Girl of Fifteen

James Weldon Johnson 1871 (Jacksonville) – 1938 (Wiscasset)



Girl of fifteen,
I see you each morning from my window
As you pass on your way to school.
I do more than see, I watch you.
I furtively draw the curtain aside.
And my heart leaps through my eyes
And follows you down the street;
Leaving me behind, half-hid
And wholly ashamed.

What holds me back,
Half-hid behind the curtains and wholly ashamed,
But my forty years beyond your fifteen?
Girl of fifteen, as you pass
There passes, too, a lightning flash of time
In which you lift those forty summers off my head,
And take those forty winters out of my heart.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

31 sec read
38

Quick analysis:

Scheme AXXXXXXXB XBAXXXX
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 547
Words 106
Stanzas 2
Stanza Lengths 9, 7

James Weldon Johnson

James Weldon Johnson was an American author, educator, lawyer, diplomat, songwriter, and early civil rights activist. Johnson is best remembered for his leadership within the NAACP as well as for his writing, which includes novels, poems, and anthologies. He was also the first African-American professor at New York University. Later in life he was a professor of creative literature and writing at Fisk University. more…

All James Weldon Johnson poems | James Weldon Johnson Books

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