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August 28, 2021

Promise

Georgia Douglas Johnson

Through the moil and the gloom they have issued
To the steps of the upwinding hill,
Where the sweet, dulcet pipes of tomorrow
In their preluding rhapsodies trill.

With a thud comes a stir in the bosom,
As there steals on the sight from afar,
Through a break of a cloud’s coiling shadow
The gleam of a bright morning star!

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on August 28, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.

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“Promise” appeared in Bronze: A Book of Verses (B.J. Brimmer Company, 1922).

Georgia Douglas Johnson was born in Atlanta, Georgia, in the late nineteenth century. An important figure of the Harlem Renaissance, her poetry collections include Bronze: A Book of Verses (B.J. Brimmer Company, 1922) and The Heart of a Woman and Other Poems (The Cornhill Company, 1918). She died in 1966.

Bronze: A Book of Verses
(B.J. Brimmer Company, 1922)

“The Promise of the Morning Star” by Amy Lowell
read more

“Hope.” by Alice Dunbar-Nelson
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.

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Poem-a-Day - "Promise" by Georgia Douglas Johnson

Promise

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