEER, MEN ARE DYING,” SAID
  CAPT. PHILLIPS, IN THE SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR
  Do not cheer, for men are dying
     From their distant homes in pain;
  And the restless sea is darkened
     By a flood of crimson rain.
  Do not cheer, for anxious mothers
     Wait and watch in lonely dread;
  Vainly waiting for the footsteps
     Never more their paths to tread.
  Do not cheer, while little children
     Gather round the widowed wife,
  Wondering why an unknown people
     Sought their own dear father’s life.
  Do not cheer, for aged fathers
     Bend above their staves and weep,
  While the ocean sings the requiem
     Where their fallen children sleep.
  Do not cheer, for lips are paling
     On which lay the mother’s kiss;
  ‘Mid the dreadful roar of battle
     How that mother’s hand they miss!
  Do not cheer: once joyous maidens,
     Who the mazy dance did tread,
  Bow their heads in bitter anguish,
     Mourning o’er their cherished dead.
  Do not cheer while maid and matron
     In this strife must bear a part;
  While the blow that strikes a soldier
     Reaches to some woman’s heart.
  Do not cheer till arbitration
     O’er the nations holds its sway,
  And the century now closing
     Ushers in a brighter day.
  Do not cheer until the nation
     Shall more wise and thoughtful grow
  Than to staunch a stream of sorrow
     By an avalanche of woe.
  Do not cheer until each nation
     Sheathes the sword and blunts the spear,
  And we sing aloud for gladness:
     Lo, the reign of Christ is here,
  And the banners of destruction
     From the battlefield are furled,
  And the peace of God descending
     Rests upon a restless world.

 
 THE BURDENS OF ALL
  We may sigh o’er the heavy burdens
     Of the black, the brown and white;
  But if we all clasped hands together
     The burdens would be more light.
  How to solve life’s saddest problems,
     Its weariness, want and woe,
  Was answered by One who suffered
     In Palestine long ago.
  He gave from his heart this precept,
     To ease the burdens of men,
  “As ye would that others do to you
     Do ye even so to them.”
  Life’s heavy, wearisome burdens
     Will change to a gracious trust
  When men shall learn in the light of God
     To be merciful and just.
  Where war has sharpened his weapons,
     And slavery masterful had,
  Let white and black and brown unite
     To build the kingdom of God.
  And never attempt in madness
     To build a kingdom or state,
  Through greed of gold or lust of power,
     On the crumbling stones of hate.
  The burdens will always he heavy,
     The sunshine fade into night,
  Till mercy and justice shall cement
     The black, the brown and the white.
  And earth shall answer with gladness,
     The herald angel’s refrain,
  When “Peace on earth, good will to men”
     Was the burden of their strain.

The post Poems by Frances E.W. Harper (1896; full text) appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.

She was just nineteen when her first published poem, “Trees at Night,” appeared in Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life in 1925. A year later, this journal published six more of her poems.

Her poems also made an appearance in NAACP’s The Crisis and the first and only issue of Fire!!, Langston Hughes’ short-lived publication. As Helene grew aware of the economic and divide facing Black New Yorkers, she began to explore racial themes in her poetry.

Several scholars have made a case for a reconsideration of Helene’s poetry. Though she was a very private and self-described shy person, her poems are bold and innovative, bearing a unique voice. 

In Notable Black American Women (1992) T. J. Bryan wrote:

“Helene Johnson’s works are models for aspiring poets — especially for African American women poets who have long been led to believe that no tradition of achievement exists among Black American women in this genre prior to the 1960s … Helene Johnson is a transitional poet whose works of the 1920s and 1930s signal a striking out in new directions among Black American women poets, who began to abandon romantic themes and poetic conventions at this juncture.”

From Lehigh University’s Digital Anthology of African American Poetry:

“Throughout the late 1920s, Johnson explored racial themes in a variety of ways in her poetry, including a number of ‘Harlem’-themed poems (“Sonnet to a Negro in Harlem” and “Bottled” being two representative examples). A number of her poems also used natural settings to powerful effect, including “A Southern Road.” Johnson’s poems often dramatize the tension between conservative morality and Christian restraints against the sensuous riot of the emerging African American youth culture of the 1920s (“Magalu”). 

Following are the poems presented in this post. They’re from several sources that are all in the public domain, notably  Caroling Dusk: An Anthology of Verse by Negro Poets, edited by Countee Cullen (1927); Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life. The Urban League; various issues); 

• Trees at Night
• Ah My Race
• Night
• Metamorphism
• Fulfillment
• The Road
• Magalu
• The Little Love
• Futility
• Love in Midsummer
• A Southern Road
• Bottled
• Sonnet to a Negro in Harlem
• Poem
• What Do I Care for Morning?
• Summer Matures
• I Am Not Proud

Helene Johnson’s legacy is encapsulated in this analysis of her life’s work  University of Minnesota Digital Conservancy:

“Regardless of her fading presence in the Harlem Renaissance, Johnson’s work is being rediscovered and revived by several scholars today. Verner Mitchell, Nina Miller, and Maureen Honey have acknowledged Johnson’s inventiveness and said that poetry of this ability from of woman of Johnson’s time was unique.

Because she experienced much independence and sovereignty as a child and young adult, Johnson conveys in her poems an extremely powerful female perspective and image. Johnson is described as having been painfully shy while growing up. Her discretion is not displayed in her poetry, however, in which she speaks boldly about her race and her gender. Her 1925 poem, ‘My Race’ challenges the feminine themes of love and motherhood through bold and aggressive stances. Johnson, when writing about race, is brave and empowering.”

. . . . . . . . . .

Trees at Night

Slim sentinels
Stretching lacy arms
About a slumberous moon;
Black quivering
Silhouettes;
Tremulous,
Stenciled on the petal
Of a bluebell;
Ink splattered
On a robin’s breast:
The jagged rent
Of mountains
Reflected in a
Still sleeping lake;
Fragile pinnacles
Of fairy castles;
Torn webs of shadows;
And
Printed ‘gainst the sky—
The trembling beauty
Of an urgent pine.

(Opportunity, May 1925)

. . . . . . . . . . .

Ah My Race

Ah my race,
Hungry race,
Throbbing and young —
Ah, my race,
Wonder race,
Sobbing with song,
Ah, my race,
Careless in mirth
Ah, my veiled race,
Fumbling in birth.

(Opportunity, July 1925)

. . . . . . . . . . .

Night

The moon flung down the bower of her hair,
A sacred cloister while she knelt at prayer.
She crossed pale bosom, breathed a sad amen —
Then bound her hair about her  head again. 

(Opportunity, January 1926)

. . . . . . . . . . .

Metamorphism

Is this the sea?
This calm emotionless bosom,
Serene as the heart of a converted Magdalene ––
Or this?
This lisping, lulling murmur of soft waters
Kissing a white beached shore with tremulous lips;
Blue rivulets of sky gurgling deliciously
O’er pale smooth-stones ––
This too?
This sudden birth of unrestrained splendour,
Tugging with turbulent force at Neptune’s leash;
This passionate abandon,
This strange tempestuous soliloquy of Nature,
All these –– the sea?

Fulfillment

To climb a hill that hungers for the sky,
To dig my hands wrist deep in pregnant earth,
To watch a young bird, veering, learn to fly,
To give a still, stark poem shining birth.

. . . . . . . . . .

The Road

Ah, little road all whirry in the breeze,
A leaping clay hill lost among the trees,
The bleeding note of rapture streaming thrush
Caught in a drowsy hush
And stretched out in a single singing line of dusky song.
Ah little road, brown as my race is brown,
Your trodden beauty like our trodden pride,
Dust of the dust, they must not bruise you down.
Rise to one brimming golden, spilling cry!

(Opportunity, July 1926)

. . . . . . . . . .

Magalu

Summer comes. The ziczac hovers
‘Round the greedy-mouthed crocodile.
A vulture beats away a foolish jackal.
The flamingo is a dash of pink
Against dark green mangroves,
Her slender legs rivaling her slim neck.
The laughing lake gurgles, delicious music in its throat
And lulls to sleep the lazy lizard,
A nebulous being on a sun-scorched rock.
In such a place,
In this pulsing, riotous gasp of color,
I met Magalu, dark as a tree at night,
Eager-lipped, listening to a man with a white collar
And a small black book with a cross on it.
Oh, Magalu, come! Take my hand and I will read you poetry,
Chromatic words,
Seraphic symphonies,
Fill up your throat with laughter and your heart with song.
Do not let him lure you from your laughing waters,
Lulling lakes, lissome winds.
Would you sell the colors of your sunset and the fragrance
Of your flowers, and the passionate wonder of your forest
For a creed that will not let you dance?

(Opportunity, July 1926)

. . . . . . . . . .

The Little Love

A shy ear bared
For incipient kisses;
A secret shared
In laughter exquisite;
Soft finger tips,
While the night embraces,
Touch passionate colors
That morning erases
And when the Dawn wakens,
No attempt to recapture
Those swift fleeting hours of ecstatic rapture,
But hide the shy ear with a curl, my pet,
And that little secret,— forget. 

(The Messenger, July 1926)

. . . . . . . . . .

Futility

It is silly —
This waiting for love
In a parlor.
When love is singing up and down the alley
Without a collar. 

(Opportunity, August 1926)

. . . . . . . . . .

Love in Midsummer

Ah love
Is like a throbbing wind,
A lullaby all crooning,
Ah love
Is like a summer sea’s soft breast.
Ah love’s 
A sobbing violin
That naïve night is tuning,
Ah love
Is down from off the white moon’s nest.

(The Messenger, October 1926)

. . . . . . . . . .

A Southern Road

Yolk-colored tongue
Parched beneath a burning sky,
A lazy little tune
Hummed up the crest of some
Soft sloping hill.
One streaming line of beauty
Flowering by a forest
Pregnant with tears.
A hidden nest for beauty
Idly flung my God
In one lonely lingering hour
Before the Sabbath.
A blue-fruited black gum,
Like a tall predella,
Bears a dangling figure,—
Sacrificial dower to the raff, Swinging alone,
A solemn, tortured shadow in the air.

(Fire!!, November 1926)

. . . . . . . . . .

Bottled

Upstairs on the third floor
Of the 135th Street library
In Harlem, I saw a little
Bottle of sand, brown sand
Just like the kids make pies
Out of down at the beach.
But the label said: “This
Sand was taken from the Sahara desert. ”
Imagine that! The Sahara desert!
Some bozo’s been all the way to Africa to get some sand.

And yesterday on Seventh Avenue
I saw a darky dressed fit to kill
In yellow gloves and swallow tail coat
And swirling a cane. And everyone
Was laughing at him. Me too,
At first, till I saw his face
When he stopped to hear a
Organ grinder grind out some jazz.
Boy! You should a seen that darky’s face!
It just shone. Gee, he was happy!
And he began to dance. No
Charleston or Black Bottom for him.
No sir. He danced just as dignified
And slow. No, not slow either.
Dignified and proud! You couldn’t
Call it slow, not with all the
Cuttin’ up he did. You would a died to see him.

The crowd kept yellin’ but he didn’t hear,
Just kept on dancin’ and twirlin’ that cane
And yellin’ out loud every once in a while.
I know the crowd thought he was coo-coo.
But say, I was where I could see his face,
And somehow, I could see him dancin’ in a jungle,
A real honest-to-cripe jungle, and he wouldn’t have on them
Trick clothes — those yaller shoes and yaller gloves
And swallow-tail coat. He wouldn’t have on nothing.
And he wouldn’t be carrying no cane.
He’d be carrying a spear with a sharp fine point
Like the bayonets we had “over there.”
And the end of it would be dipped in some kind of
Hoo-doo poison. And he’d be dancin’ black and naked and gleaming.
And he’d have rings in his ears and on his nose
And bracelets and necklaces of elephants’ teeth.
Gee, I bet he’d be beautiful then all right.
No one would laugh at him then, I bet.
Say! That man that took that sand from the Sahara desert
And put it in a little bottle on a shelf in the library,
That’s what they done to this shine, ain’t it? Bottled him.
Trick shoes, trick coat, trick cane, trick everything — all glass —
But inside —
Gee, that poor shine!

(Vanity Fair, May 1927, and Caroling Dusk, both 1927)

“Bottled” needs an introduction and context, without which it can be misconstrued. It was first published in 1927 in the May issue of Vanity Fair. and later the same year in the classic anthology Caroling Dusk

Katherine R. Lynes in Project Muse offers much insight into the story behind the poem:

“In ‘Bottled,’ Johnson puts authentic and inauthentic into dialogue when she puts an imagined African jungle into a poem set on the real streets of New York City. The speaker of the poem admires the (imagined) cultural adornments and proud dancing of a man in the streets of Harlem.

The speaker reports that he dances to jazz, American music that has some of its roots in Africa but is not in and of itself wholly African; she also imagines this man as he would be if he were in Africa. He functions as a cultural object in the poem, a cultural object with contested authenticities. Johnson’s use of a mixture of cultural tropes reveals her awareness of and attentiveness to theories of cultural relativism.” 

Read the rest of this analysis at Project Muse.

. . . . . . . . . .

Sonnet to a Negro in Harlem

You are disdainful and magnificent—
Your perfect body and your pompous gait,
Your dark eyes flashing solemnly with hate,
Small wonder that you are incompetent
To imitate those whom you so despise—
Your shoulders towering high above the throng,
Your head thrown back in rich, barbaric song,
Palm trees and mangoes stretched before your eyes.
Let others toil and sweat for labor’s sake
And wring from grasping hands their need of gold.
Why urge ahead your supercilious feet?
Scorn will efface each footprint that you make.
I love your laughter arrogant and bold.
You are too splendid for this city street.

(Caroling Dusk, 1927)

. . . . . . . . . .

See also …

Renaissance Women: 13 Female Writers of the Harlem Renaissance
Women Poets of the Harlem Renaissance to Rediscover and Read
. . . . . . . . . . .

Poem

Little brown boy,
Slim, dark, big-eyed,
Crooning love songs to your banjo
Down at the Lafayerre —
Gee, boy, I love the way you hold your head,
High sort of and a bit to one side,
Like a prince, a jazz prince. And I love
Your eyes flashing, and your hands,
And your patent-leathered feet,
And your shoulders jerking the jig-wa.
And I love your teeth flashing,
And the way your hair shines in the spotlight
Like it was the real stuff.
Gee, brown boy, I loves you all over.
I’m glad I’m a jig. I’m glad I can
Understand your dancin’ and your
Singin’, and feel all the happiness
And joy and don’t care in you.
Gee, boy, when you sing, I can close my ears
And hear tom-toms just as plain.
Listen to me, will you, what do I know
About tom-toms? But I like the word, sort of,
Don’t you? It belongs to us.
Gee, boy, I love the way you hold your head,
And the way you sing, and dance,
And everything.
Say, I think you’re wonderful. You’re
Allright with me,
You are.

(Caroling Dusk, 1927)

. . . . . . . . . .

What Do I Care for Morning

What do I care for morning,
For a shivering aspen tree,
For sun flowers and sumac
Opening greedily?
What do I care for morning,
For the glare of the rising sun,
For a sparrow’s noisy prating,
For another day begun?
Give me the beauty of evening,
The cool consummation of night,
And the moon like a love-sick lady,
Listless and wan and white.
Give me a little valley
Huddled beside a hill,
Like a monk in a monastery,
Safe and contented and still,
Give me the white road glistening,
A strand of the pale moon’s hair,
And the tall hemlocks towering
Dark as the moon is fair.
Oh what do I care for morning,
Naked and newly born—
Night is here, yielding and tender—
What do I care for dawn!

(Caroling Dusk, 1927)

. . . . . . . . . .

Summer Matures

Summer matures. Brilliant Scorpion
Appears. The Pelican’s thick pouch
Hangs heavily with perch and slugs.
The brilliant-bellied newt flashes
Its crimson crest in the white water.
In the lush meadow, by the river,
The yellow-freckled toad laughs
With a toothless gurgle at the white-necked stork
Standing asleep, and one red reedy leg.
And here Pan dreams of slim stalks clean for piping,
And of a naked nightingale gone mad with freedom.
Come. I shall weave a bed of reeds
And willow limbs and pale nightflowers.
I shall strip the roses of their petals,
And the white down from the swan’s neck.
Come, night is here. The air is drunk
With wild grape and sweet clover.
And by the secret fount of Aganippe
Euterpe sings of love. Ah, the woodland creatures,
The doves in pairs, the wild sow and her shoats,
The stag searching the forest for a mate,
Know more of love than you, my callous Phaon.
The young moon is a curved white scimitar
Pierced through the swooning night.
Sweet Phaon. With Sappho sleep like the stars at dawn.
This night was born for love my Phaon.
Come.

(Opportunity, July 1927; also Caroling Dusk, 1927)

. . . . . . . . . .

I Am Not Proud

I am not proud that I am bold
Or proud that I am black.
Color was given to me as a gage
And boldness came with that.

(The Saturday Evening Quill, April 1929)

Further reading

“The Published Poems of Helene Johnson” by T.J. Bryan. (The Langston Hughes Review, Fall 1987, Volume 6, No. 2, pp. 11-21. Published by: Langston Hughes Society, Penn State University Press)

“Toward an Understanding of Helene Johnson’s Hybrid Modernist Poetics” by Robert Fillman. CLA Journal, Vol. 61, No. 1-2 (Sept. – Dec. 2017), pp. 45-64

The post 17 Poems by Helene Johnson, Poet of the Harlem Renaissance appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.

The Heart of a Woman  was followed by Bronze (1922) and An Autumn Love Cycle (1928). Many years later she came out with Share My World (1962). With four published collections, it’s quite likely that Georgia was the most widely published of the female poets of her era.

Georgia’s poems were published in numerous periodicals and anthologies, particularly in the 1920s. In her poetry, Georgia addressed issues of race as well as universal themes of love, motherhood, and being a woman in a male-dominated world. 

The Heart of a Woman featured poems that were specific to Georgia’s life, yet universal to the female experience. They spoke of love and hope, as well as of loneliness and disappointments. Her frustration with women’s constrained roles was expressed with grace and subtlety.

The Heart of a Woman (1981), the title of the fourth volume in Maya Angelou‘s seven-part autobiography series that began with I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, is named for the first, eponymous poem in this collection.

 The Heart of a Woman was published by the Cornhill Company (Boston) and is in the public domain. You can see what it looked like when it was first published on Internet Archive.

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Learn more about Georgia Douglas Johnson

More full texts of collections by Georgia Douglas Johnson
BRONZE (1922)
AN AUTUMN LOVE CYCLE (1928)

. . . . . . . . . .

The Heart of a Woman and Other Poems
by Georgia Douglas Johnson (1918)

Contents

Introduction by William Stanley Braithwaite

The Heart of a Woman
Gossamer
The Dreams of the Dreamer
Sympathy
Contemplation
Dead Leaves
Dawn
Elevation
Whither?
Quest
Mate
Emblems
Mirrored
Pent
Pages from Life
Recall
Foredoom
Peace
Despair
Eventide
Gethsemane
Gilead
Impelled
In Quest
Inevitably
Isolation
Joy
Memory
Modulations
Omega
Poetry
Posthumous
Query
Recompense
Repulse
Rhythm
Smothered Fires
Supreme
Sympathy
Tears and Kisses
The Measure
Thrall
Tired
What Need Have I For Memory?
When I Am Dead
Whene’er I Lift My Eyes to Bliss
Where?
Youth

. . . . . . . . . . .

Introduction by William Stanley Braithwaite

The poems in this book are intensely feminine and for me this means more than anything else that they are deeply human. We are yet scarcely aware, in spite of our boasted twentieth-century progress, of what lies deeply hidden, of mystery and passion, of domestic love and joy and sorrow, of romantic  visions and practical ambitions, in the heart of a woman.

The emancipation of woman is  yet to be wholly accomplished; though  woman has stamped her image on every age of the world’s history, and in the heart of  almost every man since time began, it is only  a little over half of a century since she has either spoke or acted with a sense of freedom.  

During this time she has made little more  than a start to catch up with man in the wonderful things he has to his credit; and yet all that man has to his credit would scarcely have been achieved except for the devotion and love and inspiring comradeship of woman. Here, then, is lifted the veil, in these poignant songs and lyrics. To look upon what is revealed is to give one a sense of  infinite sympathy; to make one kneel in spirit to the marvelous patience, the wonderful endurance, the persistent faith, which are  hidden in this nature.

   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.   
 
sings the poet.
   And the songs of the singer
   Are tones that repeat
   The cry of the heart
   Till it ceases to beat.
 
This verse just quoted is from “The Dreams of the Dreamer,” and with the previous quotation tells us that this woman’s heart is keyed in the plaintive, knows the sorrowful agents of life and experience which knock and enter at the door of dreams.

But women have made the saddest songs of the world, Sappho / no less than Elizabeth Barrett Browning / Ruth the Moabite/ poetess gleaning in the fields of Boaz no less than Amy Levy / the Jewess who broke her heart against the London pavements; and no less does sadness echo its tender and appealing sigh in these songs and lyrics of Georgia Douglas Johnson. But sadness is a kind of felicity with woman, paradoxical as it may seem; and it is so because through this inexplicable felicity they touched, intuitionally caress, reality.
 
So here engaging life at its most reserved sources, whether the form or substance through which it articulates be nature, or the seasons, touch of hands or lips, love, desire, or any of the emotional abstractions which sweep like fire or wind or cooling water through the blood, Mrs. Johnson creates just that reality of woman’s heart and experience with astonishing raptures.

It is a kind of privilege to know so much about the secrets of woman’s nature, a privilege all the more to be cherished when given, as in these poems, with such exquisite utterance, with such a lyric sensibility.
 
— William Stanley Braithwaite, Cambridge, Massachusetts

. . . . . . . . . . .

The Heart of a Woman
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.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Gossamer
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 Dreams of the Dreamer
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.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Sympathy
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.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Contemplation
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!

. . . . . . . . . . .

Dead Leaves
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?

. . . . . . . . . . .

Dawn
Trailing night’s sand-sifted stars,
Rainbows sweep, as day unbars.
Fragrant essences of morn,
Bathe humanity — new-born!

. . . . . . . . . . .

Elevation
There are highways in the soul,
   Heights like pyramids that rise
   Far beyond earth-veiled eyes,
   Sweeping through the barless skies
O’er the line where daylight dies —
There are highways in the soul!

. . . . . . . . . . .

Whither?
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.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Quest
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.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Mate
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.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Emblems
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!

. . . . . . . . . . .

Mirrored
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.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Pent
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! 

. . . . . . . . . . .

Pages from Life
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!

. . . . . . . . . . .

Recall
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).

. . . . . . . . . . .

      
Foredoom
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.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Peace
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!

. . . . . . . . . . .

Despair
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.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Eventide
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.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Gethsemane
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!

. . . . . . . . . . .

Gilead
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.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Impelled
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.

. . . . . . . . . . .

In Quest
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.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Inevitably
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.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Isolation
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!

. . . . . . . . . . .

Joy
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!

. . . . . . . . . . .

Memory
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.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Modulations
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.

. . . . . . . . . . .

   
Omega
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!

. . . . . . . . . . .

Poetry
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.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Posthumous
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.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Query
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?

. . . . . . . . . . .

Recompense
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!

. . . . . . . . . . .

Repulse
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.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Rhythm
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.

. . . . . . . . . . .

   
Smothered Fires
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!

. . . . . . . . . . .

Supreme
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.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Sympathy
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.

. . . . . . . . . . .

   
Tears and Kisses
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.

. . . . . . . . . . .

The Measure
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.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Thrall
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.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Tired
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.

. . . . . . . . . . .

What Need Have I For Memory?
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?

. . . . . . . . . . .   

   
When I Am Dead
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!

. . . . . . . . . . .

  
Whene’er I Lift My Eyes to Bliss
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.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Where?
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.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Youth
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!

The post The Heart of a Woman by Georgia Douglas Johnson (1918 – full text) appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.

Mae was the only child of professional parents who were part of Philadelphia’s Black elite. They instilled in her their values of racial pride, equality, and respect for the arts.

Above right, Mae in 1928 at age nineteen, sporting an androgynous look.

While still a student at the Philadelphia High School for Girls, three of Mae’s poems were published in Black Opals, a prestigious short-lived (1927 – 1928) literary journal of a Philadelphia cultural organization of the same name.

For the fledgling poet, 1927 was a banner year. In addition to publication in Black Opals, she won first prize for her poem “Longings” in an NAACP-sponsored competition. It was published in the association’s journal, The Crisis. She won the Krigwa Prize for “Lamps, ” and “Dusk” was chosen for Ebony and Topaz, an anthology of Black poets published that same year.

Mae attended Pratt Institute in Brooklyn with the aim of studying fashion design. Though she didn’t complete her studies, her sojourn in New York City was an entry into the lively cultural scene in Greenwich Village. Perhaps that’s where she encountered the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay, whose poetry she admired. She also enjoyed a lively correspondence with Langston Hughes, who greatly encouraged her poetic endeavors.

After her early successes, she continued to have her poems published in journals and anthologies highlighting writers now associated with the Harlem Renaissance.

In 1936, Mae produced a limited edition of 350 copies of We Lift Our Voices: And Other Poems, which was critically well received. And because there were relatively few copies printed, it’s difficult to obtain this book.

Not yet in the public domain, its contents are not freely distributed online. I was fortunate enough to see one of the rare copies in the main branch of the New York Public Library, and the poetry is just beautiful. Hopefully it can become more widely available when it falls into the public domain.

Mae’s bisexual life was an open a secret. Desire for both male and female love objects were expressed in her poetry. “Dusk” (1927), for example, begins: Like you / Letting down your  / Purpled shadowed hair  / To hide the rose and gold  /  Of your loveliness .… In “Love in These Days” a relationship sours between a woman and a man: Her eyes were hard  / And his bitter / As they sat and watched  / The fire fade …

After her sojourn in New York City, Mae returned to Philadelphia, married twice, had a daughter, and her life folded into the city’s Black elite. Society columns depicted her public persona as a young society matron, impeccably attired in dresses and pearls, a contrast to her androgynous portrait at age nineteen shown at the top of this post.

It’s not clear why Mae took her own life at the age of thirty-nine (in 1948). Her obituary made no mention that she was a published poet. Philadelphia-based anthropologist and activist Arthur Huff Fauset (half-brother of Jessie Redmon Fauset) wrote that Mae was “a flame that burned out rapidly … a flash in the pan with great potential who just wouldn’t settle down.” To be fair, we don’t know if she wouldn’t, or simply couldn’t, due to external pressures to conform.

Numbering more than sixty exquisite poems, Mae Cowdery’s body of work is significant, even in comparison to those contemporaries of the Harlem Renaissance era who have remained known. One of the best overviews of her brief life can be found in Aphrodite’s Daughters: Three Modernist Poets of the Harlem Renaissance by Maureen Honey (Rutgers University Press, 2016).

See also: Women Poets of the Harlem Renaissance to Rediscover and Read

The following is a selection of poems by Mae Virginia Cowdery are in the public domain.

• Lamps
• Longings
• The Wind Blows
• Dusk
• Time
• Goal
• Hidden Moon
• My Body
• Nameless
• Love in These Days
• A Prayer
• Of the Earth
• Want

. . . . . . . . . .

Lamps

Bodies are lamps
And their life is the light.
Ivory, Gold, Bronze and Ebony—
Yet all are lamps
And their lives the lights.
Dwelling in the tabernacles
    Of the most high—are lamps.
Lighting the weary pilgrims’ way
    As they travel the dreary night—are lamps.
Swinging aloft in great Cathedrals
    Beaming on rich and poor alike—are lamps.
Flickering fitfully in harlot dives
    Wanton as they that dwell therein— are lamps.
Ivory, Gold, Bronze and Ebony—
Yet all are lamps
And their lives the lights.
Some flames rise high above the horizon
    And urge others to greater power.
Some burn steadfast thru the night
    To welcome the prodigal home.
Others flicker weakly, lacking oil to burn
    And slowly die unnoticed.
What matter how bright the flame
    How weak?
What matter how high it blazes
    How low?
A puff of wind will put it out.
You and I are lamps—Ebony lamps,
Our flame glows red and rages high within
But our ebon shroud becomes a shadow
And our light seems weak and low.
    Break that shadow
    And let the flame illumine heaven
    Or blow wind…blow
    And let our feeble lights go out.

(The Crisis, December 1927. This poem was one of two poems by Mae Cowdery that won first prize in the 1927 poetry competition in The Crisis, along with the next poem, “Longings”)

. . . . . . . . . .

Longings

To dance—
In the light of moon,
A platinum moon
Poised like a slender dagger
On the velvet darkness of night.

To dream—
’Neath the bamboo trees
On the sable breast
Of earth—
And listen to the wind.

To croon—
Weird sweet melodies
Round the cabin door
With banjos clinking softly—
And from out the shadow
Hear the beat of tom-toms
Resonant through the years.

To plunge—
My brown body
In a golden pool,
And lazily float on the swell
Watching the rising sun.

To stand—
On a purple mountain
Hidden from earth
By mists of dreams
And tears—

To talk—
With God.

(The Crisis, December 1927)

. . . . . . . . . .

The Wind Blows

The wind blows.
My soul is like a tree
Lifting its face to the sun,
Flinging wide its branches
To catch the falling rain,
   To breathe into itself a fragrance
Of far-off fields of clover,
Of hidden vales of violets,—
The wind blows,—
It is spring!

The wind blows.
My soul is like sand,
Hot, burning sand
That drifts and drifts
Caught by the wind,
Swirling, stinging, swarting,
Silver in the moonlight.
Soft breath of lovers’ feet
Lulled to sleep by the lap of waves,
The wind blows—
It is summer!

The wind blows.
My soul is still
In silent reverie
Hearing sometimes a sigh
As the frost steals over the land
Nipping everywhere.
Earth is dead.
The woods are bare.
The last leaf is gone.
Nipped by death’s bitter frost,
My youth grown grey
Awaits the coming of
The new year.
The wind blows,—
It is winter!

(Opportunity, October 1927)

. . . . . . . . . .

Dusk

Like you 
Letting down your 
Purpled shadowed hair 
To hide the rose and gold 
Of your loveliness 
And your eyes peeping thru 
Like beacon lights 
In the gathering darkness. 

(Ebony and Topaz, 1927)

. . . . . . . . .

Time

I used to sit on a high green hill
And long for you to be like the clouds,
Soft and white……….
And you eyes be like heaven’s blue
And your hair like the tree sifted sun……….
But then I was young, and my eyes yet
Round with wonder.
Now I site by an endless road and watch 
As you come……….swiftly like dusk
Your hair like a starless night
Your eyes like deep violet shadows,
And soft arms cradle me on your sweet
Brown breast……….for I have grown old
And my eyes hold unshed tears,
And my face is lean and hard in daylight’s
Mocking glare.
But with the night
Dusk fingers and lips like dew
Erase each wound of time
And my eyes grow round with wonder 
At your beauty. 

(Black Opals, Christmas 1927)

. . . . . . . . . .

Goal

My words shall drip
Like molten lava
From the towering black volcano,
On the sleeping town
’Neath its summit.
My thoughts shall be
Hot ashes
Burning all in its path.

I shall not stop
Because critics sneer,
Nor stoop to fawning
At man’s mere fancy.

I shall breathe
A clearer freer air
For I shall see the sun
Above the crowd, 

I shall not blush
And make excuse
When a son of Adam,
Who calls himself
“God’s Layman,”
Slashes with scorn
A thing born from
Truth’s womb and nursed
By beauty. It will not
Matter who stoops
To cast the first stone.
Does not my spirit
Soar above these feeble
Minds? thoughts born
From prejudice’s womb
And nursed by tradition? 

I will shatter the wall
Of darkness that rises
From gleaming day
And seeks to hide the sun.
I will turn this wall of 
Darkness (that is night)
Into a thing of beauty.

I will take from the hearts
Of black men–
Prayers their lips 
Are ‘fraid to utter.
And turn their coarseness
Into a beauty of the jungle
Whence they came.

The lava from the black volcano
Shall be words–the ashes–thoughts 
Of all men.

(Black Opals, Spring 1927)

. . . . . . . . . .

Hidden Moon

My thoughts soared up
To the starless sky
And a cloud
Passed over the face
Of the yellow moon.
My thoughts
Are the clouds that hide
The face of the moon,
And yours are
The night wind
That blows away the ugly
Moon clouds. 
(Black Opals, Spring 1927)

. . . . . . . . . .

My Body

My body
Is an ugly thing
Fashioned by God.
My body
Is an empty thing
Made from crumbling sod.

My soul
Is a lovely thing
Fashioned by God.
My soul 
Is a flaming thing
That trampling hordes
Have left untrod. 
(Black Opals, Spring 1927)

. . . . . . . . .

Nameless

How like the restless beating
Of our hearts
Is the surge of the sea;
How like the tumult
Of our souls
Is the lashing of the storm;
How like the yearning
In our song
Is the wind,
How like a prayer
Is night.

(Black Opals, Christmas 1928)

. . . . . . . . . .

Love in These Days

Her eyes were hard
And his bitter
As they sat and watched 
The fire fade
From the ashes of their love.
Then they turned 
And saw the naked autumn wind
Shake the bare autumn trees,
And each one thought
As the cold came in–
……..”It might have been”……..

(Black Opals, June 1928)

. . . . . . . . . . .

A Prayer

I saw a dark boy
     Trudging on the road
(Twas’ a dreary road Blacker than night).
     Oft times he’d stumble
And stagger ‘neath his burden
     But still he kept trudging
Along that dreary road.

I heard a dark boy
     Singing as he passed
Oft times he’d laugh
     But still a tear
Crept thru his song,
     As he kept trudging
Along that weary road.

I saw a long white mist roll down
     And cover all the earth
(There wasn’t even a shadow
     To tell it was night).
And then there came an echo . . . .
 . . . . Footsteps of a dark boy
Still climbing on the way.

A song with its tear
     And then a prayer
From the lips of a dark boy
     Struggling thru the fog.
Oft times I’d hear
     The lashing of a whip
And then a voice would cry to heaven
     “Lord! . . . Lord!
     Have mercy! . . .  mercy!”
And still that bleeding body
     Pushed onward thru the fog .
Song . . .  Tears . . .  Blood . . .  Prayer
     Throbbing thru the mist.
The mist rolled by
     And the sun shone fair,
Fair and golden
     On a dark boy . . . . cold and still
High on a bare bleak tree
     His face upturned to heaven
His soul upraised in song
     “Peace. . . . Peace
     Rest in the Lord.”
Oft times in the twilight
     I can hear him still singing
As he walks in the heavens,
     A song without a tear
A prayer without a plea.
Lord, lift me up to the purple sky
     That lays its hand of stars
Tenderly on my bowed head
     As I kneel high on this barren hill.
My song holds naught but tears
     My prayer is but a plea
Lord take me to the clouds
     To sleep . . . to sleep.

(The Crisis, September 1928)

. . . . . . . . . . .

Of the Earth

A mountain
Is earth’s mouth . . .
She thrusts her lovely
Sun painted lips
To the clouds . . . for heaven’s kiss.

A tree
Is earth’s soul . . .
She raises her verdant
Joyous prayer
To the slowly sinking sun
And to evening’s dew.
She flings her rugged defiance
To hell’s grumbling wrath
And deadly smile;
Then rustles her thanksgiving
To the dawn.

A river
Is earth’s tears . . .
Flowing from her deep brown bosom
To the horizon of
Oblivion . . .
O! Earth, why do you weep? 

(The Carolina Magazine, May 1928)

. . . . . . . . . .

Want

I want to take down with my hands
The silver stars
That grow in heaven’s dark blue meadows
And bury my face in them.

I want to wrap all around me
The silver shedding of the moon
To keep me warm.

I want to sell my soul
To the wind in a song
To keep me from crying in the night.

I want to wake and find
That I have slept the day away,
Only nights are kind now . . . 
With the stars . . . moons . . . winds and me . . . 

(The Crisis, November 1928)

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Bronze was preceded by The Heart of a Woman and Other Poems (1918). Next came An Autumn Love Cycle (1928), and many years later, Share My World (1962). Her poems were also published in numerous periodicals and anthologies, particularly in the 1920s.

In her poetry, Georgia addressed issues of race as well as universal themes of love, motherhood, and being a woman in a male-dominated world. Of all her works, Bronze most directly addressed issues of race and racism. Bronze: A Book of Verse is in the public domain.

Learn more about Georgia Douglas Johnson

More full texts of collections by Georgia Douglas Johnson
THE HEART OF A WOMAN (1918)
AN AUTUMN LOVE CYCLE (1928)

. . . . . . . . . . .

Bronze: A Book of Verse
by Georgia Douglas Johnson (1922)

Foreword by W.E.B. Du Bois

Those who know what it means to be a colored woman in 1922 — and know it not so much in fact as in feeling, apprehension, unrest and delicate yet stern thought — must read Georgia Douglas Johnson’s Bronze.

Much of it will not touch this reader and that, and some of it will mystify and puzzle them as a sort of reiteration and over-emphasis. But none can fail to be caught here and there by a word — a phrase — a period that tells a life history or even paints the history of a generation.

Can you not see that marching of the mantled with “Voices strange to ecstasy?” Have you ever looked on the “twilight faces” of their throngs, or seen the black mother with her son when “Her heart is sandaling his feet?” Or can you not conceive that infinite sorrow of a dark child wandering the world: “Seeking the breast of an unknown face!”

I hope Mrs. Johnson will have wide reading. Her word is simple, sometimes trite, but it is singularly sincere and true, and as a revelation of the soul struggle of the women of a race it is invaluable.
— W.E.B. Du Bois. New York, August 4, 1922.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Sonnet to the Mantled
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! 

. . . . . . . . . . .

Sonnet to Those Who See But Darkly
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. 

. . . . . . . . . . .

Brotherhood
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
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
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!

. . . . . . . . . . .

Calling Dreams
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 !

. . . . . . . . . . .

Desire
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.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Sorrow Singers
Hear their viol-voices ringing
Down the corridor of years,
As they lift their twilight faces
Through a mist of falling tears!

. . . . . . . . . . .

The Cross
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!

. . . . . . . . . . .

Prejudice
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!

. . . . . . . . . . .

Laocoon
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!

. . . . . . . . . . .

Moods 
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 winged vision through earth’s outer door.
In such an hour, it is mine to see,
In frowning fortune smiling destiny!

. . . . . . . . . . .

Hegira
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!

. . . . . . . . . . .

The Passing of the Ex-Slave
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!

. . . . . . . . . . .

The Octoroon
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.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Aliens
(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.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Concord
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
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.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Maternity
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!

. . . . . . . . . . .

Black Woman
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!

. . . . . . . . . . .

“One of the Least of These, My Little One”
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?”
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!

. . . . . . . . . . .

My Boy
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!

. . . . . . . . . . .

Guardianship
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!

. . . . . . . . . . .

Utopia
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!

. . . . . . . . . . .

Little Son
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.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Benediction
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!

. . . . . . . . . . .

Credo
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.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Promise
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!

. . . . . . . . . . .

The Suppliant
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!

. . . . . . . . . . .

Hope
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!

. . . . . . . . . . .

Cosmopolite
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.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Fusion
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!

. . . . . . . . . . .

Perspective
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 Up
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.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Faith
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 —

. . . . . . . . . . .

We Face the Future
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.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Soldier
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 . . .

. . . . . . . . . . .

Homing Braves
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!

. . . . . . . . . . .

Taps
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
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.

Further reading

• Poems by Georgia Douglas Johnson
• 8 Black Women Playwrights of the Early 20th Century
• Georgia Douglas Johnson on Poetry Foundation

The post Bronze by Georgia Douglas Johnson (1922) – full text appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.

Mary Effie Lee was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and raised in Wilberforce, Ohio. She took classes at Wilberforce University, Oberlin College, the Philadelphia Academy of the Arts, and the University of Pennsylvania, exploring her dual interests in writing and art. Effie and her sister Consuelo both did illustration for children’s magazines.

As the editor of the children’s column “Little Page” in The Crisis, Effie Lee was one of the first  to write poems expressly for Black children. Her poetry encouraged younger readers to appreciate their worth and beauty.

In 1920, she married Rev. Henry Nesby Newsome. In her biographical note in Caroling Dusk, 1927, a highly regarded anthology of poetry by Black writers, she describes herself as “ a lover of the out-of-doors, and of the beautiful.” The love of the natural world in particular is amply reflected in her poetry.

After her husband’s death in 1937, Effie Lee returned to her hometown of Wilberforce, Ohio, where she worked as a children’s librarian, and subsequently at Wilberforce University’s Library.

Though Effie Lee Newsome never lived in New York City, her thoughtful poetry became a fixture in the era of the Harlem Renaissance movement. A volume containing dozens of her poems for children, Gladiola Garden: Poems of Outdoors and Indoors for Second Grade Readers, was published in 1940. 

Learn more about Effie Lee Newsome
. . . . . . . . .

Poems by Effie Lee Newsome

• O Autumn, Autumn!
• Morning Light (The Dew-Drier)
• Sunset
• Magnificat
• The Bronze Legacy
• Exodus
• Cantabile
• Negro Street Serenade (in the South)
• Capriccio
• Sun Disk
• Sassafras Tea
• Pansy
• The Quilt
• Sky Pictures
• At the Pool
• Bluebird
• The Lord
• A Black Boy Dreams
• The Baker’s Boy

. . . . . . . . . .

O Autumn, Autumn!

O Autumn, Autumn! O pensive light and wistful sound!
Cold haunted sky, green-haunted ground!
When, wan, the dead leaves flutter by
Deserted realms of butterfly!
When robins band themselves together
To seek the soul of sun-steeped weather;
And all of summer’s largesse goes
For lands of olive and the rose! 

(The Crisis, October 1918)

. . . . . . . . . .

Morning Light (The Dew-Drier)

Brother to the firefly—
For as the firefly lights the night
So lights he the morning—
Bathed in the dank dews as he goes forth
Through heavy menace and mystery
Of half-waking tropic dawns,
Behold a little black boy, a naked black boy,
Sweeping aside with his slight frame
Night’s pregnant tears,
And making a morning path to the light
For the tropic traveler!
Bathed in the blood of battle,
Treading toward a new morning,
May not his race—its body long bared to the world’s disdain,
Its face schooled to smile for a light to come—
May not his race, even as the dew-boy leads,
Bear onward the world toward a new day-dawn
When tolerance, forgiveness,
Such as reigned in the heart of One
Whose heart was gold,
Shall shape the earth for that fresh dawning
     After the dews of blood?

(The Crisis, November 1918)

. . . . . . . . . .

Sunset

Since Poets have told of sunset, 
What is left for me to tell?
I can only say that I saw the day
Press crimson lips to horizon gray,
And kiss the earth farewell.

(The Crisis, May 1921)

. . . . . . . . . .

Magnificat

In lapis lazuli—
Such azure shot with gold!—
On domes of sanctity
That chiseled tribute hold,
Or breathe the Word through breath of brush
In ripened tones and old;
Through silence and in state—
Still splendors everywhere!—
Earth’s tribute from earth’s great
Steeped deep in incensed air,
With praise imprint on wall and floor,
And even shadows there;
Cathedrals strive to voice
The thanks of mild Mary,
Who found herself the choice
For immortality,
When, lowly-born, there came the word
Earth’s Mother she should be.
God, we, thy lowly race,
Would thank thee for such grace.
Though we have never been
Welcome at earthly inn,
Thy glorious Son swung wide
Those gates that scoff at pride.
And guard a Realm of Equity,
Wherein abides the Wisdom Holy
Which shapes high purpose for the lowly.

(The Crisis, December 1922)

. . . . . . . . . .

The Bronze Legacy

’Tis a noble gift to be brown, all brown,
     Like the strongest things that make up this earth,
Like the mountains grave and grand,
     Even like the very land,
     Even like the trunks of trees—
     Even oaks, to be like these!
God builds His strength in bronze.
To be brown like thrush and lark!
     Like the subtle wren so dark!
Nay, the king of beasts wears brown;
     Eagles are of this same hue.
I thank God, then, I am brown.
     Brown has mighty things to do.
(The Crisis, October 1922)

 . . . . . . . . .

Exodus

Rank fennel and broom
Grow wanly beside
The cottage and room
We once occupied,
But sold for the snows!
The dahoon berry weeps in blood,
I know,
Watched by the crow–
I’ve seen both grow
In those weird wastes of Dixie!

(The Crisis, January 1925)

. . . . . . . . . .

Cantabile

Green holly has a lovely leaf
to make the Christmas bright,
Green cedar gives a spicy smell
On Christmas eve at night.
Green candles wear a joyous look,
Each with its golden light.
   Good holly, cedars,
   Candles gay!
   Come Christmas sprite!
   Come Christmas fay!
You’ve never known a brighter day
For joining childhood in its play!

(The Crisis, December 1925)

. . . . . . . . . .

Negro Street Serenade (in the South)

The quavering zigzag of the fiddle’s notes;
The thumping “tum-tum” of the banjo and guitar;
The gauzy quiver, flutter of the fiddle;
The measured muffled thud of that guitar!
And then a voice breaks forth—
Loose, careless, mellow—
A wealth of voice that rolls, soars,
Rolls and falls,
A reveling, rich voice,
Deeper than the banjo’s;
With more of melody than fiddles’ trebles,
Yet with that subtle minor trembling through 
Which shakes the viol’s slender vibrance
As the winds might—
And all of this out in a half-hushed autumn dusk!
The autumn air itself is tense, suspended,
And into this that most spontaneous song!
Which ripples on and floats and floats
Midst “thum” of banjo
And rhythmic background of that constant taut guitar,
And travels with the wavers of the fiddle,
To float and rise and rest with moon and star! 

(The Crisis, July 1926)

. . . . . . . . . .

Capriccio

When soft suns of autumn just mock with a shadow,
When thin wind of autumn light blows,
Aye, Swallow, I’d follow,
And follow and follow—
I’d follow the petals of rose!

(The Crisis, September 1926)

. . . . . . . . . .

Sun Disk

Grant old Egypt dead, what words shall thank thee
For the tenuous touch that carved the portion,
And wrought apart the place unchanging
That marks the dark man’s challenge
From the ancient world of art?
That winged sun has wended through the ages,
And known its shape on silk and blinding page;
Been inset with the gems of burning jewels
By artisans who swing again the disk
On wings outspread, which sweep e’en centuries by!
Signet of Ra that the swart Pharoahs singled,
“Sons of the sun,”
When time and the russet mummy are lost in abyss,
And symbols and sun disk shall no longer bind death
By mystical strands to the cycles of earth,
That wisdom supernal which made wise the Pharoahs,
Will judge generations more knowing than they,
Which bury themselves deep in His Life Eternal,
That fain would fold races in Infinity.

(The Carolina Magazine, May 1927)

. . . . . . . . .

Sassafras Tea

The sass’fras tea is red and clear
In my white china cup,
So pretty I keep peeping in
Before I drink it up.

I stir it with a silver spoon,
And sometimes I just hold
Al little tea inside the spoon,
Like it was lined with gold.

It makes me hungry just to smell
The nice hot sass’fras tea,
And that’s the one thing I really like
That they say’s good for me.

(Caroling Dusk: An Anthology of Verse by Negro Poets, edited by Countee Cullen, 1927)

. . . . . . . . .

Pansy

Oh, the blue blue bloom
On the velvet cheek
Of the little pansy’s face
That hides away so still and cool
In some soft garden place!
The tiger lily’s orange fires,
The red lights from the rose
Aren’t like the gloom on that blue cheek
Of the softest flower that grows!

(Caroling Dusk: An Anthology of Verse by Negro Poets, edited by Countee Cullen, 1927)

. . . . . . . . .

The Quilt

I have the greatest fun at night,
When casement windows are all bright.
I make believe each one’s a square
Of some great quilt up in the air.

The blocks of gold have black between,
Wherever only night is seen.
It surely makes a mammoth quilt-
With bits of dark and checks of gilt-
To cover up the tired day
In such a cozy sort of way.

(Caroling Dusk: An Anthology of Verse by Negro Poets, edited by Countee Cullen, 1927)

. . . . . . . . . .

Sky Pictures

Sometimes a right white mountain
Or great soft polar bear,
Or lazy little flocks of sheep
Move on in the blue air.
The mountains tear themselves like floss,
The bears all melt away.
The little sheep will drift apart
In such a sudden way.
And then new sheep and mountains come.
New polar bears appear
And roll and tumble on again
Up in the skies so clear.
The polar bears would like to get
Where polar bears belong.
The mountains try so hard to stand
In one place firm and strong.
The little sheep all want to stop
And pasture in the sky,
But never can these things be done,
Although they try and try!

(Caroling Dusk: An Anthology of Verse by Negro Poets, edited by Countee Cullen, 1927)

. . . . . . . . . .

The Baker’s Boy

The baker’s boy delivers loaves
All up and down our street.
His car is white, his clothes are white,
White to his very feet.
I wonder if he stays that way.
I don’t see how he does all day.
I’d like to watch him going home
When all the loaves are out.
His clothes must look quite different then,
At least I have no doubt.

(Caroling Dusk: An Anthology of Verse by Negro Poets, edited by Countee Cullen, 1927)

. . . . . . . . . .

At the Pool

Like to stand right still awhile
Beside some forest pool.
The reeds around it smell so fresh,
The waters look so cool!
Sometimes I just hop in and wade,
And have a lot of fun,
Playing with bugs that dart across
The water in the sun.
They lodge here at this little pool—
All sorts ef bugs and things
That hop about its shady banks,
Or dart along with wings,
Or ‘scamper on the water top,
As water-striders go,
Or strange back-swimmers upside down,
Using their legs to row,
Or the stiff, flashing dragon flies,
The gentle demoiselle,
The clumsy, sturdy water-bugs,
And scorpions as well,
That come on top to get fresh air
From homes beneath the pool,
Where water-boatmen have their nooks,
On pebbles, as a rule.
And then, behold! Kingfisher comes,
That great big royal bird!
To him what is the dragon fly
That. kept the pool life stirred?
Or water-tigers terrible
That murder bugs all day?
Kingfisher comes, and each of these
Would hide itself away!
He swoops and swallows what he will,
A stone-fly or a frog.
Wing’d things rush frightened through the air,
Others to hole and log.
The little pool that held them all
I watch grow very bare,
But fisher knows his hide and seek—
He’ll find some one somewhere!

(The Crisis, February 1927)

. . . . . . . . . .

Bluebird

I just heard your soft smothered voice today!
I’m sure you’ll flit on in your lightwinged way,
Unmindful, undreaming of me,
Who have not yet seen you in blue and brown, 
But just heard your lush notes drip down, drip down
As showers from the black ash tree.

(The Crisis, April 1927)

. . . . . . . . . .

The Lord

Bring to me your heart all bleeding
When have I been known to mock men’s tears,
To scoff at men because their hearts were full,
Despise them in their grief?
I am the Comforter.
I make the lilies.
I am the merciful.
Hope in me.
Bring unto me the wounds that throb,
The sorrows of which you would not whisper.
I have known tears myself.
Tears cannot anger me.

(The Crisis, May 1927)

. . . . . . . . . .

A Black Boy Dreams

I trot on with the silver streams,
And laugh and build my little dreams.
I trip on with the lively brooks
Through meadowland and wood.
Ha, ho! How merrily I run!
To dream and move along is fun.
I tread the meads of yesterday
Where once the Indians used to play.
The soil belonged to white men next…
How many changes it has known!
For now it is my father’s own!
I trot on with these silver streams, 
And laugh and build my little dreams,
Ha, ho, how merrily I run!
To dream yet move along is fun.

(The Crisis, October 1927)

The post 19 Poems by Effie Lee Newsome appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.

She was associated with other great minds and literary innovators of her time, like T.S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Sylvia Beach, Sinclair Lewis, Ezra Pound, and others.

“Love Songs,” a poem that first appeared in print in 1915, is among her best known works.

Analyses of “Love Songs” by Mina Loy:

• Maeera Schreiber on Love Songs / Songs to Joannes
• The Early Poetry of Mina Loy

. . . . . . . . . .

Learn more about Mina Loy
. . . . . . . . . . 

Love Songs by Mina Loy

I

Spawn of fantasies
Sifting the appraisable
Pig Cupid his rosy snout
Rooting erotic garbage
“Once upon a time”
Pulls a weed white star-topped
Among wild oats sown in mucous membrane
I would an eye in a Bengal light
Eternity in a sky-rocket
Constellations in an ocean
Whose rivers run no fresher
Than a trickle of saliva
 
These are suspect places
 
I must live in my lantern
Trimming subliminal flicker
Virginal to the bellows
Of experience
Colored glass.
 
 
II
 
At your mercy
Our Universe
Is only
A colorless onion
You derobe
Sheath by sheath
Remaining
A disheartening odour
About your nervy hands
 
 
III
 
Night
Heavy with shut-flower’s nightmares
———————————————
Noon
Curled to the solitaire
Core of the
Sun
 
 
IV
 
Evolution fall foul of
Sexual equality
Prettily miscalculate
Similitude
 
Unnatural selection
Breed such sons and daughters
As shall jibber at each other
Uninterpretable cryptonyms
Under the moon
 
Give them some way of braying brassily
For caressive calling
Or to homophonous hiccoughs
Transpose the laugh
Let them suppose that tears
Are snowdrops or molasses
Or anything
Than human insufficiences
Begging dorsal vertebrae
 
Let meeting be the turning
To the antipodean
And Form a blur
Anything
Than to seduce them
To the one
As simple satisfaction
For the other
 
V
 
Shuttle-cock and battle-door
A little pink-love
And feathers are strewn
 
VI
 
Let Joy go solace-winged
To flutter whom she may concern
 
VII
 
Once in a mezzanino
The starry ceiling
Vaulted an unimaginable family
Bird-like abortions
With human throats
And Wisdom’s eyes
Who wore lamp-shade red dresses
And woolen hair
 
One bore a baby
In a padded porte-enfant
Tied with a sarsenet ribbon
To her goose’s wings
 
But for the abominable shadows
I would have lived
Among their fearful furniture
To teach them to tell me their secrets
Before I guessed
— Sweeping the brood clean out
 
VIII
 
Midnight empties the street
— — — To the left a boy
— One wing has been washed in rain
The other will never be clean any more —
Pulling door-bells to remind
Those that are snug
To the right a haloed ascetic
Threading houses
Probes wounds for souls
— The poor can’t wash in hot water —
And I don’t know which turning to take —
 
IX
 
We might have coupled
In the bed-ridden monopoly of a moment
Or broken flesh with one another
At the profane communion table
Where wine is spill’t on promiscuous lips
 
We might have given birth to a butterfly
With the daily-news
Printed in blood on its wings
  
X
 
In some
Prenatal plagiarism
Foetal buffoons
Caught tricks
— — — — —
From archetypal pantomime
Stringing emotions
Looped aloft
— — — —
For the blind eyes
That Nature knows us with
And most of Nature is green
— — — — — — — — — — — —
 
XI
 
Green things grow
Salads
For the cerebral
Forager’s revival
And flowered flummery
Upon bossed bellies
Of mountains
Rolling in the sun
 
XII
 
Shedding our petty pruderies
From slit eyes
 
We sidle up
To Nature
— — — that irate pornographist
 
XIII
 
The wind stuffs the scum of the white street
Into my lungs and my nostrils
Exhilarated birds
Prolonging flight into the night
Never reaching — — — — —— — —

The post Love Songs by Mina Loy (1915) appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.