Analysis of The Lawyers' Ways

Paul Laurence Dunbar 1872 (Dayton) – 1906



I've been list'nin' to them lawyers  
    In the court house up the street,
  An' I've come to the conclusion
    That I'm most completely beat.
  Fust one feller riz to argy,
    An' he boldly waded in
  As he dressed the tremblin' pris'ner
    In a coat o' deep-dyed sin.
  Why, he painted him all over
   In a hue o' blackest crime,
 An' he smeared his reputation
   With the thickest kind o' grime,
 Tell I found myself a-wond'rin',
   In a misty way and dim,
 How the Lord had come to fashion
   Sich an awful man as him.
 Then the other lawyer started,
   An' with brimmin', tearful eyes,
 Said his client was a martyr
   That was brought to sacrifice.
 An' he give to that same pris'ner
   Every blessed human grace,
 Tell I saw the light o' virtue
   Fairly shinin' from his face.
 Then I own 'at I was puzzled
   How sich things could rightly be;
 An' this aggervatin' question
   Seems to keep a-puzzlin' me.
 So, will some one please inform me,
   An' this mystery unroll--
 How an angel an' a devil
   Can persess the self-same soul?


Scheme ABCBDEFEFGCGCHCHIJFKFLMLNOCOOPPP
Poetic Form
Metre 1111110 0011101 11110010 1110101 1110111 1110100 111011 0011111 11101110 0011101 1111010 1010111 111101 0010101 10111110 1110111 10101010 111101 11101010 111110 1111111 1001101 11101110 101111 11111110 1111101 11110 111011 11111011 111001 11101010 110111
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 1,022
Words 184
Sentences 8
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 32
Lines Amount 32
Letters per line (avg) 23
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 737
Words per stanza (avg) 182
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

57 sec read
136

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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