Lift Every Voice and Sing

“Lift Every Voice and Sing” is a lyrical poem written in the first-person-plural point of view. The speaker addresses Black Americans as a collective in the first two stanzas and God in the last stanza. The poem comprises 33 lines. The rhyme scheme of the first stanza is AABCCBDDEE. The rhyme scheme of the second stanza is AABCCBDDEEE, with Line 21 as the departure from the rhyme scheme in the first stanza. The third stanza has the rhyme scheme AABCCBDDEEFE, with Line 32 as the departure from the rhyme scheme.

The rhyme in the DD lines is both internal rhyme and end rhyme, as in “taught us” (Line 8) and “brought us” (Line 9). The DD rhymes come in lines that are longer than others in their respective stanzas, making their tempo more deliberate; in these lines the speaker uses the resolve Black Americans have shown and must continue to show if they want to be free.

Meter is variable in the poem. The first two lines of each stanza are trochaic trimeter, three sets of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable: “Lift e | very