A Selection of Poems by Alice Dunbar-Nelson

By Taylor Jasmine | On November 17, 2018 | Updated April 23, 2025 | Comments (0)

Alice Dunbar-Nelson (1875 – 1935; also known as Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson) was a multitalented writer, poet, journalist, and educator. Following is a selection of her later poems, post-dating her early collection Violets and Other Tales (1895).

In her writings, Dunbar-Nelson advocated for women, African Americans, and those of mixed heritage, as she was. Perhaps even more than for her well-regarded poetry, Dunbar-Nelson was known for her short stories and searingly honest essays, in which she expressed the challenges of growing up mixed race in Louisiana.

Her blended heritage of African American, Creole, European, and Native American roots gave her a broad perspective on race. She explored these themes in tandem with the varied and complex issues faced by women of color.

As her reputation grew, despite a brief and disastrous marriage to poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, (whose name she continued to use despite completely disassociating from him), she continued to explore sexism, racism, work, sexuality, and family in the various genres in which she wrote.

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See also: Early Poems of Alice Dunbar-Nelson
(from Violets and Other Tales)
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Violets and Other Tales, her first book, was a collection of poetry, essays, and short stories. Just twenty at the time of its publication in 1895, her writings were already flavored with feminism and social justice. The following poems contained in this sampling are all in the public domain:

• I Sit and Sew
• To Madame Curie
• To the Negro Farmers of the United States
• The Lights at Carney’s Point
• You! Inez!
• Sonnet
• Music
• Snow in October
• A Prayer
• The Proletariat Speaks

More about the life and poetry of Alice Dunbar-Nelson

• Poetry Foundation
• Georgetown University: Classroom Issues and Struggles
• Women Writers You Should Know
• This Harlem Renaissance Writer Seemed to Live an Ordinary Life

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Learn more about Alice Dunbar-Nelson

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I Sit and Sew

I sit and sew—a useless task it seems,
The panoply of war, the martial tred of men,
Grim-faced, stern-eyed, gazing beyond the ken
My hands grown tired, my head weighed down with dreams—
Of lesser souls, whose eyes have not seen Death,
Nor learned to hold their lives but as a breath—
But—I must sit and sew.

I sit and sew—my heart aches with desire—
That pageant terrible, that fiercely pouring fire
On wasted fields, and writhing grotesque things
Once men. My soul in pity flings
Appealing cries, yearning only to go
There in that holocaust of hell, those fields of woe—
But — I must sit and sew.

The little useless seam, the idle patch;
Why dream I here beneath my homely thatch,
When there they lie in sodden mud and rain,
Pitifully calling me, the quick ones and the slain?
You need me, Christ! It is no roseate dream
That beckons me—this pretty futile seam,
It stifles me—God, must I sit and sew?

(originally published in the AME Church Review in 1918, “I Sit and Sew” is one of Alice Dunbar-Nelson’s most anthologized poems. Here are several analyses of “I Sit and Sew”)

To Madame Curie

Oft have I thrilled at deeds of high emprise,
And yearned to venture into realms unknown,
Thrice blessed she, I deemed, whom God had shown
How to achieve great deeds in woman’s guise.
Yet what discov’ry by expectant eyes
Of foreign shores, could vision half the throne
Full gained by her, whose power fully grown
Exceeds the conquerors of th’ uncharted skies?
So would I be this woman whom the world
Avows its benefactor; nobler far,
Than Sybil, Joan, Sappho, or Egypt’s queen.
In the alembic forged her shafts and hurled
At pain, diseases, waging a humane war;
Greater than this achievement, none, I ween.

(originally published in The Philadelphia Public Ledger, August 21, 1921)

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To the Negro Farmers of the United States

God washes clean the souls and hearts of you,
His favored ones, whose backs bend o’er the soil,
Which grudging gives to them requite for toil
In sober graces and in vision true.
God places in your hands the pow’r to do
A service sweet. Your gift supreme to foil
The bare-fanged wolves of hunger in the moil
Of Life’s activities. Yet all too few
Your glorious band, clean sprung from Nature’s heart;
The hope of hungry thousands, in whose breast
Dwells fear that you should fail. God placed no dart
Of war within your hands, but pow’r to start
Tears, praise, love, joy, enwoven in a crest
To crown you glorious, brave ones of the soil.

(originally published in the Dunbar Speaker and Entertainer, 1920)

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The Lights at Carney’s Point

O white little lights at Carney’s Point,
    You shine so clear o’er the Delaware;
When the moon rides high in the silver sky,
     Then you gleam, white gems on the Delaware.
Diamond circlet on a full white throat,
     You laugh your rays on a questioning boat;
Is it peace you dream in your flashing gleam,
      O’er the quiet flow of the Delaware?
And the lights grew dim at the water’s brim,
      For the smoke of the mills shredded slow between;
And the smoke was red, as is new bloodshed,
     And the lights went lurid ’neath the livid screen.
O red little lights at Carney’s Point,
      You glower so grim o’er the Delaware;
When the moon hides low sombrous clouds below,
      Then you glow like coals o’er the Delaware.
Blood red rubies on a throat of fire,
      You flash through the dusk of a funeral pyre;
And there hearth fires red whom you fear and dread
      O’er the turgid flow of the Delaware?
And the lights gleamed gold o’er the river cold,
      For the murk of the furnace shed a copper veil;
And the veil was grim at the great cloud’s brim,
     And the lights went molten, now hot, now pale.
O gold little lights at Carney’s Point,
      You gleam so proud o’er the Delaware;
When the moon grows wan in the eastering dawn,
      Then you sparkle gold points o’er the Delaware.
Aureate filagree on a Croesus’ brow,
      You hasten the dawn on a gray ship’s prow.
Light you streams of gold in the grim ship’s hold
      O’er the sullen flow of the Delaware?
And the lights went gray in the ash of day,
      For a quiet Aurora brought a halcyon balm;
And the sun laughed high in the infinite sky,
     And the lights were forgot in the sweet, sane calm.

(originally published in the Dunbar Speaker and Entertainer, 1920)

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You! Inez!

Orange gleams athwart a crimson soul
Lambent flames; purple passion lurks
In your dusk eyes.
Red mouth; flower soft,
Your soul leaps up—and flashes
Star-like, white, flame-hot.
Curving arms, encircling a world of love,
You! Stirring the depths of passionate desire!

(from a Holograph manuscript, February 16, 1921)

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Sonnet

I had not thought of violets late,
The wild, shy kind that spring beneath your feet
In wistful April days, when lovers mate
And wander through the fields in raptures sweet.
The thought of violets meant florists’ shops,
And bows and pins, and perfumed papers fine;
And garish lights, and mincing little fops
And cabarets and soaps, and deadening wines.
So far from sweet real things my thoughts had strayed,
I had forgot wide fields; and clear brown streams;
The perfect loveliness that God has made,—
Wild violets shy and Heaven-mounting dreams.
And now—unwittingly, you’ve made me dream
Of violets, and my soul’s forgotten gleam.

(originally published in The Book of American Negro Poetry, 1922)

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Music

Music! Lilting, soft and languorous,
Crashing, splendid, thunderous,
Blare of trumpets, sob of violins,
Tinkle of lutes and mandolins;
Poetry of harps, rattle of castanets,
Heart-break of cellos, wood-winds in tender frets;
Orchestra, symphony, bird-song, flute;
Coronach of contraltos, shrill strings a-mute.
Sakuntala sobbing in the forest drear,
Melisande moaning in crescendic fear;
Splendor and tumult of the organs roll,
Heraldic trumpets pierce the inner soul;
Symphonic syncopation that Dvorak wove,
Valkyrie crashes when the Norse gods strove;
Salome’s triumph in grunt obscene,
Tschaikowsky peering through forest green;
Verdi’s high treble of saccharine sound,
Celeste! Miserere! Lost lovers found.
Music! With you, touching my finger-tips!
Music! With you, soul on your parted lips!
Music—is you!

(originally published in Opportunity 3, July 1925)

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Snow in October

Today I saw a thing of arresting poignant beauty:
A strong, young tree, brave, in its Autumn finery
Of scarlet and burnt umber and flame yellow,
Bending beneath a weight of early snow,
Which sheathed the north side of its slender trunk,
And spread a heavy white chilly afghan
Over its crested leaves.

Yet they thrust through, defiant, glowing,
Claiming the right to live another fortnight,
Clamoring that Indian Summer had not come,
Crying “Cheat! Cheat!” because Winter has stretched
Long chill fingers into the brown, streaming hair
Of fleeing October.

The film of snow shrouded the proud redness of the tree,
As premature grief grays the strong head
Of a virile, red-haired man.

(originally published in Caroling Dusk, edited by Countee Cullen, NY: Harper & Brothers, 1927)

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A Prayer

Lord, keep my soul from bitterness and sting,
My heart from searing scorch and crushing blight;
I would not, by my gloom, obscure the light
Which might illumine rocks where others cling.
Far better, Lord, my eager hands should bring
Some little gift with my heart’s blood a-dight,
To this great good. Ere I shall merge in night,

Let me not grovel, Lord, aloft, I’d sing.
For those who stand with twisted fear-clenched hands,
And heart’s red chalice brimming full of hate,
See life’s gold gates swing open far too late,
And peace go streaming by with hurried stare.
Far better ’twere to face the hoarse-voiced crowd,
And hoist love’s guidon in the turgid air.

(originally published in Carolina Magazine, May 1928)

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The Proletariat Speaks

I love beautiful things:
Great trees, bending green winged branches to a velvet lawn,
Fountains sparkling in white marble basins,
Cool fragrance of lilacs and roses and honeysuckle.

Or exotic blooms, filling the air with heart-contracting odors;
Spacious rooms, cool and gracious with statues and books,
Carven seats and tapestries, and old masters
Whose patina shows the wealth of centuries.

And so I work
In a dusty office, whose grimed windows
Look out in an alley of unbelievable squalor,
Where mangy cats, in their degradation, spurn
Swarming bits of meat and bread;
Where odors, vile and breathtaking, rise in fetid waves
Filling my nostrils, scorching my humid, bitter cheeks.

I love beautiful things:
Carven tables laid with lily-hued linen
And fragile china and sparkling iridescent glass;
Pale silver, etched with heraldries,
Where tender bits of regal dainties tempt,
And soft-stepped service anticipates the unspoken wish.

And so I eat
In the food-laden air of a greasy kitchen,
At an oil-clothed table:
Plate piled high with food that turns my head away,
Lest a squeamish stomach reject too soon
The lumpy gobs it never needed.
Or in a smoky cafeteria, balancing a slippery tray
To a table crowded with elbows
Which lately the bus boy wiped with a grimy rag.

I love beautiful things:
Soft linen sheets and silken coverlet,
Sweet cool of chamber opened wide to fragrant breeze;
Rose-shaded lamps and golden atomizers,
Spraying Parisian fragrance over my relaxed limbs,
Fresh from a white marble bath, and sweet cool spray.

And so I sleep
In a hot hall-room whose half opened window,
Unscreened, refuses to budge another inch;
Admits no air, only insects, and hot choking gasps,
That make me writhe, nun-like, in sack-cloth sheets and lumps
      of straw.
And then I rise
To fight my way to a dubious tub,
Whose tiny, tepid stream threatens to make me late;
And hurrying out, dab my unrefreshed face
With bits of toiletry from the ten cent store.

(originally published inThe Crisis, November 1929)

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An excellent resource: Shadowed Dreams: Women’s Poetry of the Harlem Renaissance,
edited by Maureen Honey (Rutgers University Press, 1989)

Categories: Poetry