Caroling Dusk/From the Dark Tower

For other versions of this work, see From the Dark Tower.

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To Lovers of Earth: Fair Warning

Caroling Dusk (1927)
edited by Countee Cullen

From the Dark Tower by Countee Cullen

To John Keats, Poet, at Springtime

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Countee Cullen4757832Caroling Dusk — From the Dark Tower1927Countee Cullen

FROM THE DARK TOWER

We shall not always plant while others reapThe golden increment of bursting fruit,Not always countenance, abject and mute,That lesser men should hold their brothers cheap;Not everlastingly while others sleep Shall we beguile their limbs with mellow flute,Not always bend to some more subtle brute;We were not made eternally to weep.

The night whose sable breast relieves the starkWhite stars is no less lovely, being dark;And there are buds that cannot bloom at allIn light, but crumple, piteous, and fall;So in the dark we hide the heart that bleeds,And wait, and tend our agonizing seeds.