{
 "id": "james-weldon-johnson/o-black-and-unknown-bards",
 "title": "O Black and Unknown Bards",
 "poet": "James Weldon Johnson",
 "poet_slug": "james-weldon-johnson",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Fifty Years & Other Poems",
 "book_slug": "fifty-years-and-other-poems",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 3,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1917,
  "venue": "Fifty Years & Other Poems (1917)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/fiftyyearsother00johnrich",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/17884"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/james-weldon-johnson_poetry",
  "file": "poetry.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.google.com/books/edition/How_the_National_Association_for_the_Adv/AAs-AQAAMAAJ",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/17884",
   "https://archive.org/details/fiftyyearsother00johnrich",
   "https://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/johnson/johnson.html",
   "https://archive.org/details/godstrombonessev00johnso"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-12"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 48,
  "n_stanzas": 6,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 51,
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 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "O black and unknown bards of long ago,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How came your lips to touch the sacred fire?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How, in your darkness, did you come to know",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The power and beauty of the minstrel’s lyre?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who first from midst his bonds lifted his eyes?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who first from out the still watch, lone and long,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Feeling the ancient faith of prophets rise",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Within his dark-kept soul, burst into song?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Heart of what slave poured out such melody",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As “Steal away to Jesus”? On its strains",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "His spirit must have nightly floated free,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Though still about his hands he felt his chains.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who heard great “Jordan roll”? Whose starward eye",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Saw chariot “swing low”? And who was he",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That breathed that comforting, melodic sigh,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“Nobody knows de trouble I see”?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "What merely living clod, what captive thing,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Could up toward God through all its darkness grope,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And find within its deadened heart to sing",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "These songs of sorrow, love and faith, and hope?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How did it catch that subtle undertone,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That note in music heard not with the ears?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How sound the elusive reed so seldom blown,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Which stirs the soul or melts the heart to tears.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Not that great German master in his dream",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of harmonies that thundered amongst the stars",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "At the creation, ever heard a theme",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nobler than “Go down, Moses.” Mark its bars",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How like a mighty trumpet-call they stir",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The blood. Such are the notes that men have sung",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Going to valorous deeds; such tones there were",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That helped make history when Time was young.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "There is a wide, wide wonder in it all,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That from degraded rest and servile toil",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The fiery spirit of the seer should call",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "These simple children of the sun and soil.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "O black slave singers, gone, forgot, unfamed,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "You⁠—you alone, of all the long, long line",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of those who’ve sung untaught, unknown, unnamed,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Have stretched out upward, seeking the divine.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "You sang not deeds of heroes or of kings;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "No chant of bloody war, no exulting paean",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of arms-won triumphs; but your humble strings",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "You touched in chord with music empyrean.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "You sang far better than you knew; the songs",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That for your listeners’ hungry hearts sufficed",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Still live⁠—but more than this to you belongs:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "You sang a race from wood and stone to Christ.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}