Directions: Read the poem “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” Answer the questions below.
“National Hymn [Lift Every Voice and Sing]” by James Weldon Johnson
Written for the celebration of Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, Jacksonville Florida. 1900.
Lift every voice and sing
Till earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of liberty;
High as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us.
Let us march on till victory is won.
Bitter the chastening rod
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed!
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,
Till now we stand at last,
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.
Thou who hast brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who hast by thy might,
Keep us forever in the path we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places our God where we met thee,
Lest our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget thee;
Shadowed beneath thy hand,
True to our God, true to our Native land.
Johnson, James Weldon. “National Hymn [Lift Every Voice and Sing].” 1900. James Weldon
Johnson and Grace Nail Johnson Papers, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Web. Public domain.