![]() As I worked through the opening and middle lines of the last stanza: While my brother worked at his musical setting I paced back and forth on the front porch, repeating the lines over and over to myself, going through all of the agony and ecstasy of creating. In composing the two other stanzas I did not use pen and paper. I finished the stanza and turned it over to Rosamond. ![]() The spirit of the poem had taken hold of me. Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us. Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us. When, near the end of the first stanza, there came to me the lines: I got my first line: “Lift ev’ry voice and sing.” Not a startling line but I worked along grinding out the next five. We planned, better still, to have it sung by school children-a chorus of five hundred voices. I talked over with my brother the thought I had in mind, and we planned to write a song to be sung as a part of the exercises. My central idea, however, took on another form. So I gave up the project as beyond me at any rate, beyond me to carry out in so short a time and my poem on Lincoln is still to be written. My thoughts began buzzing round a central idea of writing a poem on Lincoln, but I couldn’t net them. I was put down for an address, which I began preparing but I wanted to do something else also. 154–156:Ī group of young men decided to hold on February 12 a celebration of Lincoln’s birthday. ![]() James described the composition of the song in detail in his autobiography, Along This Way (NY: Viking Press, 1933), pp. The music is by his brother, John Rosamond Johnson (1873–1954), who was a teacher at the school. Stanton School in Jacksonville, FL, at the time. ![]() The words to this venerable hymn are by James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938), who was principal of the Edwin M. ![]()
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