"Kingdom Coming" or "The Year of Jubilo" is an American Civil War song, written and composed by Henry C. Work in 1862, prior to the Emancipation Proclamation.
The song celebrates promised freedom to slaves whose master has been frightened away by the Union military forces.
The lyrics are seldom heard nowadays. The song is usually played as a lively instrumental, as with the Ken Burns documentary on the Civil War.
Work also wrote the song Babylon is Fallen ("Don't you see the black clouds risin' ober yonder") which sees the Civil War from the perspective of the black soldiers fighting for the North.
Read more about Kingdom Coming: Sample Lyrics, In Popular Culture
Famous quotes containing the words kingdom and/or coming:
“O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention!
A kingdom for a stage, princes to act,
And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“A glimpse through an interstice caught,
Of a crowd of workmen and drivers in a barroom around the stove late of a winter night, and I unremarked seated in a corner,
Of a youth who loves me and whom I love, silently approaching and seating himself near, that he may hold me by the hand,
A long while amid the noises of coming and going, of drinking and
oath and smutty jest,
There we two, content, happy in being together, speaking little,
perhaps not a word.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)