Analysis of Winter Song

Paul Laurence Dunbar 1872 (Dayton) – 1906



OH, who would be sad tho' the sky be a-graying,
And meadow and woodlands are empty and bare;
For softly and merrily now there come playing,
The little white birds thro' the winter-kissed air.
The squirrel's enjoying the rest of the thrifty,
He munches his store in the old hollow tree;
Tho' cold is the blast and the snow-flakes are drifty
He fears the white flock not a whit more than we.
Chorus:
Then heigho for the flying snow!
Over the whitened roads we go,
With pulses that tingle,
And sleigh-bells a-jingle
For winter's white birds here's a cheery heigho!


Scheme ABABCCCCDEEFFG
Poetic Form
Metre 111111011010 010111001 110010011110 01011101011 01010011010 1111001101 11101001111 11011101111 10 1110101 1001111 110110 011010 1101110101
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 556
Words 102
Sentences 5
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 14
Lines Amount 14
Letters per line (avg) 31
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 438
Words per stanza (avg) 100
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

31 sec read
70

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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