Little Grey Dreams
Little grey dreams,
I sit at the ocean’s edge,
At the grey ocean’s edge,
With you in my lap.
I launch you, one by one,
And one by one,
Little grey dreams,
Under the grey, grey, clouds,
Out on the grey, grey, sea,
You go sailing away,
From my empty lap,
Little grey dreams.
Sailing! Sailing!
Into the black,
At the horizon’s edge.
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on June 26, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.
“Little Grey Dreams” appeared in the January 1924 issue of Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life.
Angelina Weld Grimké
Angelina Weld Grimké was born in Boston on February 27, 1880. She was the daughter of Archibald Grimké, who had been born a slave in Charleston, South Carolina, and Sarah Stanley Grimké, a white woman and the daughter of an abolitionist. Named after her great-aunt, the abolitionist and suffragist, Angelina Grimké Weld, Grimké grew up in liberal, aristocratic Boston society. She attended the best preparatory schools in Massachusetts, including Cushing Academy and the now defunct Carleton School.