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—goodnight!
Not without hurt to itself may the oyster produce its pearl. These poems from the heart of a woman remind me of nothing so much as a string of pearls. Each one is witness to a bruise or gash to the spirit. The lyric cry has not been more piercing in anything written on American soil, piercing all the more for the perfect restraint, the sure artistry. It was a heart surcharged with sorrow in which these pearls of poesy took shape from secret wounds. The heart of one woman speaks in them for thousands in America, else inarticulate. “We weep,” says the African proverb, “we weep in our hearts like the tortoise.” Without one word or hint of race in all the book there is yet between its covers the unwritten, unwritable tragedy of that borderland race which knows not where it belongs in the world, a truly homeless race in soul. A sadder book could hardly be.
Mrs. Georgia Douglas Johnson was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and received her academic education in Atlanta University and a musical education at Oberlin. She now lives in Washington, D. C. She is at the beginning of her career as an author. Two other books of lyrics, under the titles of An Autumn Love Cycle, and Bronze,[4] she has in preparation for the press at this time. Some of their contents have already appeared in magazines. These two new volumes will make an advance in power and in richness of content beyond The Heart of a Woman. They will also provide the key to the tragic mystery concealed in that book. A poem that is to appear in Bronze will be given in a later chapter. I will here give another. Both have already been published in magazines.
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 strangely 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.