Countee Cullen, "Copper Sun" (1927) (full text)
By
Countee Cullen
Author of "Color" and "The Ballad of the Brown Girl"
WITH DECORATIONS BY
CHARLES CULLEN
Harper & Brothers, Publishers
New York and London
Mcmxxvii
COPPER SUN
* * *
Copyright, 1927, by Harper & Brothers
Printed in the United States of America
* * *
To the Not Impossible Her
Acknowledgments
TO
Harper's Magazine
Poetry: A Magazine of Verse
Opportunity: Journal of Negro Life
Palms
The Crisis
Fire
Folio
Yule Tide Anthology
The Measure
Vanity Fair
Books of The New York Herald-Tribune
Foot Prints
The Conning Tower of the New York World
The Nation
The Bookman
The Carolina Magazine
acknowledgment is hereby made for permission to reprint certain poems that first appeared in these periodicals.
Contents
I. COLOR
From the dark tower
Threnody for a brown girl
Confession
Uncle Jim
Colored Blues Singer
Colors
The Litany of the Dark People
II. THE DEEP IN LOVE
pity the deep in love
one day we played a game
timid lover
nocturne
words to my love
en passant
variations on a theme
a song of sour grapes
in memoriam
lament
if love be staunch
the spark
song of the rejected lover
to one who was cruel
sonnet to a scornful lady
the love tree
III. AT CAMBRIDGE
the wind bloweth where it listeth
thoughts in a zoo
two thoughts of death
the poet puts his heart to school
love’s way
portrait of a lover
an old story
to lovers of earth: fair warning
IV. VARIA
in spite of death
cor cordium
lines to my father
protest
an epitaph
scandal and gossip
youth sings a song of rosebuds
hunger
lines to our elders
the poet
more than a fool’s song
and when i think
advice to a beauty
ultimatum
lines written in jerusalem
on the mediterranean sea
millennial
at the wailing wall in jerusalem
to endymion
epilogue
V. JUVENILIA
Open door
Disenchantment
Leaves
Song
The Touch
A poem once significant, now happily not
Under the mistletoe