Sympathy, poetry by Paul Laurence Dunbar

Paul Laurence Dunbar (June 27, 1872 – February 9, 1906) was an African-American poet, novelist, and playwright of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was born in Dayton, Ohio, to parents who had been slaves in Kentucky before the American Civil War. Dunbar began to write as a child and became president of his high school's literary society. He published his first poems at the age of 16 in a Dayton newspaper.

Dunbar was prolific during his relatively short career. He wrote a dozen books of poetry, four books of short stories, four novels, lyrics for a musical and a play. Much of his more popular work in his lifetime was written in the Negro dialect associated with the antebellum South. He was one of the first African-American writers to establish a national reputation. His works of poetry included: 1899 edition of Poems of Cabin and Field, Oak and Ivy (1892), Majors and Minors (1896), Lyrics of Lowly Life (1896), We Wear the Mask (1896), When Malindy Sings (1896), Poems of Cabin and Field (1899), Lyrics of the Hearthside (1902), The Haunted Oak (1900), In Old Plantation Days (1903), and Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow (1905).

He wrote the lyrics for the musical comedy, In Dahomey (1903), the first all-African-American musical produced on Broadway; the musical also toured in the United States and the United Kingdom. After returning from the United Kingdom, Dunbar married Alice Ruth Moore on March 6, 1898. She was a teacher and poet from New Orleans whom he had met three years earlier. His first collection of short stories Folks From Dixie (1898), a sometimes "harsh examination of racial prejudice," had favorable reviews.

As we continue to celebrate National Poetry Month, please enjoy this poem, Sympathy, by Paul Laurence Dunbar, that also inspired the title for Maya Angelou's autobiography. Enjoy!

Sympathy

By Paul Laurence Dunbar

    I KNOW what the caged bird feels, alas! 

        When the sun is bright on the upland slopes; 

    When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass, 

    And the river flows like a stream of glass; 

        When the first bird sings and the first bud opes, 

    And the faint perfume from its chalice steals — 

    I know what the caged bird feels!

    I know why the caged bird beats his wing 

        Till its blood is red on the cruel bars; 

    For he must fly back to his perch and cling 

    When he fain would be on the bough a-swing; 

        And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars 

    And they pulse again with a keener sting — 

    I know why he beats his wing!

    I know why the caged bird sings, ah me, 

        When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,— 

    When he beats his bars and he would be free; 

    It is not a carol of joy or glee, 

        But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core, 

    But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings — 

    I know why the caged bird sings!