Page:Negro poets and their poems (IA negropoetstheirp00kerl).pdf/170

148 Mrs. Dunbar-Nelson has not applied herself to poetry as she has to prose fiction. As a short-story writer she has special distinction.

Exquisite artistry in verse, with infallible poetic content, is exhibited in Mrs. Georgia Douglas Johnson’s The Heart of a Woman. It is also the saddest book produced by her race. Perfect lyrical notes, the most poignant pathos—that is an exact description of it. Triple bronze cannot armor any breast successfully against its appeal. For the heart that speaks here is a heart that has known its garden of sorrows, its Gethsemane. This is the harvest of her sorrows—dreams and songs, of which she comments:

The dreams of the dreamer Are life-drops that pass The break in the heart To the Soul’s hour-glass.