Georgia Douglas Johnson

Your world is as big as you make it.
I know, for I used to abide
In the narrowest nest in a corner,
My wings pressing close to my side.

But I sighted the distant horizon
Where the skyline encircled the sea
And I throbbed with a burning desire
To travel this immensity.

I battered the cordons around me
And cradled my wings on the breeze,
Then soared to the uttermost reaches
With rapture, with power, with ease!

The mother soothes her mantled child
With incantation sad and wild;
A deep compassion brims her eye
And stills upon her lips, the sigh.

Her thoughts are leaping down the years,
O'er branding bars, through seething tears,
Her heart is sandaling his feet
Adown the world's corroding street.

Then, with a start she dons a smile
His tender yearnings to beguile,
And only God will ever know
The wordless measure of her woe.

My joy leaps with your ecstasy,
    In sympathy divine;
The smiles that wreathe upon your lips,
    Find sentinels on mine:

Your lightest sigh I'm echoing,
    I tremble with your pain,
And all your tears are falling
    In my heart like bitter rain.