Analysis of The Poet

Paul Laurence Dunbar 1872 (Dayton) – 1906



He sang of life, serenely sweet,
With, now and then, a deeper note.
From some high peak, nigh yet remote,
He voiced the world's absorbing beat.

He sang of love when earth was young,
And Love, itself, was in his lays.
But, ah, the world, it turned to praise
A jingle in a broken tongue.


Scheme ABBA CDDC
Poetic Form Quatrain 
Metre 111101001 11010101 11111101 11010101 11111111 01011011 11011111 01000101
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 286
Words 57
Sentences 5
Stanzas 2
Stanza Lengths 4, 4
Lines Amount 8
Letters per line (avg) 27
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 107
Words per stanza (avg) 28
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

17 sec read
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Paul Laurence Dunbar

Paul Laurence Dunbar was a seminal American poet of the late 19th and early 20th centuries Dunbar gained national recognition for his 1896 Lyrics of a Lowly Life one poem in the collection being Ode to Ethiopia more…

All Paul Laurence Dunbar poems | Paul Laurence Dunbar Books

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