Analysis of To A Dead Friend

Paul Laurence Dunbar 1872 (Dayton) – 1906



It is as if a silver chord
Were suddenly grown mute,
And life's song with its rhythm warred
Against a silver lute.

It is as if a silence fell
Where bides the garnered sheaf,
And voices murmuring, 'It is well,'
Are stifled by our grief.

It is as if the gloom of night
Had hid a summer's day,
And willows, sighing at their plight,
Bent low beside the way.

For he was part of all the best
That Nature loves and gives,
And ever more on Memory's breast
He lies and laughs and lives.


Scheme ABAB CDCD EFEF GHGH
Poetic Form Traditional rhyme
Quatrain 
Metre 11110101 010011 01111101 010101 11110101 110101 010100111 1101101 11110111 110101 0110111 110101 11111101 110101 0101111 110101
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 470
Words 97
Sentences 5
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 4
Lines Amount 16
Letters per line (avg) 23
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 92
Words per stanza (avg) 24
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

29 sec read
124

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…

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