{
 "id": "james-weldon-johnson/the-color-sergeant",
 "title": "The Color Sergeant",
 "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": 6,
 "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": 20,
  "n_stanzas": 5,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 49,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Under a burning tropic sun,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With comrades around him lying,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A trooper of the sable Tenth",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lay wounded, bleeding, dying.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "First in the charge up the fort-crowned hill,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "His company’s guidon bearing,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He had rushed where the leaden hail fell fast,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not death nor danger fearing.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "He fell in the front where the fight grew fierce,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Still faithful in life’s last labor;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Black though his skin, yet his heart as true",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As the steel of his blood-stained saber.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "And while the battle around him rolled,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Like the roar of a sullen breaker,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He closed his eyes on the bloody scene,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And presented arms to his Maker.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "There he lay, without honor or rank,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But, still, in a grim-like beauty;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Despised of men for his humble race,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet true, in death, to his duty.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}