Analysis of The Fisher Child's Lullaby

Paul Laurence Dunbar 1872 (Dayton) – 1906



THE wind is out in its rage to-night,
And your father is far at sea.
The rime on the window is hard and white
But dear, you are near to me.
Heave ho, weave low,
Waves of the briny deep;
Seethe low and breathe low,
But sleep you, my little one, sleep, sleep.
The little boat rocks in the cove no more,
But the flying sea-gulls wail;
I peer through the darkness that wraps the shore,
For sight of a home set sail.
Heave ho, weave low,
Waves of the briny deep;
Seethe low and breathe low,
But sleep you, my little one, sleep, sleep.
Ay, lad of mine, thy father may die
In the gale that rides the sea,
But we'll not believe it, not you and I,
Who mind us of Galilee.
Heave ho, weave low,
Waves of the briny deep;
Seethe low and breathe low,
But sleep you, my little one, sleep, sleep.


Scheme ababCDCDefefCDCDgbgbCDCD
Poetic Form
Metre 011101111 01101111 0110101101 1111111 1111 11011 11011 111110111 0101100111 1010111 1110101101 1110111 1111 11011 11011 111110111 111111011 0011101 1110111101 111110 1111 11011 11011 111110111
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 766
Words 158
Sentences 8
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 24
Lines Amount 24
Letters per line (avg) 24
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 584
Words per stanza (avg) 156
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

47 sec read
119

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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