Benjamin Griffith Brawley, "To One Untrue" (1906)
And all the many gilded nights full-blown
With murmured music and with whispered lays
Of never-ending faith, each in his own;
Oft have I revelled in the blissufl gaze
With which your heart would answer mine, full grown
With love, until a night (ah, me! our ways!)
When you for love gave laughter and a stone
For bread, comes up before me with its pain;
Then all the raging madness and the fret
And the hot flood of tears comes back again--
Comes back with all its bitterness, and yet--
The beauty and the music still remain,
Beauty and music I can ne'er forget.
Published in Voice of the Negro, May 1906