HAPPY EARTHSTRONG! 

HAPPY EARTHSTRONG TO THE HONORABLE MARCUS MOSIAH GARVEY!

"The black skin is not a badge of shame, but rather a glorious symbol of national greatness!"

April Is National Poetry Month! 

LIFE EVERY VOICE AND SING 

BLACK NATIONAL ANTHEM

JAMES WELDON JOHNSON

RENOWNED HARLEM RENAISSANCEX POET X WRITER X 

NOVELIST X ESSAYIST X EDUCATOR X CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVIST 

X DIPLOMAT X LAWYER X LYRICIST X PLAYWRIGHT

Lift every voice and sing
Till earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
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,
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun
Let us march on till victory is won
Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chastening 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 lead 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

April Is National Poetry Month! 

LIFE IS THE ART OF DRAWING

APPEARED IN "TODAY'S NEGRO VOICES: AN ANTHOLOGY BY 

YOUNG NEGRO POETS."

Attribution: CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT ARCHIVE

CAROLYN J. OGLETREE 

POET X PAINTER 

Life is the art of drawing

Lines, oil, paint, and chalk

Red, white and blue

America

Life is the art of drawing

Brushes, pencil on canvas

Red, white and blue

America

Life is the art of drawing

From bed to bed and room to room

Red, white and blue

America

Life is the art of drawing

Boy, girl, marriage

Saint Mary’s church

Red, white and blue

America

Life is the art of drawing

House, car and society

Red, white and blue

America

Life is the art of drawing

5, 4, 3, 2, 1, children-P.T.A.

Red, white and blue

America

Life is the art of drawing

Black and white, no harmony

Red, white and blue

America

Life is the art of drawing

Wars and countless deaths

Red, white and blue

America

Life is the art of drawing

Peace

Red, white and blue

America

Read more about Civil Rights History and Poems @ CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT ARCHIVE

 April Is National Poetry Month! 

ELEGY WRITTEN IN AMERICA 

FRENCH HODGES

POET X ACTOR X EDUCATOR

Born down in Georgia

Died in Tennessee

Non-violence was his method

Love was his plea.

He lived with a dream

Told it to all he met

Many still remember

Others will forget.

Believed in the ballot

Taught it all around

Taught it in the country

Taught it in the town.

In nineteen-hundred, sixty three

He went to cash a check

Tried to cash a check for freedom

America shot him in the neck.

Many things they called him

Nigger, gentle warrior, king,

Fool, dreamer, prophet, saviour,

He who bade freedom ring.

Freedom never did start its ring,

The dream never came true

The check never was cashed,

A debt unpaid comes due.

Born down in Georgia

Shot down in Tennessee

Love was his greatest gift

Freedom was his plea.

April Is National Poetry Month! 

IN MEMORIAM: MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. 

JUNE JORDAN

RENOWNED POET X PLAYWRIGHT X WRITER X ESSAYIST X 

TEACHER X ACTIVIST

honey people murder mercy U.S.A.
the milkland turn to monsters teach
to kill to violate pull down destroy
the weakly freedom growing fruit
from being born

America

tomorrow yesterday rip rape
exacerbate despoil disfigure
crazy running threat the
deadly thrall
appall belief dispel
the wildlife burn the breast
the onward tongue
the outward hand
deform the normal rainy
riot sunshine shelter wreck
of darkness derogate
delimit blank
explode deprive
assassinate and batten up
like bullets fatten up
the raving greed
reactivate a springtime
terrorizing

death by men by more
than you or I can

STOP

2

They sleep who know a regulated place
or pulse or tide or changing sky
according to some universal
stage direction obvious
like shorewashed shells

we share an afternoon of mourning
in between no next predictable
except for wild reversal hearse rehearsal
bleach the blacklong lunging
ritual of fright insanity and more
deplorable abortion
more and
more

April Is National Poetry Month! 

RIGHT ON: WHITE AMERICA

 

SONIA SANCHEZ 

ICONIC POET OF THE BLACK ARTS MOVEMENT X WRITER X 

ESSAYIST X PROFESSOR X PLAYWRIGHT

this country might have been a pio

neer land

once.

but. there ain’t

no mo

indians blowing

custer’s mind

with a different

image of america.

this country

might have

needed shoot/

outs/ daily/

once.

but. there ain’t

no mo real/ white allamerican

bad/guys.

just.

u & me

blk/ and un/armed.

this country might have been a

pio

neer land once.

and it still is.

check out

the falling

gun/shell on our blk/ tomorrows.  

April Is National Poetry Month! 

AMERICA BLEEDS

FIRST APPEARED IN "MOTIVE MAGAZINE."

 

ANGELO LEWIS 

POET

it does, it does, i have seen it

bleeding brothers & sisters, 

i have seen it, i have seen it,

come rushing, walk crippled,

fall flatly on tears of sad streets

where creatures fall onward with

cold eyes over them, armies on

streets over them, police on

pavements over them, tear gas

in faces over them, fires &

minds, living dreams living,

all of them innocents, yes,

yes, i have seen it, it bleeds,

it bleeds, have seen it bleed,

spill blood at my brothers,

cough no at our dignity,

i tell you, i tell you, we must,

kick on this monster, till it

dies, till it dies, dies, dies,

dies, dies, lies in the dirt

with its blood & its sickness,

head fall rolling in gutter,

red, white, & blue, flow freely,

flow freely, move over, fall down,

down, down, be finished at

last.

April Is National Poetry Month! 

ARSON AND COLD LACE

(or how i yearn to burn baby burn)

"ARSON AND COLD LACE," FIRST APPEARED IN "UMBRA."

WORTH LONG

POET X FORMER STAFF COORDINATOR OF SNCC

We have found you out

Falsed face America

We have found you out

We have found you out

False farmers

We have found you out

The sparks of suspicion

Are melting your waters

and water can’t drown them

These fires a-burning

and firemen can’t calm them

With falsely appeasing

and preachers can’t pray

with hopes for deceiving

Nor leaders deliver

A lecture on losing

Nor teachers inform them

The chosen are choosing

For now is the fire

And fires won’t answer

To logic and listening

and hopefully seeming

Hot flames must devour

The kneeling and fleeing

and torture the masters

Whose idiot pleading

Gits lost in the echoes

Of dancing and bleeding

We have found you out

False farmers

We have found you out

We have found you out

False faced America

We have found you out

 April Is National Poetry Month! 

AMERICA 

APPEARED IN "AN ANTHOLOGY OF MODERN POEMS BY BLACK 

AMERICANS."

BOBB HAMILTON

POET X SCULPTOR X EDITOR

America

Is a fairyland fraud

Where democracy is pronounced

Dippty-Do

Ten Times on a T.V. commercial -----

insulting my

Black mother,

My black sister

My black wife,

My black self.

April Is National Poetry Month! 

I WANT TO HEAR AN AMERICAN POEM

DEF JAM POETRY EDITION

RAS BARAKA

POET X AUTHOR X EDUCATOR X SOCIAL ACTIVIST X POLITICAN 

X MAYOR OF NEWARK

Are there any American poets in here?

I wanna hear an American poem
Something American
South Carolina slave shouter
Alabama backwoods church shack call and response

I wanna hear an American poem
An American poem about
Share croppers on the side of the road
Of families in cardboard boxes
Not about kings or majestic lands
Or how beautiful ugly can be

I wanna hear some American Poetry
About projects
And lead poison
And poverty
And children in jail

I wanna hear a poem about a picket line
In a Joe Hill legend
Struggle for an 8 hour day
Hey you
Hey you
Where are all the American poems
About Harlem number runners
And barbershop conversations about
Colored faces on colored TVS

I wanna hear an American poem
Something American
As American as jazz
Or a South Bronx burner brandished on abandoned buildings
A scratch tune
A breakbeat
A backspin
A beatboxer
A rap song
In congo square
Niggas beating on buckets on broad street
As American as the Zulu Nation
And Latin Kings

I wanna hear an American poem
About a dead girl on Chadwick Avenue
With a bullet in her neck
From a cop doing his job
Ordered by Fascism
And crack cocaine

You know
Something made in the USA
Something American
And Afro-Cuban
New Yorican
Latin tinge
Beaten boom by and playna
Spiralling out of the wide open tenement windows
In the middle of winter
On the verge of East Harlem or North Newark
Palms of brown colonies
Of Albizu being tortured for breathing Taíno blood
Screaming African tongues
Dialoguing in Spanish for being him
Puerto Rican self, and
Worst of all
Loving it

My God where is all the American poetry
Just death marches
And stoic laughter
Niggas being funny
No more American poets
No I won't boost your morale
Or play your songs
Or make you feel comfortable
Or build your ego
Or Play my part

I just wanna hear an American poem
Something native
Like Trail of Tears
Wounded Knee
Like smallpox
And blankets

You know, American
Something that represents us
A colored rainbow
A big bright fist
An uncorrected sentence
Improper English

As American as COINTELPRO
As Peekskill, New York
As Robeson singing out the back of his truck
Like Nina Simone playing at the Village Gate
With Baldwin next to her on a piano stool
And Amiri and Amina Baraka in the audience
Air filled with Cognac
And Mississippi goddamn
Capture that moment!
Write Something about that

An American masterpiece
You know
An American poem
Something, strictly American
Like Red Summer
Strange fruit
pomarades

Hey you! Yeah you! Yeah you!
You, you!
Something American!
USA! America!
USA! America!
USA!

As American as the KKK

A poem about Emmett Till will do
The Tallahatchie River
Church bombings
Or child murders
About Alabama red dirt
And boycotts in Montgomery
About families migrating North
With dignity and shotguns

I wanna hear a poem,
A poem about a beautiful black boy
Can't you see him?
A beautiful black boy colored into the night
His eyes, the stars, his hands, our will
About a beautiful black boy in the middle of a project
Playing checkers with glass and stones
Who beat buckets or drums
And play the horn in his sleep

I wanna hear a poem
A poem about a beautiful brown girl
An incredibly beautiful brown girl
With an age, mahogany, smile, and
Flower pedals for her lips
And a beautiful brown girl with a poem in her eyes
A poem in her eyes
And a gun in her hand
Sitting in a puddle of tears
In Clinton’s women's facility
In the garden state
In the land of the free

You know something American
Something that represents me

April Is National Poetry Month! 

I, TOO SING, AMERICA

LANGSTON HUGHES

RENOWNED HARLEM RENAISSANCE POET X NOVELIST 

X ESSAYIST X PLAYWRIGHT X COLUMNIST X SOCIAL ACTIVIST

I, Too, Sing, America.

I am the darker brother.

They send me to eat in the kitchen

When company comes,

But I laugh,

And eat well,

And grow strong.

Tomorrow,

I’ll be at the table

When company comes

Nobody’ll dare

Say to me,

“Eat in the kitchen,”

Then.

Besides,

They’ll see how beautiful I am

And be ashamed--

I, too, am American.

April Is National Poetry Month! 

AMERICA

LANGSTON HUGHES

RENOWNED HARLEM RENAISSANCE POET X NOVELIST 

X ESSAYIST X PLAYWRIGHT X COLUMNIST X SOCIAL ACTIVIST

Little dark baby,
Little Jew baby,
Little outcast,
America is seeking the stars,
America is seeking tomorrow.
You are America.
I am America
America—the dream,
America—the vision.
America—the star-seeking I.
Out of yesterday
The chains of slavery;
Out of yesterday,
The ghettos of Europe;
Out of yesterday,
The poverty and pain of the old, old world,
The building and struggle of this new one,
We come
You and I,
Seeking the stars.
You and I,
You of the blue eyes
And the blond hair,
I of the dark eyes
And the crinkly hair.
You and I
Offering hands
Being brothers,
Being one,
Being America.
You and I.
And I?
Who am I?
You know me:
I am Crispus Attucks at the Boston Tea Party;
Jimmy Jones in the ranks of the last black troops marching for democracy.
I am Sojourner Truth preaching and praying for the goodness of this wide, wide land;
Today's black mother bearing tomorrow's America.
Who am I?
You know me,
Dream of my dreams,
I am America.
I am America seeking the stars.
America—
Hoping, praying
Fighting, dreaming.
Knowing
There are stains
On the beauty of my democracy,
I want to be clean.
I want to grovel
No longer in the mire.
I want to reach always
After stars.
Who am I?
I am the ghetto child,
I am the dark baby,
I am you
And the blond tomorrow
And yet
I am my one sole self,
America seeking the stars.

April Is National Poetry Month! 

IN AMERICA

BERNIE CASEY

POET X ARTIST X ACTOR X FORMER NFL PLAYER

he said

in america

would i like california?

in america

is much money?

in america

is large streets

and nice house.

in america

he said.

is good pretty country?

in america

you have indian

who don’t do so good

in america

the black man

is not so free yet, yes?

if in america

you speak of liberty

not for everybody, yes?

i think

in america

is some good

and some not so good

and i said

in america, yes

there is some good

and some not so good.  

April Is National Poetry Month! 

AMERICA

CLAUDE MCKAY

RENOWNED HARLEM RENAISSANCE POET X WRITER

Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger's tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth!
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
Giving me strength erect against her hate.
Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.
Yet as a rebel fronts a king in state,
I stand within her walls with not a shred
Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.
Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,
And see her might and granite wonders there,
Beneath the touch of Time's unerring hand,
Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.

 April Is National Poetry Month! 

HYMN TO AMERICA

Published in “The 

Messenger Magazine,” August 

1925.

E. LUCIEN WAITHE

POET 

America I sing to you
A hymn of love mixed with my tears,
A hymn made up of thoughts that spring
From many, many cruel years.

I love you my America
Who would not want to call me yours ;
With all the wrongs that hemmed me in
I stood up to defend your doors.

Before I knew time, place, or scene,
My mother kept before my view
Your emblem lighted with the stars,
Which I still saw there as I grew.

And when I saw out in the bay
Shining above all other glare
The light that burns throughout the night,
I smiled and said I need not fear.

I thought it then a light to love,
To liberty and every good ;
But that was false — a light to hell
I found it soon after I stood

Upon the hill where Life took me
To view the things that are as rare,
To feel the teeth of poverty
And pull at opportunity's bar.

I had high hopes, bright dreams were mine,
A future roseate as the light
That limns the shadows of the hills
Against the sky as dawn grows bright.

Too soon hate's dark eclipse hid all
The brightness of this day of hope;
And your weak pride narrowed and bound
My every effort, every scope.

But still America I lived
Scourged by the jeers, the taunts, the scorn ;
Why should some men inherit love
And some to such strong hate be born ?

America I pay with love
For all the hate you give to me;
I take your jagged-edge cup and drink
The drug of dark hate fearlessly.

I know it can but drug the sense.
And hold ambition to the earth ;
For hate can never conquer me,
Nor wrong rob me of all my mirth.

I shall still cry, shall laugh and play
Until some larger heart should come
To light yours into flames of love
That burn for all and not for some.

And still a dream is in my soul
In which I see you handing me
A golden star of membership
In this great world's fraternity.

Then from the ruins of much wrong,
Within the shining shop of right
I'll forge for you a tower wherefrom
Shall gleam earth's purest brightest light.

Then all the nations of this world
Shall look to you and call you great ;
Because your light shall shine afar

When one large love replaces hate.

April Is National Poetry Month! 

TO AMERICA

Published in "THE CRISIS Magazine," NOVEMBER 

1917.

JAMES WELDON JOHNSON

RENOWNED HARLEM RENAISSANCEX POET X WRITER X 

NOVELIST X ESSAYIST X EDUCATOR X CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVIST 

X DIPLOMAT X LAWYER X LYRICIST X PLAYWRIGHT 

 

How would you have us, as we are?
Or sinking 'neath the load we bear?
Our eyes fixed forward on a star?
Or gazing empty at despair?

Rising or falling? Men or things?
With dragging pace or footsteps fleet?
Strong, willing sinews in your wings?
Or tightening chains about your feet?

April Is National Poetry Month! 

AMERICA 

Published in "RACE RHYMES" 

in 1911.

CARRIE WILLIAMS CLIFFORD

POET

America is not another name for opportunity
To all her sons! Nay, bid me not be dumb —
I will be heard. Christians, I come
To plead with burning eloquence of truth
A brother's cause; ay, to demand, forsooth,
The manhood rights of which he is denied;
Too long your pretense have your acts belied.
What has he done to merit your fierce hate?
I charge you, speak the truth; for know, his fate
Irrevocably is bound up with yours,
For good or ill, as long as time endures.
Torn from his native home by ruthless hands,
For centuries he tilled your fruitful lands,
In shameful, base, degrading slavery;
Your humble, patient, loyal vassal, he —
Piling your coffers high with magic gold,
Himself, the while, like cattle bought and sold.

When devastating war stalked through the land,
And dangers threatened you on every hand,
These sons whose color you cannot forgive.
Did freely shed their blood that you might live
A nation, strong and great. And will you then
Continue to debase, degrade, contemn
Your loyal children, while with smiling face
You raise disloyal ones to power and place?

Is race or color crime, that for this cause
You draft against the Negro unjust laws?
Is race or color sin that he should be
For these things treated so outrageously?
O, boastful, white American, beware!
It is the handiwork of God you dare
Thus to despise and He will you repay
With generous measure overflowing, yea,
For all the good which in his life you've wrought.
For helpful deed, or kindly, loving thought —
For every act of cruelty you've done,
For every groan which you have from him wrung.
For every infamy by him endured,
He will you all repay, be thou assured!
Not here alone ere time shall cease to be,
But likewise There, through all eternity.

April Is National Poetry Month! 

Plea of The Negro Soldier 

Published in "Springfield Republican," 

Feb. 16, 1907. 

CHARLES FRED WHITE

POET 

America, ungrateful land!
Whose treacherous soil my blood has dyed,
Whose wealth my father's shackled hand
Has hoarded up, who has denied
Me right to live, to vote, to learn,
Whose laws protect me not from wrong,
Who will permit me not to earn
An honest living, who in song
Doth boast a land of freedom, but
Whose flag waves o'er a land of crime,
The makers of whose laws unjust
Themselves are stained with blood and slime
Of murders, lynchings, rape and lies,
And who, while yet the sacred oath
Of office on their vile lips lies,
Will lead a mob of comrades forth
To take some negro, innocent,
Accused perhaps, but never tried,
From custody of government
And burn him, to a pillar tied,
I fear the dawning of thy doom:
I hear the voice of justice cry
From out this wilderness of gloom:
I see the dark clouds in thy sky.
From Boston massacre, my blood
Through all the channels of thy war
Has mingled with thy crimson flood;
Through Yorktown, Erie, Wagner,—far
To El Caney and San Juan Hill,
Where, midst the charges awful din,
With song our voice the air did fill
And make that song a battle hymn.—
The Philippines, so dearly bought,
Are strewn with bodies of my kin;
My comrades have thy glory wrought
In war, in peace, with skill and vim.
'Twas I who rescued from the urn
Of death thy fickle soldier chief;
Tis he who gives me in return
Disgrace, dishonor, no relief
From poverty my feeble years
Must bring me soon; he who deprives
Me of support retirement rears
Up for her faithful soldiers' lives.
My thirty years of living death
In bloody war avail me naught
When prejudice and perjured breath
Of Brownsville 'gainst my name is brought.
And dost thou yet, ungrateful land
Expect my blood and kin to stand
In cowered silence, while thy hand
Continues to despoil our band?
May God forbid that of my race
A single child shall e'er disgrace
His native land, the resting place
Of martyred kin, by fear to face
Injustice by whomever thrown.
The ancient Plebeians of Rome
For treatment such renounced their home
And sought the Sacred Mountain's dome.
The colonies of George the Third
To less injustice war preferred
And fired,—the while the world concurred,—
The shot which round the earth was heard.
Republic cannot long endure
When autocrat can feel secure
To heap injustice on the poor
Or helpless; ruin follows sure.
Three centuries have near rolled by
Since first our fathers' mournful cry
And clank of chains rose to thy sky,
Nor yet have found just cause to die.
Our voice of protest shall not cease
Until thy unjust bonds release
Our rights, that our lives may increase
In riches, happiness and peace.
But I, alas! have given all
In answer to thy urgent call,
Exposed my life to sword and ball,
And now, as o'er me creeps the fall
Of life, I find no recompense
But base discharge, with no defense
Through which to prove my innocence,
Though I've committed no offense.
For this I've given up my home
O'er hapless battle-fields to roam,
I've crossed the ocean's hungry foam,
I've fought disease in hostile loam.
O God of justice and of right!
If thou art deaf and hast no sight,
Lend me Thy weapons and Thy might,
That this last battle I may fight.

 April Is National Poetry Month! 

THE NEGRO'S "AMERICA" appeared in "The Colored Advocate” 

in 1897.

FRANK BARBOUR COFFIN

POET X PHARMCIST

My country, ’tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty,
Would I could sing;
Its land of Pilgrim’s pride
Also where lynched men died
With such upon her tide,
Freedom can’t reign.
My native country, thee
The world pronounce you free
Thy name I love;
But when the lynchers rise
To slaughter human lives
Thou closest up thine eyes,
Thy God’s above.
Let Negroes smell the breeze
So they can sing with ease
Sweet freedom’s song;
Let justice reign supreme,
Let men be what they seem
Break up that lyncher’s screen,
Lay down all wrong.
Our fathers’ God, to Thee,
Author of liberty,
To Thee we sing;
How can our land be bright?
Can lynching be a light?
Protect us by thy might,
Great God our king!

April Is National Poetry Month!  

AMERICA

Published in 1853

JAMES M. WHITFIELD 

POET X ABOLITIONSIT X POLITICAL ACTIVIST

America, it is to thee,

Thou boasted land of liberty,—
It is to thee I raise my song,
Thou land of blood, and crime, and wrong.
It is to thee, my native land,

From whence has issued many a band

To tear the black man from his soil,

And force him here to delve and toil;

Chained on your blood-bemoistened sod,

Cringing beneath a tyrant's rod,

Stripped of those rights which Nature's God

Bequeathed to all the human race,

Bound to a petty tyrant's nod,

Because he wears a paler face.

Was it for this, that freedom's fires

Were kindled by your patriot sires?
Was it for this, they shed their blood,

On hill and plain, on field and flood?

Was it for this, that wealth and life

Were staked upon that desperate strife,

Which drenched this land for seven long years

With blood of men, and women's tears?

When black and white fought side by side, 

Upon the well-contested field,—

Turned back the fierce opposing tide, 

And made the proud invader yield—

When, wounded, side by side they lay, 

And heard with joy the proud hurrah

From their victorious comrades say 

That they had waged successful war,

The thought ne'er entered in their brains

That they endured those toils and pains,

To forge fresh fetters, heavier chains

For their own children, in whose veins

Should flow that patriotic blood,

So freely shed on field and flood.

Oh no; they fought, as they believed, 

For the inherent rights of man;

But mark, how they have been deceived 

By slavery's accursed plan.

They never thought, when thus they shed

Their heart's best blood, in freedom's cause

That their own sons would live in dread, 

Under unjust, oppressive laws:

That those who quietly enjoyed 

The rights for which they fought and fell,

Could be the framers of a code, 

That would disgrace the fiends of hell!

Could they have looked, with prophet's ken, 

Down to the present evil time, 

Seen free-born men, uncharged with crime,

Consigned unto a slaver's pen,—

Or thrust into a prison cell,

With thieves and murderers to dwell—

While that same flag whose stripes and stars

Had been their guide through freedom's wars

As proudly waved above the pen

Of dealers in the souls of men!

Or could the shades of all the dead, 

Who fell beneath that starry flag,

Visit the scenes where they once bled, 

On hill and plain, on vale and crag,

By peaceful brook, or ocean's strand, 

By inland lake, or dark green wood,

Where'er the soil of this wide land 

Was moistened by their patriot blood,—

And then survey the country o'er, 

From north to south, from east to west,

And hear the agonizing cry

Ascending up to God on high,

From western wilds to ocean's shore, 

The fervent prayer of the oppressed;

The cry of helpless infancy 

Torn from the parent's fond caress

By some base tool of tyranny,

And doomed to woe and wretchedness;

The indignant wail of fiery youth, 

Its noble aspirations crushed,

Its generous zeal, its love of truth, 

Trampled by tyrants in the dust;

The aerial piles which fancy reared, 

And hopes too bright to be enjoyed,

Have passed and left his young heart seared, 

And all its dreams of bliss destroyed.

The shriek of virgin purity, 

Doomed to some libertine's embrace,

Should rouse the strongest sympathy 

Of each one of the human race;

And weak old age, oppressed with care, 

As he reviews the scene of strife,

Puts up to God a fervent prayer, 

To close his dark and troubled life.

The cry of fathers, mothers, wives, 

Severed from all their hearts hold dear,

And doomed to spend their wretched lives 

In gloom, and doubt, and hate, and fear;

And manhood, too, with soul of fire,

And arm of strength, and smothered ire,

Stands pondering with brow of gloom,

Upon his dark unhappy doom,

Whether to plunge in battle's strife,

And buy his freedom with his life,

And with stout heart and weapon strong,

Pay back the tyrant wrong for wrong,

Or wait the promised time of God, 

When his Almighty ire shall wake,

And smite the oppressor in his wrath,

And hurl red ruin in his path,

And with the terrors of his rod, 

Cause adamantine hearts to quake.

Here Christian writhes in bondage still, 

Beneath his brother Christian's rod,

And pastors trample down at will, 

The image of the living God.

While prayers go up in lofty strains, 

And pealing hymns ascend to heaven,

The captive, toiling in his chains, 

With tortured limbs and bosom riven,

Raises his fettered hand on high, 

And in the accents of despair,

To him who rules both earth and sky, 

Puts up a sad, a fervent prayer,

To free him from the awful blast 

Of slavery's bitter galling shame—

Although his portion should be cast 

With demons in eternal flame!

Almighty God! Ât is this they call 

The land of liberty and law;

Part of its sons in baser thrall 

Than Babylon or Egypt saw—

Worse scenes of rapine, lust and shame, 

Than Babylonian ever knew,

Are perpetrated in the name 

Of God, the holy, just, and true;

And darker doom than Egypt felt,

May yet repay this nation's guilt.

Almighty God! thy aid impart,

And fire anew each faltering heart,

And strengthen every patriot's hand,

Who aims to save our native land.

We do not come before thy throne, 

With carnal weapons drenched in gore,

Although our blood has freely flown, 

In adding to the tyrant's store.

Father! before thy throne we come, 

Not in the panoply of war,

With pealing trump, and rolling drum, 

And cannon booming loud and far;

Striving in blood to wash out blood,

Through wrong to seek redress for wrong;

For while thou 'rt holy, just and good, 

The battle is not to the strong;

But in the sacred name of peace, 

Of justice, virtue, love and truth,

We pray, and never mean to cease, 

Till weak old age and fiery youth

In freedom's cause their voices raise,

And burst the bonds of every slave;

Till, north and south, and east and west,

The wrongs we bear shall be redressed.