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.

—  Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
Poems, 1896

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825-1911) was a poet, author, journalist, and lecturer. She wrote her first volume of poetry at age 21, and was the first African American woman to publish a short story.  She was an influential abolitionist, suffragist, and reformer who co-founded the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs.  In 1866, Harper spoke at the National Woman’s Rights Convention in New York. Her famous speech entitled, “We Are All Bound Up Together,” urged her fellow attendees to include African American women in their fight for suffrage.  For a complete compilation of the poetry, prose, and speeches of Frances Harper, see A Brighter Coming Day: A Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Reader, (Hardcover, April 1, 1991)