A New Kind of Literary Pulse

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Classics African American Literature 20th Century  1 min

Translation

Anne Spencer

Anne Spencer

Harlem Renaissance poet and activist Anne Bethel Scales Bannister Spencer was born on a Virginia farm in 1882. The daughter of former slaves, Spencer’s mother enrolled her in school for the first time when she was 11, at the Virginia Theological Seminary and College (now Virginia University of Lynchburg). Spencer’s poetry engages themes of religion, race, and the natural world. She was the first African American woman poet to be featured in the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry (1973).

We trekked into a far country,My friend and I.Our deeper content was never spoken,But each knew all the other said.He told me how calm his soul was laidBy the lack of anvil and strife.“The wooing kestrel,” I said, “mutes his mating-noteTo please the harmony of this sweet silence.”And when at the day’s endWe laid tired bodies ’gainstThe loose warm sands,And the air fleeced its particles for a coverlet;When star after star came outTo guard their lovers in oblivion —My soul so leapt that my evening prayerStole my morning song!