Just like moons and like suns, / With the certainty of tides, / Just like hopes springing high, / Still I’ll rise.
This is the third stanza of Still I Rise. It follows the stanza that begins “Does my sassiness upset you?” and likens the speaker’s rising to the moon, the sun and the tides.
History, despite its wrenching pain / Cannot be unlived, but if faced / With courage, need not be lived again.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear / I rise / Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear / I rise
You may trod me in the very dirt / But still, like dust, I’ll rise.
A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: / Its loveliness increases; it will never / Pass into nothingness;
I have walked that long road to freedom. I have tried not to falter; I have made missteps along the way. But I have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb.
I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.