Mark Zuckerman - Composer

The Gift to Sing

2025 SATB a cappella (CO) Score Get the Music Recording: The Rocky Mountain Chamber Choir
An a cappella choral setting of a poem by James Weldon Johnson.

Sometimes the mist overhangs my path,
And blackening clouds about me cling;
But, oh, I have a magic way
To turn the gloom to cheerful day -
I softly sing.

And if the way grows darker still,
Shadowed by Sorrow’s somber wing,
With glad defiance in my throat,
I pierce the darkness with a note,
And sing, and sing.

I brood not over the broken past,
Nor dread whatever time may bring;
No nights are dark, no days are long,
While in my heart there swells a song,
And I can sing.

Writer and civil rights activist James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938), a voice of the Harlem Renaissance and a leader of the NAACP, wrote the lyrics to Lift Every Voice and Sing (with music by his brother, J. Rosamond Johnson), which became known as the Black National Anthem.