Analysis of The Sand-Man

Paul Laurence Dunbar 1872 (Dayton) – 1906



I KNOW a man
With face of tan,
But who is ever kind;
Whom girls and boys
Leave games and toys
Each eventide to find.
When day grows dim,
They watch for him,
He comes to place his claim;
He wears the crown
Of Dreaming-town;
The sand-man is his name.
When sparkling eyes
Droop sleepywise
And busy lips grow dumb;
When little heads
Nod toward the beds,
We know the sand-man's come.


Scheme AABCCBDDEFFEGCHIIH
Poetic Form
Metre 1101 1111 111101 1101 1101 1111 1111 1111 111111 1101 1101 011111 1101 11 010111 1101 10101 110111
Closest metre Iambic dimeter
Characters 369
Words 74
Sentences 4
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 18
Lines Amount 18
Letters per line (avg) 16
Words per line (avg) 4
Letters per stanza (avg) 292
Words per stanza (avg) 72
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

22 sec read
127

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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