Analysis of Yesterday And To-Morrow

Paul Laurence Dunbar 1872 (Dayton) – 1906



YESTERDAY I held your hand,
Reverently I pressed it,
And its gentle yieldingness
From my soul I blessed it.
But to-day I sit alone,
Sad and sore repining;
Must our gold forever know
Flames for the refining?
Yesterday I walked with you,
Could a day be sweeter?
Life was all a lyric song
Set to tricksy meter.
Ah, to-day is like a dirge,—
Place my arms around you,
Let me feel the same dear joy
As when first I found you.
Let me once retrace my steps,
From these roads unpleasant,
Let my heart and mind and soul
All ignore the present.
Yesterday the iron seared
And to-day means sorrow.
Pause, my soul, arise, arise,
Look where gleams the morrow.


Scheme ABCBDEFEGHEHIGJGCKLKMFCF
Poetic Form
Metre 101111 1000111 01101 111111 1111101 1011 11010101 110010 101111 101110 1110101 11110 1111101 111011 1110111 111111 1110111 111010 1110101 101010 100101 011110 1110101 111010
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 631
Words 123
Sentences 9
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 24
Lines Amount 24
Letters per line (avg) 21
Words per line (avg) 5
Letters per stanza (avg) 499
Words per stanza (avg) 120
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 12, 2023

36 sec read
92

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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