Longing
by Paul Laurence Dunbar
If you could sit with me beside
the sea to-day,
And whisper with me sweetest
dreaming o'er and o'er;
I think I should not find the
clouds so dim and gray,
And not so loud the waves com-
plaining at the shore.
If you could sit with me upon the
shore to-day,
And hold my hand in yours as in
the days of old,
I think I should not mind the chill
baptismal spray,
Nor find my hand and heart and
all the world so cold.
If you could walk with me upon
the strand to-day,
And tell me that my longing love
had won your own,
I think all my sad thoughts would
then be put away,
And I could give back laughter
for the Ocean's moan!
Paul Laurence Dunbar (June 27, 1872 - February 9, 1906) was a seminal African-American poet in the late 19th and early 20th century. Dunbar gained national recognition for his 1896 Lyrics of a Lowly Life. Born in Dayton, Ohio to parents who had escaped from slavery, Dunbar died from tuberculosis at 34.
Dunbar, Paul Laurence. "Longing." The Collected Poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar. Ed. Joanne M. Braxton. Charlottesville: Universty of Virginia Press, 1993. p. 21.
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