Analysis of When All Is Done



When all is done, and my last word is said,
And ye who loved me murmur, 'He is dead,'
Let no one weep, for fear that I should know,
And sorrow too that ye should sorrow so.

When all is done and in the oozing clay,
Ye lay this cast-off hull of mine away,
Pray not for me, for, after long despair,
The quiet of the grave will be a prayer.

For I have suffered loss and grievous pain,
The hurts of hatred and the world's disdain,
And wounds so deep that love, well-tried and pure,
Had not the pow'r to ease them or to cure.

When all is done, say not my day is o'er,
And that thro' night I seek a dimmer shore:
Say rather that my morn has just begun,--
I greet the dawn and not a setting sun,
When all is done.


Scheme AABB CCDD EEFF XXGGG
Poetic Form
Metre 1111011111 0111110111 1111111111 0101111101 1111000101 1111111101 1111110101 0101011101 1111010101 0111000101 0111111101 11011111111 11111111110 0111110101 1101111101 1101010101 1111
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 697
Words 150
Sentences 5
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 5
Lines Amount 17
Letters per line (avg) 31
Words per line (avg) 9
Letters per stanza (avg) 132
Words per stanza (avg) 37
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on May 02, 2023

45 sec read
176

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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