In the poem "Lift Every Voice and Sing" (1900) by James Weldon Johnson, the use of figurative language draws a parallel between the past of suffering represented by slavery and a present of hope represented by the Civil Rights Movements. We can observe those differences in some verses like:
“Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us. “
In this verses, it´s clear the belief in a transition from a dark past to a present of hope.
"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. "
In this part a he describes how the old generations ("our fathers") of black people paved the way with a lot of o sorrow and pain (Stony the road we trod/Bitter the chastening rod) through a "gloomy past" to achieve this moment when the new generations can dream with a better future ("Till now we stand at last/Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast).
