Page:Negro poets and their poems (IA negropoetstheirp00kerl).pdf/79

Rh verses that have the charm which Longfellow found in the simple and heartfelt lays of the humbler poet. From such a poem, entitled To My Grandmother, by Mae Smith Johnson, I take two stanzas, the first two as beautiful as the theme evoked:

You ’mind me of the winter’s eve When low the sinking sun Casts soft bright rays upon the snow And day, now almost done, In silence deep prepares to leave, And calmly waits the signal “Go.” Your eyes are faded vestal lights That once the hearth illumed, Where vestal virgins vigil kept, And budding virtue bloomed: Like stars that beam on summer nights, Your eyes, by joy and sorrow swept.

Less beautiful, less original, but in another way not less appealing, are these stanzas, also signed by an unknown name and taken from the Christmas number of a newspaper. They are the last stanzas but one of a poem entitled The Child Is Found, by Charles H. Este:

O hearts that mourn and sorrow so, That doubt the power of God, An angel now is bending low— To comfort as you plod.