I’ve learned of life this bitter truth: Hope not between the crumbling walls Of mankind’s gratitude to find repose, But rather, Build within thy own soul Fortresses!
Where this text comes from
First published in The Messenger 6.11 (November 1924). Located in the issue scan at marxists.org, signed “GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON”, on the page whose running head reads “THE MESSENGER 359”, immediately after her “Romance”. All six lines agree with the corpus text. The month is not read off the page: the masthead leaf of this scan carries no text layer, so the issue’s date comes from the archive’s own listing of the file and from Lehigh, which agree. [1] [2]
Structure read from the source's markup; the words have not been compared against a page scan. Last checked 2026-08-12.
Taken from Standard Ebooks, standardebooks/georgia-douglas-johnson_poetry, poetry.xhtml. Rights: public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931).
Earlier sources (13)
This poem as JSON or plain text . Line anchors #L1–#L6.
Cite this poem
Georgia Douglas Johnson (1880?–1966).
“Lesson.” First published in The Messenger 6.11 (November 1924).
Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/georgia-douglas-johnson/lesson/.
Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.
More by Georgia Douglas Johnson