Expectancy
I do not care for sleep, I’ll wait awhile
For Love to come out of the darkness, wait
For laughter, gifted with the frequent fate
Of dusk-lit hope, to touch me with the smile
Of moon and star and joy of that last mile
Before I reach the sea. The ships are late
And mayhap laden with the precious freight
Dawn brings from Life’s eternal summer isle.
And should I find the sweeter fruits of dream—
The oranges of love and mating song—
I’ll laugh so true the morn will gayly seem
Endless and ships full laden with a throng
Of beauty, dreams and loves will come to me
Out of the surge of yonder silver sea.
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on February 9, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.
“Expectancy” by William Moore is featured in Negro Poets and Their Poems (The Associated Publishers, Inc., 1923), edited by Robert Thomas Kerlin. Kerlin, a civil rights activist and professor of English, noted about Moore’s work: “The productions I have seen in the Negro magazines and newspapers from William Moore’s pen give me the idea of a poet distinctly original and distinctly endowed with imagination. If there appears some obscurity in his poems let it not be too hastily set down against him as a fault. Some ideas are intrinsically obscure. The expression of them that should be lucid would be false, inadequate. Some poets there needs must be who, escaping from the inevitable, the commonplace, will transport us out into infinity to confront the eternal mysteries. Mr. Moore does this in two sonnets which I will give to represent his poetic work.”