The wild flowers that she loved down green ways stray;
Her roses lift their wistful buds at dawn,
But not for eyes that loved them best;
Only her little pansies are all gone,
Some lying softly on her breast.
And flowers will bud and be
Until Eternity;
But she who loved them well has gone away.
Where has she gone? And who is there to say?
But this we know: her gentle spirit moves
And is where beauty never wanes,
Perchance by other streams, ’mid other groves;
And to us here, ah! she remains
A lovely memory
Until Eternity.
She came, she loved, and then she went away.
The subject of these beautiful memorial verses was not simply in feeling but in expression also a poet herself. From “A June Song” written by her I will take a stanza in evidence:
How shall we crown her bright young head?
Crown it with roses, rare and red;
Crown it with roses, creamy white,
As the lotus bloom that sweetens the night.
Crown it with roses as pink as shell
In which the voices of ocean dwell.
And a fairer queen
Shall ne’er be seen
Than our lovely, laughing June.
VI. Mrs. Anne Spencer
Who can fathom to its depths the heart of womanhood? Under the conditions of American
Mrs. Anne Spencer
life the Negro woman’s heart offers difficulties peculiar to itself. These various writers—talented, cultured, with the keen sensibilities of a specially sensitive people—have given us glimpses into some of the depths, not all. A poet of the other sex, Mr. McKay, with that divination which belongs to the poet, intimates in The Harlem Dancer, quoted on page 128, that the index of the heart is not always in the occupation or the face: