He had his Dream

Paul Laurence Dunbar 1872 (Dayton) – 1906



He had his dream, and all through life,
Worked up to it through toil and strife.
Afloat fore'er before his eyes,
It colored for him all his skies:
The storm-cloud dark
Above his bark,
The calm and listless vault of blue
Took on its hopeful hue,
It tinctured every passing beam -
He had his dream.

He labored hard and failed at last,
His sails too weak to bear the blast,
The raging tempests tore away
And sent his beating bark astray.
But what cared he
For wind or sea!
He said, 'The tempest will be short,
My bark will come to port.'
He saw through every cloud a gleam -
He had his dream.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

35 sec read
119

Quick analysis:

Scheme aabbccddeE ffgghhiieE
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 578
Words 118
Stanzas 2
Stanza Lengths 10, 10

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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