Poem IndexFirst lines About

Tower

Langston Hughes (1901–1967) · 1930

Death is a tower
To which the soul ascends
To spend a meditative hour⁠—
That never ends.

Where this text comes from

First published in The Crisis (July 1930). [1]

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/langston-hughes_poetry, poetry.xhtml. Rights: public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931).

Earlier sources (53)

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Weary_Blues
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001021002
https://scalar.lehigh.edu/african-american-poetry-a-digital-anthology/langston-hughes-fine-clothes-to-the-jew-1927-full-text.1
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/003138045
https://archive.org/details/newnegrointerpre00unse
http://childlit.unl.edu/topics/edi.brownies.html
https://archive.org/details/the-brownies-book
https://archive.org/details/crisis2324dubo
https://archive.org/details/crisis2526dubo
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000502434
https://archive.org/details/sim_crisis_1926-10_32_6
https://archive.org/details/sim_crisis_1927-06_34_4
https://archive.org/details/sim_crisis_1927-07_34_5
https://archive.org/details/sim_crisis_1927-10_34_8
https://archive.org/details/sim_crisis_1927-11_34_9
https://archive.org/details/sim_crisis_1928-06_35_6
https://archive.org/details/sim_crisis_the-crisis_1930-07_37_7
https://archive.org/details/hughes_ny_amsterdam_1923-04-25
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008956003
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/006784879
https://archive.org/details/sim_opportunity-a-journal-of-negro-life_1925-03_3_27
https://archive.org/details/sim_opportunity-a-journal-of-negro-life_1925-06_3_30
https://archive.org/details/sim_opportunity-a-journal-of-negro-life_1926-05_4_41
https://archive.org/details/sim_opportunity-a-journal-of-negro-life_1926-10_4_46
https://archive.org/details/sim_opportunity-a-journal-of-negro-life_1927-03_5_3
https://archive.org/details/sim_opportunity-a-journal-of-negro-life_1927-06_5_6
https://archive.org/details/sim_opportunity-a-journal-of-negro-life_1927-12_5_12
https://archive.org/details/sim_opportunity-a-journal-of-negro-life_1930-06_8_6
https://archive.org/details/sim_opportunity-a-journal-of-negro-life_1930-12_8_12
https://archive.org/details/sim_political-affairs_1925-03_4_5
https://archive.org/details/sim_political-affairs_1925-04_4_6
https://archive.org/details/sim_political-affairs_1925-07_4_9
https://archive.org/details/langston_hughes_new_york_herald_tribune-1926-02-14
https://archive.org/details/014-lnn-1926-03-01-001-single
https://archive.org/details/014-lnn-1926-11-01-001-single
https://archive.org/details/014-lnn-1927-02-01-001-single
https://archive.org/details/014-lnn-1928-10-01-001-single
https://archive.org/details/lincoln-university-yearbook-1928
https://archive.org/details/sim_vanity-fair_1926-05_26_3
https://books.google.com/books?id=2dsqAQAAIAAJ
https://archive.org/details/palms_october_1926
https://archive.org/details/langston_hughes_palms_november_1926
https://archive.org/details/sim_poetry_1926-11_29_2
https://archive.org/details/v01n05-sep-1926-New-Masses/v02n02-dec-1926-New-Masses
https://archive.org/details/v01n05-sep-1926-New-Masses/v03n10-feb-1928-New-Masses
https://archive.org/details/v01n05-sep-1926-New-Masses/v06n07-dec-1930-New-Masses
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000520354
https://archive.org/details/ebonytopazcollec00unse
https://archive.org/details/carolinamagazine19261927
https://archive.org/details/harlem-1928-11
https://poets.org/poet/langston-hughes
https://www.poetrynook.com/poet/langston-hughes
https://scalar.lehigh.edu/african-american-poetry-a-digital-anthology/langston-hughes-poems-published-in-the-crisis-1921-1926

This poem as JSON or plain text. Line anchors #L1–#L4.

Cite this poem

Langston Hughes (1901–1967). “Tower.” First published in The Crisis (July 1930). Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/langston-hughes/tower/. Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.

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