Analysis of A Summer's Night

Paul Laurence Dunbar 1872 (Dayton) – 1906



THE night is dewy as a maiden's mouth,
The skies are bright as are a maiden's eyes,
Soft as a maiden's breath the wind that flies
Up from the perfumed bosom of the South.
Like sentinels, the pines stand in the park;
And hither hastening, like rakes that roam,
With lamps to light their wayward footsteps home,
The fireflies come stagg'ring down the dark.


Scheme ABBACDDC
Poetic Form
Metre 011101011 011111011 110110111 1100110101 1100011001 0101001111 111111011 010111101
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 355
Words 66
Sentences 3
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 8
Lines Amount 8
Letters per line (avg) 35
Words per line (avg) 8
Letters per stanza (avg) 278
Words per stanza (avg) 64
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 19, 2023

21 sec read
67

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…

All Paul Laurence Dunbar poems | Paul Laurence Dunbar Books

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