A Fairer Hope, a Brighter Morn + 

From the peaceful heights of a higher life + 

I heard your maddening cry of strife; + 

It quivered with anguish, wrath and pain, + 

Like a demon struggling with his chain. + 

A chain of evil, heavy and strong, + 

Rusted with ages of fearful wrong, + 

Encrusted with blood and burning tears, + 

The chain I had worn and dragged for years. + 

It clasped my limbs, but it bound your heart, + 

And formed of your life a fearful part; + 

You sowed the wind, but could not control + 

The tempest wild of a guilty soul. + 

You saw me stand with my broken chain + 

Forged in the furnace of fiery pain. + 

You saw my children around me stand + 

Lovingly clasping my unbound hand. + 

But you remembered my blood and tears + 

’Mid the weary wasting flight of years. + 

You thought of the rice swamps, lone and dank, + 

When my heart in hopless anguish sank. + 

You thought of your fields with harvest white, + 

Where I toiled in pain from morn till night; + 

You thought of the days you bought and sold + 

The children I loved, for paltry gold. + 

You thought of our shrieks that rent the air⁠— + 

Our moans of anguish and deep despair; + 

With chattering teeth and paling face, + 

You thought of your nation’s deep disgrace. + 

You wove from your fears a fearful fate + 

To spring from your seeds of scorn and hate; + 

You imagined the saddest, wildest thing, + 

That time, with revenges fierce, could bring. + 

The cry you thought from a Voodoo breast + 

Was the echo of your soul’s unrest; + 

When thoughts too sad for fruitless tears + 

Loomed like the ghosts of avenging years. + 

Oh, prophet of evil, could not your voice + 

In our new hopes and freedom rejoice? + 

’Mid the light which streams around our way + 

Was there naught to see but an evil day? + 

Nothing but vengeance, wrath and hate, + 

And the serpent coils of an evil fate⁠— + 

A fate that shall crush and drag you down; + 

A doom that shall press like an iron crown? + 

A fate that shall crisp and curl your hair + 

And darken your faces now so fair, + 

And send through your veins like a poisoned flood + 

The hated stream of the Negro’s blood? + 

A fate to madden the heart and brain + 

You’ve peopled with phantoms of dread and pain, + 

And fancies wild of your daughter’s shriek + 

With Congo kisses upon her cheek? + 

Beyond the mist of your gloomy fears, + 

I see the promise of brighter years. + 

Through the dark I see their golden hem + 

And my heart gives out its glad amen. + 

The banner of Christ was your sacred trust, + 

But you trailed that banner in the dust, + 

And mockingly told us amid our pain + 

The hand of your God had forged our chain. + 

We stumbled and groped through the dreary night + 

Till our fingers touched God’s robe of light; + 

And we knew He heard, from his lofty throne, + 

Our saddest cries and faintest moan. + 

The cross you have covered with sin and shame + 

We’ll bear aloft in Christ’s holy name. + 

Oh, never again may its folds be furled + 

While sorrow and sin enshroud our world! + 

God, to whose fingers thrills each heart beat, + 

Has not sent us to walk with aimless feet, + 

To cower and crouch, with bated breath + 

From margins of life to shores of death. + 

Higher and better than hate for hate, + 

Like the scorpion fangs that desolate, + 

Is the hope of a brighter, fairer morn + 

And a peace and a love that shall yet be born; + 

When the Negro shall hold an honored place, + 

The friend and helper of every race; + 

His mission to build and not destroy, + 

And gladden the world with love and joy. + 