Poem IndexFirst lines About

Winter Sweetness

Langston Hughes (1901–1967) · 1921

The little house is sugar,
Its roof with snow is piled,
And from its tiny window,
Peeps a maple-sugar child.

Where this text comes from

First published in The Brownies’ Book (January 1921). Located in the bound run of The Brownies’ Book on disk (Archive.org the-brownies-book): printed on page 27 of the issue whose masthead reads Vol. 2 No. 1, January 1921, Whole No. 13, and listed on that issue’s contents page. The October 1921 issue reprints it on page 293 with the credit “From Brownies’ Book, Jan., 1921.” [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
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https://archive.org/details/sim_crisis_1927-07_34_5
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https://archive.org/details/sim_opportunity-a-journal-of-negro-life_1927-03_5_3
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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
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https://archive.org/details/langston_hughes_new_york_herald_tribune-1926-02-14
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https://archive.org/details/014-lnn-1928-10-01-001-single
https://archive.org/details/lincoln-university-yearbook-1928
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https://books.google.com/books?id=2dsqAQAAIAAJ
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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
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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). “Winter Sweetness.” First published in The Brownies’ Book (January 1921). Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/langston-hughes/winter-sweetness/. Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.

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