Caroling Dusk/Sonnet

For other versions of this work, see Sonnet (Dunbar-Nelson).

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Snow in October

Caroling Dusk (1927)
edited by Countee Cullen

Sonnet by Alice Dunbar Nelson

I Sit and Sew

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Alice Dunbar Nelson4750427Caroling Dusk — Sonnet1927Countee Cullen

SONNET

I had no thought of violets of late,The wild, shy kind that spring beneath your feetIn wistful April days, when lovers mateAnd wander through the fields in raptures sweet.The thought of violets meant florists’ shops,And bows and pins, and perfumed papers fine;And garish lights, and mincing little fopsAnd cabarets and songs, and deadening wine.So far from sweet real things my thoughts had strayed,I had forgot wide fields, and clear brown streams;The perfect loveliness that God has made,—Wild violets shy and Heaven-mounting dreams.And now—unwittingly, you’ve made me dreamOf violets, and my soul’s forgotten gleam.