The Dreams of the Dreamer

The Dreams of the Dreamer
By Georgia Douglas Johnson
 
The dreams of the dreamer
Are life-drops that pass
The break in the heart
To the soul’s hour-glass.
 
The songs of the singer
Are tones that repeat
The cry of the heart
‘Till it ceases to beat
 
 
About the Poem
 
Georgia Douglas Johnson’s The Dreams of the Dreamer is a brief but piercing meditation on the power and fragility of artistic expression. The poem likens dreams to “life-drops” trickling through “the soul’s hour-glass,” evoking both the preciousness of our inner visions and the inevitability of time’s passing. Songs, meanwhile, are cast as echoes of the heart’s cry—repetitions of human longing that endure until life itself is spent. The economy of Johnson’s language underscores the intensity of her theme: art is not incidental, but essential, even when born out of sorrow.
 
Johnson begins with the figure of the “dreamer.” Dreams, she says, are like “life-drops”—fragile and fleeting, but essential, like water to the body. These dreams fall through “the soul’s hour-glass,” suggesting both the inevitability of time and the slow draining away of what sustains us. Dreams here are not idle fantasies, but pieces of the self—hopes and desires that slip away as the heart breaks.
 
In the second stanza, Johnson turns to the “singer.” The singer’s art is not mere entertainment but a repetition of the heart’s cry. Music is presented as a translation of sorrow, carried outward in tones until the very last beat of life. Just as dreams are vital but fragile, songs are beautiful but born of pain.
 
Read in the context of the Harlem Renaissance, the poem reflects how art and creativity served as lifelines in the face of systemic racism and social limitation. Dreams and songs became vessels through which Black artists preserved dignity and expressed pain, hope, and resilience. Johnson, like her contemporaries, understood that creativity was both survival and resistance.
 
At the same time, the poem resonates deeply with the experience of many LGBTQ+ people. For generations, queer lives have been marked by hidden dreams and muted songs—hopes often confined by the fear of rejection or the demands of conformity. The imagery of “life-drops” slipping away through the heart’s breaks speaks to the quiet toll of living unseen or unaccepted, while the idea of the singer repeating the heart’s cry “’till it ceases to beat” captures how art has so often been the only place queer voices could safely exist. For LGBTQ+ readers, Johnson’s words may echo the endurance of self-expression in the face of silence, shame, or erasure. The poem’s beauty lies in its universality: it honors both the dreamer and the singer as figures whose inner truths cannot be contained, even when the world would rather they be quiet.
 
 
About the Poet
 
Georgia Douglas Johnson (1880–1966) was one of the most important Black female voices of the Harlem Renaissance. Though she lived much of her life in Washington, D.C., her poetry and plays brought her into the circle of leading Renaissance figures such as Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen. Johnson published four volumes of poetry and numerous plays, many of which grappled with themes of racial injustice, gender roles, and the inner struggles of Black life in America. Her home became a meeting place for writers, activists, and intellectuals, known as the “S Street Salon.” Despite the obstacles she faced as a woman and as an African American, Johnson’s poetry endures for its lyrical precision and emotional honesty, capturing the complex textures of longing, loss, and resilience. 

Postscript: I have a lot of pictures of men in beds saved—some waiting in anticipation, some just waking up, some lying there wide-eyed, some alone, some with a partner. But none of them really felt like a dreamer. This one did. Something about the way he holds the bed linens, the calm on his face, the way he’s settled in—it just spoke of dreaming. Maybe you see that too, maybe you don’t. I could have picked someone daydreaming, but I kept coming back to this. Because while daydreams let us play with ideas, it’s in sleep that the truest longings surface, when our minds stop steering and let the dreams simply be. And maybe those are the real dreams of a dreamer.