Sonnet
I had no thought of violets of late,
The wild, shy kind that spring beneath your feet
In wistful April days, when lovers mate
And wander through the fields in raptures sweet.
The thought of violets meant florists’ shops,
And bows and pins, and perfumed papers fine;
And garish lights, and mincing little fops
And cabarets and songs, and deadening wine.
So far from sweet real things my thoughts had strayed,
I had forgot wide fields, and clear brown streams
The perfect loveliness that God has made,—
Wild violets shy and Heaven-mounting dreams.
And now—unwittingly, you’ve made me dream
Of violets, and my soul’s forgotten gleam.
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on September 6, 2015, by the Academy of American Poets.
“Sonnet” was published in The American Book of Negro Poetry (Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1922).
Alice Dunbar-Nelson
Alice Ruth Moore Dunbar-Nelson was born on July 19, 1875, in New Orleans. Her mother was Patricia Wright, a seamstress, and her father, Joseph Moore, was a merchant marine. Nelson earned a teaching degree at Straight University (now, Dillard University) in 1892 at age seventeen. She then taught in the local public school system as an elementary school teacher until 1931.