Paean

Across the dewy lawn she treads
    Before the sun awakes
While lush, green grasses bow their heads
    To kiss the tracks she makes.

The violets, in clusters, stand
    And stare her beauty through,
And seem so happy in her hand,
    They know not what to do.

She must have come whence zephyrs blow,
    From sprites’ or angels’ lands;
Her heart is meet for God to know—
Oh, heaven is where she stands!

Credit

From Caroling Dusk (Harper & Brothers, 1927), edited by Countee Cullen. This poem is in the public domain.

Author

Jonathan Henderson Brooks

Jonathan Henderson Brooks was born on a farm near Lexington, Mississippi, in 1904. His parents divorced when he was eleven. Brooks’s four siblings—three sisters and a brother—went to live with their father, while Brooks remained with their mother. They subsisted as sharecroppers in Lexington, then Brooks left home to attend Jackson College. While there, he won first prize in a short story contest. In the fall of 1923, he entered Lincoln University in Missouri and graduated from its high school department in 1925. Brooks then enrolled at Tougaloo College in Jackson, Mississippi.

Date Published

01/01/1927