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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
James Weldon Johnson
James Weldon Johnson
James Weldon Johnson was born in 1871 in Jacksonville, Florida. He was encouraged to study English literature and the European musical tradition. He attended Atlanta University with the intention that the education...
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FURTHER READING
Other Sonnets
A Certain Slant of Sunlight
by Ted Berrigan
American Sonnet (10)
by Wanda Coleman
American Sonnet (35)
by Wanda Coleman
Anthem for Doomed Youth
by Wilfred Owen
Atlantis—A Lost Sonnet
by Eavan Boland
Autumn
by Richard Garcia
Death, be not proud (Holy Sonnet 10)
by John Donne
Discourse
by Forrest Hamer
History
by Robert Lowell
How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
My Letters! all dead paper... (Sonnet 28)
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun (Sonnet 130)
by William Shakespeare
Oil & Steel
by Henri Cole
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? (Sonnet 18)
by William Shakespeare
Shawl
by Albert Goldbarth
Silence
by Thomas Hood
Sonnet 1
by Gwendolyn Bennett
Sonnet 100
by Lord Brooke Fulke Greville
Sonnet 131
by Petrarch
Sonnet 6
by Rainer Maria Rilke
Sonnet [Nothing was ever what it claimed to be,]
by Karen Volkman
When I Consider How My Light Is Spent
by John Milton
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Mother Night  
by James Weldon Johnson

Eternities before the first-born day,
Or ere the first sun fledged his wings of flame,
Calm Night, the everlasting and the same,
A brooding mother over chaos lay.
And whirling suns shall blaze and then decay,
Shall run their fiery courses and then claim
The haven of the darkness whence they came;
Back to Nirvanic peace shall grope their way. 
  
So when my feeble sun of life burns out,
And sounded is the hour for my long sleep,
I shall, full weary of the feverish light,
Welcome the darkness without fear or doubt,
And heavy-lidded, I shall softly creep
Into the quiet bosom of the Night.



From The Book of American Negro Poetry, edited by James Weldon Johnson, published in 1922.
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