_{Lift every voice and sing till earth and heaven ring.}

_{Ring with harmonies of liberty;}

_{Let our rejoicing rise, high as the list'ning skies,}

_{Let it resound loud as the rolling seas.}

_{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 bought us;}

_{Facing a rising sun of our new day begun,}

_{Let us march on till victory is won.}

_{Stony the road we trod, bitter the chast'ning 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 paths thro 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 hast by They 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.}

James Weldon Johnson