Analysis of The Sparrow

Paul Laurence Dunbar 1872 (Dayton) – 1906



A LITTLE bird, with plumage brown,
Beside my window flutters down,
A moment chirps its little strain,
Then taps upon my window-pane,
And chirps again, and hops along,
To call my notice to its song;
But I work on, nor heed its lay,
Till, in neglect, it flies away.

So birds of peace and hope and love
Come fluttering earthward from above,
To settle on life's window-sills,
And ease our load of earthly ills;
But we, in traffic's rush and din
Too deep engaged to let them in,
With deadened heart and sense plod on,
Nor know our loss till they are gone.


Scheme AABBCCDD EEFFGGXX
Poetic Form
Metre 01011101 01110101 01011101 11011101 01010101 11110111 11111111 10011101 11110101 11001101 11011101 011011101 11010101 11011110 1110111 111011111
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 543
Words 105
Sentences 3
Stanzas 2
Stanza Lengths 8, 8
Lines Amount 16
Letters per line (avg) 27
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 212
Words per stanza (avg) 52
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on May 03, 2023

32 sec read
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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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