At the Spring Dawn
Angelina Weld Grinke

I watched the dawn come,
     Watched the spring dawn come,
And the red sun shouldered his way up
    Through the gray, through the blue,
Through the lilac mists.
The quiet of it! The goodness of it!
     And one bird awoke, sang, whirred
A blur moving black against the sun,
     Sang again--a far off.
And I stretched my arms to the redness of the sun,

Stretched to my fingertips,
     And I laughed.
Ah! It is good to be alive, good to love,

     At the dawn,
         At the spring dawn.

(At the Spring dawn appeared in Negro Poets and their
poems in 1923.) Angelina Grinke, born in Boston February 27,
1880, was a journalist and poet. Her work was collected in
several reviews and anthologies. She died October 1958.