1
Wilt thou go with me sweet maid 
Say maiden wilt thou go with me 
Through the valley-depths of shade, 
Of night and dark obscurity, 
Where the path has lost its way 
Where the sun forgets the day 
Where there’s nor life nor light to see 
Sweet maiden, wilt thou go with me? 
2
Where stones will turn to flooding streams 
Where plains will rise like ocean waves 
Where life will fade like visioned dreams 
And mountains darken into caves 
Say maiden wilt thou go with me 
Through this sad non-identity 
Where parents live and are forgot 
And sisters live and know us not? 
3
Say maiden wilt thou go with me 
In this strange death of life to be 
To live in death and be the same 
Without this life, or home, or name 
At once to be, and not to be 
That was, and is not—yet to see 
Things pass like shadows—and the sky 
Above, below, around us lie?  
4
The land of shadows wilt thou trace 
And look—nor know each other’s face, 
The present mixed with reasons gone 
And past, and present all as one. 
Say, maiden can thy life be led 
To join the living to the dead? 
Then trace thy footsteps on with me 
We’re wed to one eternity. 
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on October 23, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.
She
Who searched for lovers
In the night
Has gone the quiet way
Into the still,
Dark land of death
Beyond the rim of day.
Now like a little lonely waif
She walks
An endless street
And gives her kiss to nothingness.
Would God his lips were sweet!
From The Weary Blues (Alfred A. Knopf, 1926) by Langston Hughes. This poem is in the public domain.