Analysis of The Meadow Lark

Paul Laurence Dunbar 1872 (Dayton) – 1906



THOUGH the winds be dank,
And the sky be sober,
And the grieving Day
In a mantle gray
Hath let her waiting maiden robe her, —
All the fields along
I can hear the song
Of the meadow lark,
As she flits and flutters,
And laughs at the thunder when it mutters.
O happy bird, of heart most gay
To sing when skies are gray!
When the clouds are full,
And the tempest master
Lets the loud winds sweep
From his bosom deep
Like heralds of some dire disaster,
Then the heart alone
To itself makes moan;
And the songs come slow,
While the tears fall fleeter,
And silence than song by far seems sweeter.
Oh, few are they along the way
Who sing when skies are gray!


Scheme ABCCBDDEFFCCGBHHBIIJBBCC
Poetic Form
Metre 10111 001110 00101 00101 110101010 10101 11101 1011 111010 0110101110 11011111 111111 10111 001010 10111 11101 110111010 10101 10111 00111 10111 0101111110 11110101 111111
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 639
Words 130
Sentences 5
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 24
Lines Amount 24
Letters per line (avg) 21
Words per line (avg) 5
Letters per stanza (avg) 507
Words per stanza (avg) 128
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on May 01, 2023

39 sec read
35

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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