age, his past experiences, or physical characteristics, the true lover becomes an abstract
creature, as shriven and innocent as at the day of his birth—or death . . .
Consider me a melody
That serves its simple turn,
Or but the residue of fire
That settles in the urn . . .
You will know that such snatches of song are unfair to the singer, but this, and more,
Mrs. Johnson has poignantly lineated and set down for whatever God blessed folk remain in
this hard-boiled day.
Anne Spencer, [Review of An Autumn Love Cycle], Crisis 36,
No.3 (March 1929): 87
Marita Odette Bonner
It will have to be the old figure, I guess. It will have to be the figure of
fire.—Love is fire.—But surely it is a fire.—Love must be a fire, lit in
the beginning to warm us, to light us, to circle us in completely from the iciness of the
Struggle—during our Night-of-passage. In Youth, love is a flame mad and consuming,
licking out to eat up Ideas and Ideals, true and false alike.
In Autumn, love is a smoldering fire. A yellow flame burning thinly here, a blue flame
pouring steadily there, a red glow everywhere underneath the coals. A red glow smoldering
under the coals, that must soon be covered with ashes from the Night.
In Autumn—a smoldering fire. Afire smoldering with yellow and blue jets. Yellow
jets. Reflections of other flames. Yellow jets:
Oh night of love,
Your rapt ecstatic hours were mine.
Blue, steady, and a red glow all through:—
Would I might mend
the fabric of my youth
For I would go a further while with you
And drain the cup of Joy.
It is all there. The ashes of experiences burnt through, scorched through and become
New "Welt," "Illusion," "Parody," "Delusion,"
–Steadily—
And all through the Autumn Love Cycle you feel there glows before you, a
life that has leapt eagerly to embrace all living, all loving. There is no forced
pretences at flights of emotion here—no sycophant, sexual, blue wailings. (. . .)
Truly it is a fire that has burned steadily, bravely, unflinchingly. Surely here is a
life lived steadily, a life lived whole.
Sticklers with their noses lowered to root out flaws might fail to see the steadiness,
the wholeness sometimes when everything seems to sink suddenly laden with the heavy
ornateness of the good old language of the nineteenth century. But there will always be
rooters for flaws and sticklers for words and seekers for form-divorced-from content. And
there will always be content—Life and Love whether it marches proudly and
aristocratically in flawless form—whether it labors and heaves under a tangle of
rocks and weeds.
And the Autumn Love Cycle swings completely—swings fully—glows with a
reality that burns off any slight dross, any shade of imperfection and makes you draw deep
scorching breath and say,
Is this what it is to be—
if you are young.
—If you are old—and if you are old—I guess you know that the fire of
love even burns ashes.
Marita Odette Bonner, [Review of An Autumn Love Cycle],
Opportunity 7, No.4 (April 1929): l30
Benjamin Brawley
Georgia Douglas was a teacher in Atlanta before becoming, in 1903, the wife of
Henry Lincoln Johnson, later recorder of deeds in the District of Columbia. She is the
author of three small volumes, The Heart of a Woman (1918), Bronze (1922),
and An Autumn Love Cycle (1928). While much of her work transcends
the bounds of race, her second booklet was dominated by the striving of the Negro; and her
sympathy may also be seen in such a later poem as "Old Black Men."
They have dreamed as young men dream
Of glory, love and power;
They have hoped as youth will hope
Of life’s sun-minted hour.
They have seen as others saw
Their bubbles burst in air,
And they have learned to live it down
As though they did not care.
In her earlier work Mrs. Johnson cultivated especially the poignant, sharply chiselled
lyric that became so popular with Sara Teasdale and some other writers a decade or two
ago. Later, however, there came into bet verse a deeper, a more mellow note, as in "I
Closed My Shutters Fast Last Night."
I closed my shutters fast last night,
Reluctantly and slow,
So pleading was the purple sky
With all the lights hung low;
I left my lagging heart outside
Within the dark alone,
I heard it singing through the gloom
A wordless, anguished tone.
Upon my sleepless couch I lay
Until the tranquil morn
Came through the silver silences
To bring my heart forlorn,
Restoring it with calm caress
Unto its sheltered bower,
While whispering, "Await, await
Your golden, perfect hour."
Benjamin Brawley, The Negro Genius (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1937), pp.
219-20
366