No greater earthly boon than this I crave, That those who some day gather ’round my grave, In place of tears, may whisper of me then, “He sang a song that reached the hearts of men.”
Where this text comes from
First published in Fifty Years & Other Poems (1917). First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established. [1] [2]
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/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–#L4.
Cite this poem
James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938).
“The Reward.” First published in Fifty Years & Other Poems (1917).
Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/james-weldon-johnson/the-reward/.
Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.
More by James Weldon Johnson