Surrender
We ask for peace. We, at the bound
O life, are weary of the round
In search of Truth. We know the quest
Is not for us, the vision blest
Is meant for other eyes. Uncrowned,
We go, with heads bowed to the ground,
And old hands, gnarled and hard and browned.
Let us forget the past unrest,—
We ask for peace.
Our strainéd ears are deaf,—no sound
May reach them more; no sight may wound
Our worn-out eyes. We gave our best,
And, while we totter down the West,
Unto that last, that open mound,—
We ask for peace.
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on February 8, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.
“Surrender” by Angelina Weld Grimké appears in the anthology Caroling Dusk: An Anthology of Verse by Negro Poets (Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1927), edited by Countee Cullen. In Selected Works of Angelina Weld Grimké (Oxford University Press, 1991), writer and scholar Carolivia Herron noted, “A large percentage of the Grimké poetic canon is indeed a record of her attempt to love and be loved by another woman. […] ‘To Joseph Lee,’ however, is an example of a small percentage of Grimké’s poetry that was written for occasions of celebration or commemoration. […] In addition, Grimké wrote and published several poems, such as ‘Tenebris’ and ‘Beware Lest He Awakes,’ that portray the African-American experience of racial pride, as well as reaction against and revenge for lynching and other racist acts within the United States.” Herron also noted that while most of the narrative personae who speak in Grimké’s poems about love, death, and grief are “quite frankly white and male,” Grimké’s focus in her prose works is more exclusively identified with the interests of African Americans.
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.