Analysis of A Boy's Summer Song

Paul Laurence Dunbar 1872 (Dayton) – 1906



'Tis fine to play
In the fragrant hay,
And romp on the golden load;
To ride old Jack
To the barn and back,
Or tramp by a shady road.
To pause and drink,
At a mossy brink;
Ah, that is the best of joy,
And so I say
On a summer's day,
What's so fine as being a boy? Ha, Ha!
With line and hook
By a babbling brook,
The fisherman's sport we ply;
And list the song
Of the feathered throng
That flit in the branches nigh.
At last we strip
For a quiet dip;
Ah, that is the best of joy.
For this I say
On a summer's day,
What's so fine as being a boy? Ha, Ha!


Scheme aabccbddEaAFgghiihjjEaAF
Poetic Form
Metre 1111 00101 0110101 1111 10101 1110101 1101 1011 1110111 0111 10101 1111100111 1101 101001 0100111 0101 10101 1100101 1111 10101 1110111 1111 10101 1111100111
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 536
Words 122
Sentences 8
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 24
Lines Amount 24
Letters per line (avg) 17
Words per line (avg) 5
Letters per stanza (avg) 403
Words per stanza (avg) 120
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 14, 2023

38 sec read
180

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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