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1910s African American Poem Seasons

O Autumn, Autumn!

O Autumn, Autumn!

By Mary Effie Lee
Annotations by Rene Marzuk
William Henry Holmes. Autumn Tangle. Watercolor, 1920, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Florence Deakins Becker. Public domain. 
O Autumn, Autumn! O pensive light and wistful sound!
Gold-haunted sky, green-haunted ground!
When, wan, the dead leaves flutter by
Deserted realms of butterfly!
When robins band themselves together
To seek the soul of sun-steeped weather;
And all of summer’s largesse goes
For lands of olive and the rose!
LEE, MARY EFFIE. “O AUTUMN, AUTUMN!” THE CRISIS 16, NO. 6 (OCTOBER 1918): 269.

Contexts

Mary Effie Lee kept contributing to The Crisis as Mary Lee Newsome after her wedding to Rev. H. N. Newsome of Selma, Alabama, in 1920. She was one of the African American poets who wrote primarily for children. The Envious Lobster also contains selections from Gladiola Garden, her one volume of poetry.

Starting in 1912, the October issues of The Crisis, the official magazine of the NAACP, were dedicated to children. A typical edition of these children’s numbers would contain a special editorial piece and two or three literary works specifically for children, while still including the serious pieces about contemporary issues with a focus on race that The Crisis was known for. These October numbers were sprinkled with children’s photographs sent in by the readers.

In his first editorial for the Children’s number in 1912, W. E. B. Du Bois wrote that “there is a sense in which all numbers and all words of a magazine of ideas myst point to the child—to that vast immortality and wide sweep and infinite possibility which the child represents.”

The success of The Crisis’ children’s number led to the standalone The Brownies’ Book, a monthly magazine for African American children that circulated from January 1920 to December 1921 under the editorship of Du Bois, Augustus Granville Dill, and Jessie Fauset.

Definitions from Oxford English Dictionary:

  • haunted: Frequented or much visited by spirits, imaginary beings, apparitions, spectres, etc.
  • largesse: The willingness to spend freely; (the virtue of) generosity; liberality, munificence.
  • wan: Lacking light, or lustre; dark-hued, dusky, gloomy, dark. Obsolete. Chiefly poetic.

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