Lift every voice and sing,
‘Til earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the list’ning 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 ‘til 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,
‘Til 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
Led 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,
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 lands.
**********************
If the left actually listened to the words, they would ban this song. I’m cool with it; it’s the song that is the equivalent of America the Beautiful, turning to God as our strength.
The history of the song is that it was written in the early 20th century for school children’s pagent honoring the birth of Abraham Lincoln.
The author and composer quickly forgot it but the 500+ children who sang it did not.
Some of them went to college and taught it to their classmates.
Some of those became teachers and taught it to those in their charge.
It’s been in Baptist hymnals forever.
Except it’s BAD. Comparing it to America the Beautiful is like comparing Stephanie Meyer to JK Rowling.
I mean, I hear ya. Don’t get me wrong. And God bless ya for hearing it that way. And I pray some day the bitter left will hear in it what you do. But for it’s good intentions, or at least its worthwhile aping of good intentions, it’s just poorly written.
“Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us.”
Was your faith taught to you by a dark past?
“Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;”
If your hope is rooted in the present, do you need to now turn to your hope?
“Facing the rising sun of our new day begun, let us march on”
Are you marching against the Sun? Won’t that hurt your eyes?
“Bitter the chastening rod, Felt in the days when hope unborn had died” So your hope is dead? Was it a miscarriage, or the victim of abortion?
“We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,” That seems disrespectful of the dead, no?