We were all huddled together in one cell, our feet in stocks, and around our necks fastened the most galling of chains. The air we breathed was laden with the foulest impurities, while the floor on which we sat was covered with filth and infested with vermin. No ray of light was allowed to penetrate that pestilential dungeon or to warm its icy coldness. We were placed in two rows, each facing the other. We had taught them to repeat certain verses which, every night, they chanted with extreme fervour. "God is sufficient unto me; He verily is the All-Sufficing!" one row would intone, while the other would reply: "In Him let the trusting trust." The chorus of these gladsome voices would continue to peal out until the early hours of the morning. Their reverberation would fill the dungeon, and, piercing its massive walls, would reach the ears of Násiri'd-Dín Sháh, whose palace was not far distant from the place where we were imprisoned. "What means this sound?" he was reported to have exclaimed. "It is the anthem the Bábís are intoning in their prison," they replied. The Sháh made no further remarks, nor did he attempt to restrain the enthusiasm his prisoners, despite the horrors of their confinement, continued to display."

(H.M. Balyuzi, Bahá'u'lláh: The King of Glory, p. 80)

XLV: The Ancient Beauty hath consented to be…

The Ancient Beauty hath consented to be bound with chains that mankind may be released from its bondage, and hath accepted to be made a prisoner within this most mighty Stronghold that the whole world may attain unto true liberty. He hath drained to its dregs the cup of sorrow, that all the peoples of the earth may attain unto abiding joy, and be filled with gladness. This is of the mercy of your Lord, the Compassionate, the Most Merciful. We have accepted to be abased, O believers in the Unity of God, that ye may be exalted, and have suffered manifold afflictions, that ye might prosper and flourish. He Who hath come to build anew the whole world, behold, how they that have joined partners with God have forced Him to dwell within the most desolate of cities!

O Black and Unknown Bards

by James Weldon Johnson


O black and unknown bards of long ago,
How came your lips to touch the sacred fire?
How, in your darkness, did you come to know
The power and beauty of the minstrel's lyre?
Who first from midst his bonds lifted his eyes?
Who first from out the still watch, lone and long,
Feeling the ancient faith of prophets rise
Within his dark-kept soul, burst into song?

"Now, of course, the slave didn't get his democracy from the Bill of Rights. He got it from his

reading of the moral justice of the Hebrew prophets and his concept of the wrath of God. And,

particularly, his mind seized on the experience of the Jews in Egypt and of the figure of Moses,

the savior of the people, leading them out of bondage, and, therefore, there is not only no more

musically beautiful spiritual, but no more symbolic spiritual than “Go Down Moses." (White

et al. 1940)

Alain Locke introducing the Spirituals at a Library of Congress event the "Festival of Music

Commemorating the Seventy-Fifth Anniversary of the Proclamation of the Thirteenth Amend-

ment to the Constitution of the United States," 1940.