Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing

Lift ev’ry voice and sing
Till earth and heaven ring.
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the list’ning 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.
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on till victory is won.

Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chast’ning rod.
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
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.

God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who has by Thy might
Led us into the light.
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,
May we forever stand.
True to our God
True to our native land.

Where this text comes from

First published in Sheet music, Joseph W. Stern & Co. (New York, 1900), headed “National Hymn for the Colored People of America”. This date is uncertain. Written for the Lincoln’s-birthday exercises at the Stanton School, Jacksonville, and first sung there in February 1900; the Library of Congress essay on the song dates the writing to 1899. The earliest located printing is the Stern sheet music, a copy of which the British Library stamped 3 November 1900. Marked uncertain because popular accounts date the musical setting to 1905 and the printing to 1921, and no 1900 imprint has been read here — only a specialist account of one. [1] [2]

Structure read from the source's markup; the words have not been compared against a page scan. Last checked 2026-08-14.

Taken from Standard Ebooks, standardebooks/james-weldon-johnson_poetry, poetry.xhtml. Rights: public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931).

Earlier sources (5)

This poem as JSON or plain text. Line anchors #L1–#L33.

Cite this poem

James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938). “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing.” First published in Sheet music, Joseph W. Stern & Co. (New York, 1900), headed “National Hymn for the Colored People of America”. Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/james-weldon-johnson/lift-evry-voice-and-sing/. Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.

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