Analysis of Lyrics Of Love And Sorrow
Paul Laurence Dunbar 1872 (Dayton) – 1906
Love is the light of the world, my dear,
Heigho, but the world is gloomy;
The light has failed and the lamp down hurled,
Leaves only darkness to me.
Love is the light of the world, my dear,
Ah me, but the world is dreary;
The night is down, and my curtain furled
But I cannot sleep, though weary.
Love is the light of the world, my dear,
Alas for a hopeless hoping,
When the flame went out in the breeze that swirled,
And a soul went blindly groping.
The light was on the golden sands,
A glimmer on the sea;
My soul spoke clearly to thy soul,
Thy spirit answered me.
Since then the light that gilds the sands,
And glimmers on the sea,
But vainly struggles to reflect
The radiant soul of thee.
The sea speaks to me of you
All the day long;
Still as I sit by its side
You are its song.
The sea sings to me of you
Loud on the reef;
Always it moans as it sings,
Voicing my grief.
My dear love died last night;
Shall I clothe her in white?
My passionate love is dead,
Shall I robe her in red?
But nay, she was all untrue,
She shall not go drest in blue;
Still my desolate love was brave,
Unrobed let her go to her grave.
There are brilliant heights of sorrow
That only the few may know;
And the lesser woes of the world, like waves,
Break noiselessly, far below.
I hold for my own possessing,
A mount that is lone and still--
The great high place of a hopeless grief,
And I call it my 'Heart-break Hill.'
And once on a winter's midnight
I found its highest crown,
And there in the gloom, my soul and I,
Weeping, we sat us down.
But now when I seek that summit
We are two ghosts that go;
Only two shades of a thing that died,
Once in the long ago.
So I sit me down in the silence,
And say to my soul, 'Be still,'
So the world may not know we died that night,
From weeping on 'Heart-break Hill.'
Scheme | Abcb Abcb Adcd ebxb ebxb fghg fixi jjkkffll mmxmdninjoxo xmhmxnjn |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 110110111 1101110 011100111 1101011 110110111 11101110 011101101 11101110 110110111 01101010 1011100111 00111010 01110101 010101 11110111 110101 11011101 010101 11010101 0100111 0111111 1011 1111111 1111 0111111 1101 111111 1011 111111 111001 1100111 111001 1111101 1111101 11100111 1101101 11101110 1100111 0010110111 11101 11111010 0111101 011110101 01111111 0110101 111101 010011101 101111 11111110 111111 101110111 100101 111110010 0111111 1011111111 1101111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,750 |
Words | 370 |
Sentences | 16 |
Stanzas | 10 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 8, 12, 8 |
Lines Amount | 56 |
Letters per line (avg) | 24 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 136 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 36 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 24, 2023
- 1:50 min read
- 97 Views
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"Lyrics Of Love And Sorrow" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 30 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/28791/lyrics-of-love-and-sorrow>.
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