Edward Smyth Jones Poetry

Edward Smyth Jones (1881–1968) was an African-American poet born to formerly enslaved parents in Natchez, Mississippi. Jones sought education, attending Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College and later making an ambitious journey to Harvard, where he was briefly jailed for vagrancy.

Jones published several poetry collections, including “The Rose That Bloometh in My Heart” and “The Sylvan Cabin”, known for its tribute to Abraham Lincoln. His work was praised for its use of Standard English rather than dialect and was included in significant anthologies like James Weldon Johnson’s “The Book of American Negro Poetry”.

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A Bouquet

‘A Bouquet’ preserves and communicates the devoted affections of its speaker via an offering of resplendent flowers.

In this poem, Edward Smyth Jones employs lush floral imagery to symbolize the sincerity and depth of love in a style reminiscent of romantic poets. The bouquet initially represents universal love, before becoming an intimate sign of the pair's emotional bond; while the wreath imbues it with a sense of continuity and commitment. Alongside the rhyming couplets that link the poem's message of devotional love, these earnest verses by Jones are defined by their lucid truthfulness.

A blossom pink, a blossom blue,

Make all there is in love so true.

'Tis fit, methinks, my heart to move,

To give it thee, sweet girl, I love!

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