Lift Every Voice and Sing

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1900

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Form and Meter

“Lift Every Voice and Sing” is a lyrical poem written in the first-person-plural point of view. The speaker addresses Black Americans as a collective in the first two stanzas and God in the last stanza. The poem comprises 33 lines. The rhyme scheme of the first stanza is AABCCBDDEE. The rhyme scheme of the second stanza is AABCCBDDEEE, with Line 21 as the departure from the rhyme scheme in the first stanza. The third stanza has the rhyme scheme AABCCBDDEEFE, with Line 32 as the departure from the rhyme scheme.

The rhyme in the DD lines is both internal rhyme and end rhyme, as in “taught us” (Line 8) and “brought us” (Line 9). The DD rhymes come in lines that are longer than others in their respective stanzas, making their tempo more deliberate; in these lines the speaker uses the resolve Black Americans have shown and must continue to show if they want to be free.

Meter is variable in the poem. The first two lines of each stanza are trochaic trimeter, three sets of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable: “Lift e | very voice | and sing” (Line 1). The third lines of stanzas are iambic pentameter, five sets of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable: “Ring with | the har | mo nies | of Li | ber ty” (Line 3). These choices around rhyme and meter in “Lift Every Voice and Sing” reflect that this poem entered the public arena as a song performed by a choir.

Metaphor

There are several key metaphors—exact comparisons between unlike things—in the poem. The aspirations of Black Americans for a better future is a “rising sun” (Line 9), and the journey through enslavement and the Post-Reconstruction period is a path along a “Stony” (Line 11) road, for example. These comparisons are conventions of several literary traditions, including Black American poetry and the Bible. The use of conventional Biblical metaphors is particularly noticeable in the third stanza, which makes sense since that stanza is addressed to God. By relying on metaphors from the Bible, James Weldon Johnson points his audience to an important aspect of Black Americans’ resilience in the face of adversity.

Alliteration

Alliteration is the use of words that begin with the same consonant or vowel for emphasis or to make memorization easier. In the poem, Johnson creates alliterative lines of “s” and “f” sounds: In the line “Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us” (Line 7), repeated “s” and “f” sounds help hold the long line together and make the words easier to remember—important when one is singing. Meanwhile, all the “d” sounds in Lines 11-12 make the lines ponderous, a reflection of the heavy mood of those lines and the stanza as a whole.