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• 1 2024-02-03T08:02:27-05:00 Georgia Douglas Johnson, "An Autumn Love Cycle" (full text) (1928) 9 plain 2024-06-26T18:02:54-04:00 Georgia Douglas Johnson, An Autumn Love Cycle
  
  
  Harold Vinal, Limited
  New York
  1928
  
  
  This book is lovingly dedicated to Zona Gale whose appreciation, encouragement, and helopful criticism have so heartened me
  
  
  Privilege to reprint certain of these poems is through the courtesy of the editors of The Crisis, The Liberator, Telling Tales, The Sphinx, Music and Poetry, Messenger, Opportunity, and The Minaret. 
  
  
  Foreword by Alain Locke
  
  FOREWORD
  
  In the title of her first volume, The Heart of a Woman, Georgia Douglas Johnson chose with singular felicity, indeed with the felicity of instinct, her special domain in art. And as she proceeds with maturing power and courage of expression in this third volume, it becomes all the more apparent that the task which she has set herself is the documenting of the feminine heart. Any poetic expression of life from this point of view that achieves a genuine authenticity and sincerity of emotion is as welcome as it is rare. For the emotions of woman, time-old though they be and hackneyed over as in a sense they really are, are still but half expressed. They have yet to be carried beyond the platitudes and the sentimentalizations of a man-made tradition.
  
  Yet in the wholesome stripping off of mediaeval brocades and the laces of classic conceits, it has often occurred to us to question whether the imposition of futurist patterns and the cubist cut of the current intellectual modes has given us any more vital or adequate a revelation of the flesh and blood figure of the "eternal feminine."
  
  "Clothes are but clothes," as Carlyle would say: modern feminist realism has but overlaid the vitally human with another convention, and interposed another cloak. How long shall we make a sphinx of woman, who herself now yearns to throw off along with the mystery, the psychological vestments of disguise. Our author puts it pointedly in "Paradox,"-
  
  Alas! you love me better cold
  Strange as the pyramids of old
  Responselessly . . .
  So, like a veil, my poor disguise
  Is draped to save me from your eyes
  Deep challenges.
  Fain would I fling this robe aside
  And from you, in your bosom hide
  Eternally.
  
  Voicing this yearning of woman for candid self-expression, Mrs. Johnson invades the province where convention has been most tyrannous and inveterate,--the experience of love. And here she succeeds where others more doctrinally feminist than she have failed; for they in over-sophistication, in terror of platitudes and the commonplace, have stressed the bizarre, the exceptional, in one way or another have over-intellectualized their message nad overleapt the common elemental experience they would nevertheless express. Mrs. Johnson, on the contrary, in a simple declarative style, engages with an ingenuous declarative style, engages with ingenuous directness the moods and emotions of her themes. 
  
  Through you I entered Heaven and Hell 
  Knew rapture and despair.
  
  Here is the requisite touch, certainly for the experiences of the heart. Greater sophistication would spoil the message. Fortunately, to the gift on a lyric style, delicate in touch, rhapsodic in [t]one, authentic in timbre, there has been added a temperamental endowment of ardent sincerity of emotion, ingenuous candor of expression, and, happies of all for the particular task, a naive and unsophisticated spirit. 
  
  By way of a substantive message, Mrs. Johnson’s philosophy of life is simple, unpretentious, but wholesome and spiritually invigorating. On the one hand, she belongs with those who, under the leadership of Sara Teasdale, have been rediscovering the Sapphic cult of love as the ecstasy of life, that cult of enthusiasm which leaps over the dilemma of optimism and pessimism, and accepting the paradoxes, pulses in the immediacies of life and rejoices openly in th glory of experience. In a deeper and somewhat more individual message, upon which she only verges, and which we believe will later be her most mature and original contribution, Mrs. Johnson probes under the experiences of love to the underlying forces of natural instinct which so fatalistically control our lives. [Especially is this evident in her suggestion of the tragic poignancy of Motherhood, where the consummation of love seems also the expiation of passion, and where, between the antagonisms of the dual role of Mother and Lover, we may suspect the real dilemma of womanhood to life.]
  
  Whatever the philosophical yield, however, we are grateful for the prospect of such lyricism. Seeking a pure lyric gold, Mrs. Johnson has gone straight to the mine of the heart. She has dug patiently in the veins of her own subjective experience. What she has gleaned has been treasured for the joy of the search and for its own intrinsic worth, and not exploited for the values of show and applause. Above all, her material has been expressed with a candor that shows that she brings to the poetic field what it lacks most,-- the gift of the elemental touch. Few will deny that, with all its other excellences, the poetry of the generation needs just this touch o make it more vitally human and more spontaneously effective. 
  
  ALAIN LOCKE.
  Washington, D.C. 
  
  
  THE CYCLE
  
  I Closed My Shutters Fast Last Night
  
  I closed my shutters fast last night,
  Reluctantly and slow,
  So pleading was the purple sky
  With all the lights hung low;
  I left my lagging heart outside 
  Within the dark alone, 
  I heard it singing through the gloom
  A wordless, anguished tone.
  Upon my sleepless couch I lay 
  Until the tranquil morn
  Came through the silver silences
  To bring my heart forlorn,
  Restoring it with calm caress
  Unto its sheltered bower,
  While whispering: “Await, wait
  Your golden, perfect hour.”
  
  
  
  Footsteps
  
  Passing ever, early, late,
  No fond footsteps seek my gate,
  But down the winding road they wend
  To some other journey’s end.
  
  Yet,--I would not have them wait
  Here within my guarded gate,
  Certain footsteps I shall know,
  And for them I listen low!
  
  
  
  Oh Night of Love
  
  Oh night of love, your rapt ecstatic hours
  Were mine, the languor of their pale perfume
  Pervades me, kisses in a fountain-fire,
  Surround me,--fetter and consume.
  
  Oh night of love, your groves of strange content
  Project a thralldom over comind days;
  Exalted, derelict, and blind I went
  Unmindfully along Life’s misty ways. 
  
  
  
  Autumn
  
  Believe me–when I say
  That love like yours, at this belated hour,
  Overwhelms me,--
  Stills the fount of thought!
  I move as one new-born–
  And strange to swift transitions
  As from my prison door
  I gaze
  Into a blinding sunlight!
  
  
  
  Thralldom
  
  Your voice keeps ringing down the day
     In accents soft and mild,
     With which you have beguiled
     And wooed me as a child.
  
  Your presence bounds my every way
     And thrills me in its fold
     With phantom hands that hold
     Like cherished chains of gold. 
  
  
  
  Separation
  
  Within your pulsing day 
  There must be little space
  For visions of my face
  To lure your thoughts away.
  
  Yet, I would have it so,
  To be alone the pain
  That saddens love’s refrain.
  Pray God you never know!
  
  
  
  Proving
  
  Were you a leper bathed in wounds
     And by the world denied,
  I’d share your fatal exile
     As a privilege, with pride.
  
  You are the very sun, the moon,
     The starlight of my soul,
  The sounding motif of my heart 
     Its impetus and goal!
  
  
  
  Interim
  
  The days lie dark between our jeweled meetings
  Like wintry burials.
  
  My heart bows low before the cheerless hearth
  Until your voice rings through the gloom
  And bids me
  Wake!
  And live!
  
  
  
  
  Good-Bye
  
  Let’s say ‘Good-bye’
  Nor wait Love’s latest breath
  Poised now so lightly on the wing of Death,
  While yet within our eye one fervent gleam 
  Remains to hallow this, a passing dream:
  Yes, yes ‘Good-bye,’
  For it is best to part
  While Love’s low light still burns
  Within the heart!
  
  
  Love's Miracle
  
  So like a boundless, soundless sea
  The miracle of love to me
  With all the world a rosy dream
  Sailing upon a silver stream,
  While I, a fairy in mid-air,
  Am dancing, dancing everywhere.
  
  Hark! do you hear the thunder peal?
  I care not what it would reveal,
  Tomorrow will be yesterday
  When I am shivering and gray:
  
  I will not heed the prompter's ring
  Let others answer, I shall sing
  And dance the merrier--away!
  I'll live and live and live--today!
  
  
  
  A Paradox
  
  I know you love me better cold
  Strange as the pyramids of old
  Responselessly.
  but I am frail, and spent and weak
  With surging torrents that bespeak
  A living fire.
  So, like a veil, my poor disguise
  Is draped to save me from your eyes' 
  Deep challenges.
  Fain would I fling this robe aside
  And from you, in your bosom hide
  Eternally.
  Alas! you love me better cold
  Like frozen pyramids of old
  Unyieldingly? 
  
  
  How My Heart Sinks
  
  How my heart sinks when I behold the sad reflection of my face,
  A wan and wistful wound, wiht o, such meagre grace;
  How can you hold me dear withal and conjure charms withdrawn.
  Or does the Autumn twilight hold a charm unknown to dawn?
  
  Hold! Do not speak! some day perchance, I'll read the message dire
  Within the ashes of the flame, the aftermath of fire,
  Ere then perhaps I shall have found the highways of the soul
  Where one may read uncrucified, the blood-words of the scroll.
  Till then, uphold illusion's veil before my gaze the while
  That I may gather strength to fuse from agony, a smile! 
  
  
  To Time
  
  Day by day the threads of white
  Muliply, Oh! hour-glass!
  How passing swift your bright sands pass,
  Fain would I hold you,
  Linger, bide
  Until these surges shall subside,
  That sweep me forward unto bliss,
  Oh! charging sun, I bid you rest,
  Break not your arrow in my breast!
  
  
  Welt
  
  Would I might mend the fabric of my youth
  Which daily flaunts its tatters to my eyes, 
  Would I might compromise awhile with truth
  Until love's moon, now waxing, wanes and dies.
  
  For I would go a further while with you
  And draing this Cup of Joy so passing fair,
  Which meets my parching lips like cooling dew
  'Ere time has brush cold fingers through my hair.
  
  
  Review
  
  I fear my power impotent
  To hold you leal and full content,
  Some hapless look or word perchance
  Dispels the glamor of romance;
  I tremble lest some stranger fair
  Arrest you,--cause you to compare
  The meagre charms which I possess
  With some resplendent loveliness.
  
  How far removed from Youth's command
  The trembling sceptre in my hand,
  As miserly within the glass
  I mark Love's fleeting hours pass. 
  
  
  Illusion
  
  Oh! for the veils of my far-away youth,
  Shielding my heart from the blaze of the truth;
  Why did I stray from their foldings and grow
  Into the sadness that follows--to know.
  
  Impotent atom with desolate gaze
  Treading Life's treacherous, intricate maze--
  Oh for the veils, for the vails of my youth
  Shielding my heart from the blaze of the truth!
  
  
  Parody
  
  You came,
  The tapestries of love
  Were shining in the sun,
  My wishes settled down content
  About you as you stood. 
  I looked into your cryptic eyes
  And thought I understood;
  But no,--
  The splendor of your gaudy robe
  Grew dimmer day by day,
  I wondered,
  Searched within my soul to seize the mystery.
  The answer staggered me,
  Aghast,
  Like one at bay,
  I gazed with open eyes of thought upon you,
  God! 'twas true--
  A mockery, a parody, 
  Had come to me--in you!
  
  
  Delusion
  
  You gave me your hand,
  I held it to be
  The last word, the dear word,
  The soul's entity;
  I cherished it, treasured it,
  Only to find
  I held but a gauntlet--
  That I had been blind!
  
  
  Sunset
  
  And now-- 
  As one who closes up the house and goes uncaring where
  He may forget the scenes of home 'mid foreign climes and air,
  I bar the chamber of my heart and seal the past within
  To wander down the city's road amid the whirr and din.
  The long years seem impassable, the morning has no smile,
  With naught behind these barring doors and nothing else worth while,
  Like some lone pilgrim without hope, I stumble on my way, 
  Who lifts no futile plea for  sun, but asks for clouds less grey.
  
  
  Finis
  
  I looked death calmly in the face
  And placed my hand within his hand
  And said:
  "Come, come, let us away
  For I have lost the magic key
  Opening the portals of desire---
  My wishes cumber in the dust,
  And life is stagnant
           in
                    my
                              heart!
  
  
  CONTEMPLATION
  
  Ivy 
  
  I am a woman
  Which means
  I am insufficient
  I need---
  something to hold me
  Or perhaps uphold.
  I am a woman.
  
  Joy
  
  There's nothing certain, nothing sure
  Save sorrow. Fragile happiness
  Was never fashioned to endure;
  For joy repels the perfect claim
  And answers to no certain name;
  How furtively we scan the mist
  Perchance amid the gloom to find
  Some moments rare and rapture-kist.
  
  
  One Day
  
  God-by dear day of sunshine, rain
  In flooding torrents pours
  Its liquid footsteps on my roof,
  Its fingers on my doors.
  
  While I sit tranquilly within
  And tell my beads of joy,
  Holding a peace within my heart
  Which nothing can destroy. 
  
  
  Attar
  
  Fire---tears---
  And the torture-chamber,
  With the last maddening  turn of the screw---
  Only thus
  Is one precious drop distilled 
  Of the attar of rose
  Of the heart.
  
  
  Youth's Progeny
  
  Oh the sad little dreams of the dime yesteryear
  Lying cold, still and stark in the dust of their bier,
  How the hear hurries back, all the long weary way,
  Just to bid them good-night at the close of the day.
  
  
  I Wnder
  
  I wonder---
        as I see them pass unheeded down the way,
  (The women who were once beloved, imperious and gay)
  Holding with frail, pale hands the cup
  Of Life's discarded wine
  If memories 
  Are bliss enough
  To make the dregs---divine!
  
  
  Values
  
  All the pretty baubles spread
  Are not the answer to my need,
  These tinseled trappings but beguile
  This journeying, while deep within
  A want unspeakable resides,
  That throbs and throbs unceasingly,---
  So hungering,--- no banquet spread
  Can tempt it, and no golden wine
  Make it forget: I balance it---
  The world flies upward in the scale!
  Always, unsoothed, unquieted,
  It aches and aches across the days
  And sears the nights that sum my life.
  
  
  Armageddon
  
  In the silence and the dark
  I fought with dragons;
  I was battered, beaten sore
  But rose again;
  On my knees I fought still rising
  In my pain;
  In the dark I fought with dragons.
  Weary tears
  Cease your flowing,
  Even now, the dawn appears!
  
  
  Le Soir
  
  Mute-lipped---
              unquestioning grim-visaged Fate,
  I cleave the shadows toward the Western Gate;
  And yet---
              my lagging heart still holds
  Mute-arms outstretched
  Unto earth's gleaming folds.
  
  Who knows? 
              perhaps Hop'es blossoms spray
  In lush profusion
  O'er the edge of day!
  
  
  Treasure
  
  What matters though love's dream shall pass,
  Since from the throbbing hour-glass
  One golden-throated moment prest
  Its attared incense to my breast.
  
  Since I have known the purple gleam
  That lifts above me---can I deem
  The way unlighted--when I go 
  Encircled by love's afterglow?
  
  
  Retrospection
  
  After all---
               mine is the joy
  Which naught can lessen or destroy.
  For love has led my flying feet
  Where immortelles are springing sweet,
  And everlasting skies of gold
  Are memories, when earth is cold
  And though our future paths should lie
  Estranged, as star-ways, through the sky,
  I shall not look reproof, nor find
  Within this pass a charge unkind,
  And lightly sorrow shall be met
  For I can never know regret. 
  
  
  INTERMEZZI
  
  Springtime
  
  Again it is the vibrant May,
     The bursting buds, the leafing trees,
     The fragrant, undulating breeze,
     Call to my heart in subtlest way:
     Come! come! it is a holiday.
  
  The stremlet with unending song,
     Beneath its silver veil of mist
     Seems flowing, flowing, to some tryst,
     While I---with inner surges strong,
     Find incomplete the day, and long.
  
  
  Destiny
  
  I know my love is seeing me
  As restless rivers seek the sea,
  Across the night, across the days
  That snare the intervening ways.
  
  I know my love is seeking me
  As Time must seek Eternity,
  When nights are very still I hear
  His footsteps, coming, coming near!
  
  
  Envoys
  
  Love calls me tonight
  In the beat of the rain
  Through the cold little drops
  On my bare window-pane;
  Calls and calls through the dark
  Like a whispered refrain
  Tapping soft on my heart
  Through the bare window pane. 
  
  
  I Want to Die While You Love Me

  I want to die while you love me,
     While yet you hold me fair,
  While laughter lies upon my lips
     And lights are in my hair.
   

  I want to die while you love me,
     And bear to that still bed,
  Your kisses turbulent, unspent
     To warm me when I’m dead.
   

  I want to die while you love me
     Oh, who would care to live
  Till love has nothing more to ask
     And nothing more to give?

  
  
  Ecstasy
  
  Not less than this, beloved,
  This beaming, highmost ray
  That sweeps in royal splendor
  Across our perfect day.
  
  Not less than this,---far rather 
  That we should say 'adieu,'
  With every rose in Eden
  Abloom for me and you.
  
  
  Pledge
  
  With kisses I'll awake you love
  So tenderly at morn,
  The pledges of my fealty
  Diunally reborn.
  
  We'll thread life's way together love,
  And when the fading light
  Dips softly over western hills
  I'll kiss your eyes good-night.
  
  
  Your Eyes
  
  Your eyes---
  Dark pools, so calm and deep,
  A thousand ages in them sleep,
  A dreaming world within them lies,
  And all my hopes 
  Of paradise!
  
  
  
  Amour
  
  Kis me!
  And let the hours bloom triumphantly 
  Before life's little sun has set
  And I am old.
  
  Love me!
  The day is fleet
  And I . . . .
  Am far too passionate 
  To die!
  
  
  Finality
  
  When love's triumphant day is done,
  Go forward! leave me to the night
  Beneath the coldly staring stars,
  The waiting winter and its blight.
  
  For I would never hold the heart
  That mutely quivers to be free,
  Unfurl your restless wings--away!
  And leave the emptiness to me. 
  
  
  In Love
  
  I lived in Hell the other day
  Its fires wrapt me angrily,
  But now their horrors fall and fade
  Like ghosts that memory has made.
  
  I lived in Hell even today,
  How sift the fierce flames die away---
  Submerged with kisses, I forget,
  With tears upon my pillows yet.
  
  
  Fiction
  
  Ah! love!
  I shall not seek to penetrate
  Your webbed gauze 
  Nor tease my heart
  By queries deep,
  But hold you tenderly;
  The day is evening,
  And I must cull my flowers
  'Ere dark.
  
  
  Dead Days
  
  Dead days of rapture and espair
     I would your hours exhume,
  Renew their wildness once again
     Their rigors and perfume.
  
  
  PENSEROSO
  
  Break, Break My Heart
  
  Break, break my heart
  For love is done,
  The pale light trails the dying sun---
  And night awaits--no hope---no stars
  Darkness
  Hide my scars!
  
  
  Little King
  
  From worshipping I now arise
  Stunned and aghast, with opoen eyes
  I see the real, the little you
  I thought so gallant, brave and true.
  
  A pity yet is mine, I fear,
  Since wherefore comes this falling tear,
  For none among your fawning throng
  Will love you well, nor love you long.
  
  
  Romance
  
  When I was young
               I used to say:
  romance will come risding by
  And I shall surely smile
  And play with him awhile.
  
  When I grew older
               then I said:
  romance may come riding by
  I wonder shall I smile
  And play with him awhile?
  
  But now---
               Alas! I only say:
  Romance never will come by
  And I shall never smile
  He has been dead the while!
  
  
  Falling Gods
  
  Confusion, desuetude and gloom,
     The travailing of sound,
  Fell desolation in my soul,
     And agony profound;
  The gods are falling heavily
     And for all time to be,
  And never more my heart shall know
     A shrine to Deity!
  
  
  Armour
  
  You cannot hurt me any more
     For I am armored now
  And I can look into your face
     With cool, unfevered brow.
  
  The tranquil river meets the sea,
     My life flows on at rest,
  Unurged, untorn, but oh, my God!
     I love the old way best!
  
  
  Divide
  
  Your lightes breath may fan my cheek
  Your whisper stir me when you speak,
  And yet---
  The teeming planets play
  Between your heart---and mine
  Today.
  
  
  Return
  
  Now, 
  Like the pines intoning
  Though some solitary gloom
  My errant throughts go pattering
  About love's ancient tomb,
  And though no breath of incense rare
  Lies round the shattered cup,
  A banquet weird, the fragments
  Where the ghost of love 
  May sup.
  
  
  Song of the Sinner
  
  Just a bit of ashes
  Grey, grey ashes---spent---
  God! how fierce the fires burned
  Down to this continent.
  
  Just a bit of ashes, 
  Not a single spark
  Lives in this residuum
  Crumbling cold and dark.
  
  Just a bit of ashes---
  To the judgment day,
  I go with my memories---
  Pray, sweet virgin, pray!
  
  
  
  Celibacy
  
  Where is the love that might have been
  flung to the far ends of Earth?
  In my body stamping around,
  In my body like a hound
  Leashed and restless---
  Biding time!
  
  
  
  CADENCE
  
  Offering
  
  I seek no tokens of you dear
     I only ask to give
  The purple flower of my heart
     And you will let it live.
  
  I ask no fealty or plight,
     I only pray that you
  May find earth's barren places bright
     Perhaps, because it grew.
  
  And when for you the final sun
     Moves toward the darkening West,
  I shall be lingering to place
     Love's flower on your breast. 
  
  
  Estrangement
  
  Some day I shall be dead, and pride
     Which kept me from your feet,
  Shall be the burden of the song
     My cold lips shall repeat.
  
  And some day when you too shall find
     A pillow in the sod,
  Would you then spurn an hour with me
     Above---where daisies nod?
  
  
  Recessional 
  
  Consider me a memory---a dream
  That passed away,
  Or yet, a flower that has blown and shattered---
  In a day;
  For passion sleeps, alas, and keeps no vigil
  With the years,
  And wakens to no conjuring
  Of orison or tears.
  
  Consider me a melody 
  That served its simple turn,
  Or but the residue of fire
  That settles in the urn,
  For love defies puring reasoning
  And undeterred flows
  Within---without 
  The vassal heart!
  Its reasoning---
  Who knows? 
  
  
  Sepulchre
  
  I have mounded the corpse of my sorrow
     And wreathed it with roses fair
  That none who may pass on the morrow
     May know what lies buried there. 
  
  
  Curtain 
  
  When one has lived
  'Tis not so hard
  To fold the hands,
  To say, "Good-night,"
  and creep away 
  Behind the dark:
  But 'tis not strange
  The heart rebels
  When sounds of night 
  Ring down the day
  That was a weary, joyless way
  From early dawn
  To setting sun:
  How eagerly we trail the light
  For crumbs of happiness we fend,
  And struggle, struggle---to the end!
  
  
  
  Afterglow
  
  Through you I entered heaven and hell,
  Knew rapture and despair,
  I flitted 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 placide pool
  On evening's mellowed brow,
  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 world
  To live it all again!
  
  
  FINIS
  ​​​​​​​