Sterling Brown (Sterling A. Brown), "After the Storm" (1927)
By Sterling Brown
There is pathetic beauty in it all;
O’erhead the murky, sullen rainclouds pass,
The sun’s first darting rays have pierced the mass,
Just now so grim, so gray. Again the call
Is heard of storm-hushed robins. Maples-tall,
To show the regal silver of their class,
Rustle their thirst-slaked leaves and on the grass,
Drenched into higher colog, some last drops fall.
’Tis like that heart, whose happiness excelled
All others, which, with its gay threshold crossed
At last by sorrow’s gloom, has fitly learned
To stifle throes of pain, has ne’er rebelled
In angry bitterness, has merely turned
Gayness to pathos, with no beauty lost.
Published in The Crisis, April 1927