Poem-a-Day is reader-supported. Your gift today will help the Academy of American Poets continue to publish the work of 260 poets each year, and share this series with 300,000 readers every day.

August 14, 2021

Exile

Winifred Welles

I have made grief a gorgeous, queenly thing,
And worn my melancholy with an air.
My tears were big as stars to deck my hair,
My silence stunning as a sapphire ring.
Oh, more than any light the dark could fling
A glamour over me to make me rare,
Better than any color I could wear
The pearly grandeur that the shadows bring.
What is there left to joy for such as I?
What throne can dawn upraise for me who found
The dusk so royal and so rich a one?
Laughter will whirl and whistle on the sky—
Far from this riot I shall stand uncrowned,
Disrobed, bereft, an outcast in the sun.

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on August 14, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.

Subscribe to the Poem-a-Day Podcast

“Exile” appeared in The Hesitant Heart (B. W. Huebsch, 1919).

Winifred Welles was born around 1893. She authored many books of poetry and prose, including The Hesitant Heart (B. W. Huebsch, 1919); This Delicate Love (Viking, 1929); and The Lost Landscape: Some memories of a family and a town in Connecticut, 1659-1906 (Grey Walls Press, 1948). She died around 1939.

Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1920
(Small, Maynard & Company, 1920)

“Snow-Flakes” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
read more

“41 [No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,]” by Gerard Manley Hopkins
read more

Thanks to Kazim Ali, author of Northern Light: Power, Land, and the Memory of Water (Milkweed Editions, 2021), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month’s weekdays. Watch a Q&A about Ali’s curatorial approach and find out more about our guest editors for the year.

This free, daily series is made possible by our readers. If you’re able, please consider donating to support this work.

Become a monthly sustainer
join

Make a one-time gift
donate

The Academy of American Poets

75 Maiden Lane

St #901

New York, NY 10038

Add us to your address book

View this email in your browser

Want to change how you receive these emails?
You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list.

Poem-a-Day - "Exile" by Winifred Welles

Exile

Subscribe to the Poem-a-Day Podcast

Older messages

"A Fairy Tale of Blackboyhood" by Dāshaun Washington

"Interior" by Jada Renée Allen

"The One Mockingbird Only Sings at Night" by Hannah Sanghee Park

More Poems by the 2021 Poets Laureate Fellows, PEN America’s Women in Translation Month Reading, and more

"Poem for Rebecca Wight" by Rachel Moritz

You Might Also Like

Join the Men’s Health Membership Today and Lock In This Special Price.

Review: “A Very Nice Box”

This Is How Fashion Girls Wear Button-Down Shirts Right Now

What to Clean in Your Home After Someone Gets Sick

Dear Poet 2025 and MLK Jr. Day

Zendaya Served Carrie Bradshaw In A Tutu — With An Edgy Twist

‘My Divorced Dad Bought a House With His Secret Girlfriend’

Writing a Non-Fiction Book?

Win $50,000 cash and pay off your bills!

The Galaxians