Deep in the Quiet Wood by James Weldon Johnson

March 14, 2015   Deep in the Quiet Wood   James Weldon Johnson

Are you bowed down in heart? Do you but hear the clashing discords and the din of life? Then come away, come to the peaceful wood, Here bathe your soul in silence. Listen! Now, From out the palpitating solitude Do you not catch, yet faint, elusive strains? They are above, around, within you, everywhere. Silently listen! Clear, and still more clear, they come. They bubble up in rippling notes, and swell in singing tones. Now let your soul run the whole gamut of the wondrous scale Until, responsive to the tonic chord, It touches the diapason of God’s grand cathedral organ, Filling earth for you with heavenly peace And holy harmonies.            This poem is in the public domain. About This Poem   “Deep in the Quiet Wood” was published in Johnson’s book Fifty Years & Other Poems (The Cornhill Company, 1917).   James Weldon Johnson was born on June 17, 1871, in Jacksonville, Florida. In 1920 he became the national organizer for the NAACP. His books include The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912) and Self-Determining Haiti (1920). He died on June 26, 1938. Photo credit: Carl Van Vechten Poetry by Johnson   Lift Every Voice and Sing: Selected Poems (Penguin Classics, 2000) "Song of Nature" by Ralph Waldo Emerson "The Gladness of Nature" by William Cullen Bryant "God’s World" by Edna St. Vincent Millay Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006,Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends.