Read the following stanza from “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” Then discuss how the punctuation influences the flow and meaning of the poem. Based on what you see in this stanza, briefly describe how you’ll punctuate your lyric poem. Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chastening rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,
Till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.