Page:Negro poets and their poems (IA negropoetstheirp00kerl).pdf/178

156 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.

Who can fathom to its depths the heart of womanhood? Under the conditions of American