text: A Negro Sermon
  And God stepped out on space,
  And He looked around and said,
  I’ll make me a world.”
  And as far as the eye of God could see
  Darkness covered everything,
  Blacker than a hundred midnights
  Down in a cypress swamp.
  Then God smiled,
  And the light broke,
  And the darkness rolled up on one side,
  And the light stood shining on the other,
  And God said, “That’s good!”
  Then God reached out and took the light in His hands,
  And God rolled the light around in His hands
  Until He made the sun;
  And He set that sun a-blazing in the heavens.
  And the light that was left from making the sun
  God gathered it up in a shining ball
  And flung it against the darkness,
  Spangling the night with the moon and stars.
  Then down between
  The darkness and the light
  He hurled the world;
  And God said, “That’s good.”
  Then God Himself stepped down—
  And the sun was on His right hand
  And the moon was on His left;
  The stars were clustered about His head,
  And the earth was under His feet.
  And God walked, and where He trod
  His footsteps hollowed the valleys out
  And bulged the mountains up.
  Then He stopped and looked, and saw
  That the earth was hot and barren.
  So God stepped over to the edge of the world
  And He spat out the seven seas;
  He batted His eyes, and the lightnings flashed;
  He clapped His hands, and the thunders rolled;
  And the waters above the earth came down,
  The cooling waters came down.
  Then the green grass sprouted,
  And the little red flowers blossomed,
  The pine tree pointed his finger to the sky,
  And the oak spread out his arms,
  And the lakes cuddled down in the hollows of the ground,
  And the rivers ran to the sea;
  And God smiled again,
  And the rainbow appeared,
  And curled itself around His shoulder.
  Then God raised His arm and He waved His hand,
  Over the sea and over the land,
  And He said, “Bring forth. Bring forth.”
  And quicker than God could drop His hand
  Fishes and fowls
  And beasts and birds
  Swam the rivers and the seas,
  Roamed the forests and the woods,
  And split the air with their wings.
  And God said, “That’s good.”
  Then God walked around,
  And God looked around
  On all that He had made.
  He looked at His sun,
  And He looked at His moon,
  And He looked at His little stars;
  He looked on His world,
  With all its living things,
  And God said, “I’m lonely still.”
  Then God sat down
  On the side of a hill where He could think;
  By a deep, wide river He sat down;
  With His head in His hands,
  God thought and thought,
  Till He thought, “I’ll make me a man”
  Up from the bed of a river
  God scooped the clay;
  And by the bank of the river
  He kneeled Him down;
  And there the great God Almighty
  Who lit the sun and fixed it in the sky,
  Who flung the stars to the most far corner of the night,
  Who rounded the earth in the middle of His hand;
  This Great God,
  Like a mammy bending over her baby,
  Kneeled down in the dust
  Toiling over a lump of clay
  Till He shaped it in His own image;
  Then into it He blew the breath of life,
  And man became a living soul.
  —James Weldon Johnson.
  Published in The Freeman, December 1920
  Also published in Anthology of Magazine Verse, 1921
  Also published in The Book of American Negro Poetry, 1922
  Also published in The New Negro: An Interpretation 1925