Complete Poems

Description

2000 marks the centenary of “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” James Weldon Johnson’s most famous lyric, which is now embraced as the Negro National Anthem. In celebration, this Penguin original collects all the poems from Johnson’s published works—Fifty Years and Other Poems (1917), God’s Trombones (1927), and Saint Peter Relates an Incident of the Resurrection Day (1935)—along with a number of previously unpublished poems.

Sondra Kathryn Wilson, the foremost authority on Johnson and his work, provides an introduction that sheds light on Johnson’s many achievements and his pioneering contributions to recording and celebrating the African American experience.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators. 

Complete PoemsIntroduction
Suggestions for Further Reading
Chronology
Part I. God’s Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse
Preface to God’s Trombones
Listen, Lord – A Prayer
The Creation
The Prodigal Son
Go Down Death – A Funeral Sermon
Noah Built the Ark
The Crucifixion
Let My People Go
The Judgment Day

Part II. Saint Peter Relates an Incident and Fifty Years and Other Poems
Saint Peter Relates an Incident of the Resurrection Day
O Black and Unknown Bards
Brothers – American Drama
O Southland!
We to America
Mother Night
The Young Warrior
The White Witch
My City
The Glory of the Day Was in Her Face
Life
The Black Mammy
Fragment
Mother, Farewell! (from the Spanish of Placido)
Girl of Fifteen
The Suicide

Down by the Carib Sea
I. Sunrise in the Tropics
II. Los Cigarrillos
III. Teestay
IV. The Lottery Girl
V. The Dancing Girl
VI. Sunset in the Tropics

Deep in the Quiet Wood
Prayer at Sunrise
Her Eyes Twin Pools
Vashti
If I Were Paris
Ghosts of the Old Year
Beauty Never Old
Blessed Sleep
The Greatest of These Is War
A Poet to His Baby Son
Ma Lady’s Lips Am Like de Honey
A Plantation Bacchanal
Tunk
Brer Rabbit, You’s de Cutes’ of ‘Em All
Answer to Prayer
A Banjo Song
The Rivals
Sence You Went Away
Lift Every Voice and Sing
Envoy

Introduction to Fifty Years and Other Poems by Brander Matthews
Fifty Years
To Horace Bumstead
The Color Sergeant
From the German of Uhland
Before a Painting
I Hear the Stars Still Singing
A Mid-Day Dreamer
The Temptress
The Ghost of Deacon Brown
“Lazy”
Omar
Voluptas (I)
The Word of an Engineer
The Gift to Sing
Morning, Noon and Night
The Awakening
Venus in a Garden
Nobody’s Lookin’ But de Owl and de Moon
You’s Sweet to Yo’ Mammy Jes de Same
July in Georgy
Dat Gal o’ Mine
The Seasons
‘Possum Song
An Explanation
De Little Pickaninny’s Gone to Sleep

Part III. The College Years and Other Poems
Moods
A Passing Melody
The River
Helene
The Class of ’94
Grandmother’s Bible
A Dream
Sonnet
Sonnet – The Secret
Class Poem
Voluptas (II)
Optimistic Sam
Mobile Mardi Gras
After My First Week Teaching in the Country
To a Brook Near My School House
A Recollection
The Last Waltz
To a Friend
Only Trust Me
A Brand
Christmas Carol
Miserable
To H.B.
To a Friend, with a Rose
A Heathen
To My Valentine
Ode to Florida
Acknowledgment
The Passionate Lover
Art vs. Trade
The Poet’s Harp
I Love Thee Still
To Louie (I)
A Fragment (I)
Untitled Poem (“Was what you thought love, but passing”)
Untitled Poem (“Come with me my love and wander”)

James Weldon Johnson was born in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1871. Among the first to break through the barriers segregating his race, he was educated at Atlanta University and at Columbia and was the first black admitted to the Florida bar. He was also, for a time, a songwriter in New York, American consul in Venezuela and Nicaragua, executive secretary of the NAACP, and professor of creative literature at Fisk University—experiences recorded in his autobiography, Along This Way. Other books by him include Saint Peter Relates an Incident, Black Manhattan, and God’s Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse. In addition to his own writing, Johnson was the editor of pioneering anthologies of black American poetry and spirituals. He died in 1938.US

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