This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Ode to Ethiopia" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (April 2015) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

"Ode to Ethiopia" is a poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar, a noted African-American poet who achieved a national reputation in the United States before the end of the nineteenth century, published in his 1893 book Oak and Ivy.^[1]

Dunbar presents ideas of Ethiopia as a mother, shows a pride in the African-American people, and encourages hope as well as racial pride. His poem emphasizes a belief in a brighter future ahead for the people of Ethiopia which is based on their own honor and hard labour.

Part of this poem was used as a prologue to the fourth movement of William Grant Still's Symphony No. 1 "Afro-American":^[2]

Be proud, my race, in mind and soul;

Thy name is writ on Glory's scroll

In characters of fire.

High 'mid the clouds of Fame's bright sky

Thy banner's blazoned folds now fly,

And truth shall lift them higher.

• African American literature

• The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar at Project Gutenberg

This poetry-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

• v
• t
• e