Analysis of At the Tavern

Paul Laurence Dunbar 1872 (Dayton) – 1906



A lilt and a swing,  
    And a ditty to sing,
   Or ever the night grow old;
    The wine is within,
    And I'm sure t'were a sin
  For a soldier to choose to be cold, my dear,
  For a soldier to choose to be cold.
    We're right for a spell,
    But the fever is -- well,
  No thing to be braved, at least;
   So bring me the wine;
   No low fever in mine,
 For a drink more kind than a priest, my dear,
 For a drink is more kind than a
      priest.


Scheme AABCCDBEEFGGDHF
Poetic Form Tetractys  (20%)
Metre 01001 001011 1100111 01101 0111001 10101111111 101011111 11101 101011 1111111 11101 111001 1011110111 10111110 1
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 449
Words 93
Sentences 3
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 15
Lines Amount 15
Letters per line (avg) 20
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 298
Words per stanza (avg) 91
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

28 sec read
100

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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