The Gift to Sing

James Weldon Johnson

Sometimes the mist overhangs my path,
And blackening clouds about me cling;
But, oh, I have a magic way
To turn the gloom to cheerful day—
I softly sing.

And if the way grows darker still,
Shadowed by Sorrow's somber wing,
With glad defiance in my throat,
I pierce the darkness with a note,
And sing, and sing.

I brood not over the broken past,
Nor dread whatever time may bring;
No nights are dark, no days are long,
While in my heart there swells a song,
And I can sing.

Poetry Tale: The Song That Left Without Him

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TEXT PROVENANCE · First published 1917 in Fifty Years & Other Poems · Text from Fifty Years & Other Poems (1917), via Wikisource.

Fifty Years & Other Poems (1917)

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