The Want of You
A hint of gold where the moon will be;
Through the flocking clouds just a star or two;
Leaf sounds, soft and wet and hushed,
And oh! the crying want of you.
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on February 23, 2020 by the Academy of American Poets.
“The Want of You” originally appeared in Negro Poets and Their Poems (Associated Publishers, 1923).
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.