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Atlanta offering: Poems

Chapter 35: Songs for the People.
By Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
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Poetry

About This Book

The collection gathers short lyric and occasional poems that move between intimate domestic remembrance, devotional reflection, and pointed social commentary. Several lyrics cherish maternal memory and nature; others draw on faith and small objects to consider human place in the cosmos. Public-spirited pieces address interracial fellowship, educational uplift, and the call for justice and peace, while satirical and moral poems critique gendered double standards and social hypocrisy. Overall the poems balance tenderness and moral urgency, blending personal feeling with reformist conviction.

Songs for the People.

Let me make the songs for the people,
Songs for the old and young;
Songs to stir like a battle-cry
Wherever they are sung.
Not for the clashing of sabres,
For carnage nor for strife;
But songs to thrill the hearts of men
With more abundant life.
Let me make the songs for the weary,
Amid life’s fever and fret,
Till hearts shall relax their tension,
And careworn brows forget.
Let me sing for little children,
Before their footsteps stray,
Sweet anthems of love and duty,
To float o’er life’s highway.
I would sing for the poor and aged,
When shadows dim their sight;
Of the bright and restful mansions,
Where there shall be no night.
Our world, so worn and weary,
Needs music, pure and strong,
To hush the jangle and discords
Of sorrow, pain, and wrong.
Music to soothe all its sorrow,
Till war and crime shall cease;
And the hearts of men grown tender
Girdle the world with peace.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
  1. p. 38, changed “Sea King” to “Sea-King” to agree with usage in the poem.
  2. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in spelling.
  3. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.