‘Hope.’

     

Hope.

Wild seas of tossing, writhing waves,
A wreck half-sinking in the tortuous gloom;
One man clings desperately, while Boreas raves,
   And helps to blot the rays of moon and star,
   Then comes a sudden flash of light, which gleams on shores afar.

Alice Dunbar-Nelson

Alice Ruth Moore Dunbar-Nelson was born on this date in 1875 in New Orleans. She graduated from Straight University in New Orleans and worked as an elementary teacher. She was a Harlem Renaissance poet, journalist, short-story writer, playwright, and activist for civil rights and women’s suffrage. Her works include Violets and Other Tales (The Monthly Review, 1895) and The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories (Dodd, Mead and Company, 1899). She married Paul Laurence Dunbar in 1898, though they later separated. She died September 18, 1935 in Philadelphia.

“Hope.” originally appeared in Violets and Other Tales.


Courtesy Academy of American Poets.

The Anchor and the Ark are emblems of a well grounded hope and a well spent life. They are emblematical of that Divine Ark, which bears us over this tempestuous sea of troubles, and the Anchor, which shall safely moor us in the peaceful harbor where the wicked cease from troubling, and weary are at rest.

Lecture of the MM°