Rhapsody
I am glad daylong for the gift of song,
For time and change and sorrow;
For the sunset wings and the world-end things
Which hang on the edge of to-morrow.
I am glad for my heart whose gates apart
Are the entrance-place of wonders,
Where dreams come in from the rush and din
Like sheep from the rains and thunders.
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I am glad daylong for the gift of song,
For time and change and sorrow;
For the sunset wings and the world-end things
Which hang on the edge of to-morrow.
I am glad for my heart whose gates apart
Are the entrance-place of wonders,
Where dreams come in from the rush and din
Like sheep from the rains and thunders.
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Hello Friends,
I apologize for falling a little behind on the poem-a-days! The trip back from Austin really wore me out. But I’m back in DC now and catching up.
Our poem-a-day for April 4 comes from William Stanley Braithwaite, a self-educated African-American writer who self-published his first poetry collection Lyrics of Love and Life (containing this poem) in 1904. Among his many accomplishments, Braithwaite was a well-known literary critic, founded his own publishing firm, and was a professor of creative writing at Atlanta University.
For me, one of the important things about this poem is that Braithwaite is ‘glad’ not only for more traditionally happy things like “song” and “sunset” but also gives equal weight to “sorrow” and “world-end things.” The second quatrain could be read as showing that we only really experience “wonders” when a heart and dreams have experienced “rush and din” or “rains and thunders.”
Did you notice “Rhapsody” is not only about “the gift of song” but has a sing-song rhythm? This poem also makes me wonder how far back the literary association between sleep and sheep goes — does anyone know? I’m not convinced by any of the initial Wikipedia-type answers. Anyway, I love this image of sheep as dreams, and sleep as the shelter for those sheep; I’ve never heard that expressed quite how Braithwaite puts it in this poem.
— Ellen