Analysis of In An English Garden

Paul Laurence Dunbar 1872 (Dayton) – 1906



In this old garden, fair, I walk to-day
Heart-charmed with all the beauty of the scene:
The rich, luxuriant grasses' cooling green,
The wall's environ, ivy-decked and gray,
The waving branches with the wind at play,
The slight and tremulous blooms that show between,
Sweet all: and yet my yearning heart doth lean
Toward Love's Egyptian fleshpots far away.

Beside the wall, the slim Laburnum grows
And flings its golden flow'rs to every breeze.
But e'en among such soothing sights as these,
I pant and nurse my soul-devouring woes.
Of all the longings that our hearts wot of,
There is no hunger like the want of love!


Scheme ABBAABBA CDDCEE
Poetic Form Petrarchan sonnet 
Metre 0111011111 1111010101 01010010101 01110101 0101010111 01010011101 1101110111 0110101101 01010111 01110111001 11101110111 11011101001 11010110111 1111010111
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 612
Words 109
Sentences 5
Stanzas 2
Stanza Lengths 8, 6
Lines Amount 14
Letters per line (avg) 35
Words per line (avg) 8
Letters per stanza (avg) 243
Words per stanza (avg) 54
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 26, 2023

33 sec read
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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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