15 Poems by Georgia Douglas Johnson

By Nava Atlas | On February 28, 2018 | Updated May 5, 2025 | Comments (4)

Georgia Douglas Johnson on the cover of The Crisis

Georgia Douglas Johnson’s first poems were published in the NAACP’s magazine, The Crisis, in 1916. She published four poetry collections: The Heart of a Woman (1918), Bronze (1922), An Autumn Love Cycle (1928), and after a long gap, Share My World (1962).

Though considered an important participant in the Harlem Renaissance movement, Georgia Douglas Johnson (1880 – 1966) was never a New York City resident. Georgia and her family lived in Washington, D.C. Their house on S Street NW came to be known as the “S Street Salon” — a satellite of sorts for writers of the movement visiting in the nation’s segregated capital.

Among the colleagues who were regular visitors were the leading lights of the Renaissance: Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, Alain Locke, and many of the noted women writers of the Harlem Renaissance.

As a person of mixed race, she addressed issues of bias and racism in her poems from a broad perspective. She also wrote many that were intensely personal. In particular, she explored the constraining roles of devoted wife and mother and how these clashed with the desire to be a creative artist.

Jessie Redmon Fauset, an important editor of the Harlem Renaissance era, and a poet in her own right, helped Georgia select the works for The Heart of a Woman collection. The Heart of a Woman, indeed, inspired Maya Angelou‘s memoir of the same title.

In addition to poetry, Georgia wrote nearly thirty plays. Though some of her work was destroyed around the time of her death, there was a large enough body left to confirm her contributions to the Harlem Renaissance movement.

The following poems are included in this listing:

Hope
The Heart of a Woman
My Little Dreams
Smothered Fires
Again it is the Vibrant May
Calling Dreams
Afterglow
Lost Illusions
Motherhood / Black Woman
Common Dust
Your World
Prejudice
Credo
Little Son
I Want to Die While You Love Me

. . . . . . . . .

See also:

The Heart of a Woman by Georgia Douglas Johnson (1918; full text)
Bronze by Georgia Douglas Johnson (1922; full text)
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Hope

Frail children of sorrow, dethroned by a hue,
The shadows are flecked by the rose sifting through,
The world has its motion, all things pass away;
No night is omnipotent, there must be day!
The oak tarries long in the depths of the seed
But swift is the season of nettle and weed,
Abide yet awhile in the mellowing shade
And rise with the hour for which you were made.
The cycle of seasons, the tidals of man,
Revolve in the orb of the infinite plan;
We move to the rhythm of ages long done,
And each has his hour — to dwell in the sun!

(The Crisis, October 1917)

. . . . . . . . .

The Heart of a Woman

The heart of a woman goes forth with the dawn,
As a lone bird, soft winging, so restlessly on,
Afar o’er life’s turrets and vales does it roam
In the wake of those echoes the heart calls home.
The heart of a woman falls back with the night,
And enters some alien cage in its plight,
And tries to forget it has dreamed of the stars
While it breaks, breaks, breaks on the sheltering bars.

(The Heart of a Woman and Other Poems by Georgia Douglas Johnson, 1918)

. . . . . . . . .

My Little Dreams

I’m folding up my little dreams
Within my heart tonight,
And praying I may soon forget
The torture of their sight.

For time’s deft fingers scroll my brow
With fell relentless art—
I’m folding up my little dreams
Tonight, within my heart.

(The Heart of a Woman and Other Poems by Georgia Douglas Johnson, 1918)

. . . . . . . . .

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 a dead.

At last the weary war was done,
The tapers were alight,
And with a sigh of victory
She breathed a soft—goodnight!

(The Heart of a Woman and Other Poems by Georgia Douglas Johnson, 1918)

. . . . . . . . .

Again it is the Vibrant May

Again it is the vibrant May,
The bursting buds, the leafing trees,
The toying fragrance of the breeze
Call to my heart in subtlest way,
Come! come, it is a holiday!

The streamlet with unending song,
Steals soft beneath a veiling mist,
As to some sweet alluring tryst —
While I, with inner surges strong,
Find incomplete the day, and long.

Again it is the vibrant May,
The Springtime feror mocks my pain,
For I am thrall to wintry rain–
Fain would I turn my eyes away,
For love alone brings holiday.

(The Crisis, May 1918)

. . . . . . . . .

Calling Dreams

The right to make my dreams come true,
I ask, nay, I demand of life,
Nor shall fate’s deadly contraband
Impede my steps, nor countermand;
Too long my heart against the ground
Has beat the dusty years around,
And now at length I rise! I wake!
And stride into the morning break!

(The Crisis, January 1920)

. . . . . . . . .

Afterglow

Through you, I entered heaven and hell,
Knew rapture and despair;
I vaunted o’er the plains of earth
And scaled each shining stair.
Drank deep the waters of content
And drained the cup of gall,
Was regal and was impotent,
Was suzerain and thrall:
Now by reflection’s placid pool,
At evening’s tranquil hour,
I smile across the backward way
And pledge anew, my vow:

For every glancing, golden gleam,
I offer, gladly, Pain;
And I would give a thousand worlds,
To live it all again.

(The Crisis, March 1920)

. . . . . . . . .

Lost Illusions

Oh, for the veils of my far away youth,
Shielding my heart from the blaze of the truth,
Why did I stray from their shelter and grow
Into the sadness that follows—to know!

Impotent atom with desolate gaze
Threading the tumult of hazardous ways—
Oh, for the veils, for the veils of my youth
Veils that hung low o’er the blaze of the truth!

(The Book of American Negro Poetry, edited by James Weldon Johnson, 1922)

. . . . . . . . . .

Motherhood / Black Woman

Don’t knock at the door, little child,
     I cannot let you in,
You know not what a world this is
     Of cruelty and sin.
Wait in the still eternity
     Until I come to you,
The world is cruel, cruel, child,
     I cannot let you in!

Don’t knock at my heart, little one,
     I cannot bear the pain
Of turning deaf-ear to your call
     Time and time again!
You do not know the monster men
     Inhabiting the earth,
Be still, be still, my precious child,
     I must not give you birth!

(Published as “Motherhood” in The Crisis, October 1922;
and as “Black Woman” in Bronze: A Book of Verse by Georgia Douglas Johnson, 1922)

. . . . . . . . . .

Common Dust

And who shall separate the dust
What later we shall be:
Whose keen discerning eye will scan
And solve the mystery?

The high, the low, the rich, the poor,
The black, the white, the red,
And all the chromatique between,
Of whom shall it be said:

Here lies the dust of Africa;
Here are the sons of Rome;
Here lies the one unlabelled,
The world at large his home!

Can one then separate the dust?
Will mankind lie apart,
When life has settled back again
The same as from the start?