Poet for June – James Weldon Johnson

Listen, Lord A Prayer

Jun 3, 2009 Linda Sue Grimes

James Weldon Johnson was born June 17, 1871, in Jacksonville, Florida. A composer of many popular songs, this poet also penned many important prayer-poems.

James Weldon Johnson’s “Listen, Lord: A Prayer” from God’s Trombones offers a beautiful supplication to the Lord. Instead of the ordinary stock features that public prayers often display, Johnson’s poetry lives in the verse through his original and heartfelt images and phrasings.

The poem features four stanzas of varying lengths, and the voice that sings through reminds the reader that this poet was also the composer of hundreds of songs, many that become quite popular. He also penned the very famous, inspiring lyric, “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” which became the “Negro National Anthem.”

First Stanza: “O Lord, we come this morning”

The speaker is leading a prayer, and the occasion could be a church gathering or it could simply be the speaker praying to God alone, but including his fellows in the supplication. He tells the Lord, “we come this morning / Knee-bowed and body-bent / Before Thy throne of grace.” The opening is quite standard fare bringing the attention to God, coming on bended knees, very humbly before the Lord’s graceful presence.

Then the speaker asks the Lord to “Bow our hearts beneath our knees.” He asks that the Lord make them even more humble than they think they already are. The speaker understands the nature of the vain, proud human heart that needs the Lord to help it become humble.

The speaker then likens the human beings to “empty pitchers” brought to the fountain of the Lord’s effulgence. He avers before the Lord that they come “with no merit of [their] own,” for which they ever depend on the Lord. He colorfully asks the Lord to “open up a window of heaven, / And lean out far over the battlements of glory, / And listen this morning.”

Second Stanza: “Lord, have mercy on proud and dying sinners”

The speaker asks for mercy on the “proud and dying sinners” and then alludes to Jonathan Edwards’ image, “the God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider,” from his famous lecture-sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” with “sinners hanging over the mouth of hell.” He admits that those sinners “seem to love their distance well.”

But the speaker asks the Lord to “Mount Your milk-white horse, // Ride by the dingy gates of hell, /

And stop poor sinners in their headlong plunge.” The speaker pleads mercy for himself and the helpless ones who seem to be lost in their worldly wallowing.

Third Stanza: “And now, O Lord, this man of God”

In the third stanza, the speaker directs the Lord’s attention to an individual “man of God,” for whom the speaker asks specific blessings. He asks the Lord to hold him in the “hollow of [His] hand” and keep him safe “out of the gunshot of the devil.” He asks that this man of God be washed and hung to dry; he wants the Lord to “pin [the man’s] ear to the wisdom-post,” and “make his words sledge hammers of truth.” And this truth will “beat[ ] on the iron heart of sin,” like a blacksmith hammering out a horseshoe on an anvil. He wants this man to be perfected according to the Lord’s will.

The speaker wants this man to be given great vision with his “eye to the telescope of eternity.” He dramatizes the salvation of this man asking the Lord to “Fill him full of the dynamite of Thy power, / Anoint him all over with the oil of Thy salvation, / And set his tongue on fire.” The speaker begs the Lord grant this man the power to preach the word with great authority.

Fourth Stanza: “And now, O Lord”

The speaker finally reveals that he is asking all these things for what he considers the greatest sinner of all, his own self. He has experienced great sorrows in his life and had vile abuse of name calling heaped upon him, but he supplicates humbly to the Lord, to “Mary’s Baby,” that when he is lowered into the grave, he experience “peace / To wait for that great gittin'-up morning—Amen.”

The speaker metaphorically likens his union with God as “that great gittin’-up morning,”— a beautiful and marvelously accurate descriptor for that blessed event.

Other James Weldon Johnson Articles

The copyright of the article Poet for June – James Weldon Johnson in Poetry is owned by Linda Sue Grimes. Permission to republish Poet for June – James Weldon Johnson in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

James Weldon Johnson