Analysis of To The Road

Paul Laurence Dunbar 1872 (Dayton) – 1906



Cool is the wind, for the summer is waning,
Who 's for the road?
Sun-flecked and soft, where the dead leaves are raining,
Who 's for the road?
Knapsack and alpenstock press hand and shoulder,
Prick of the brier and roll of the boulder;
This be your lot till the season grow older;
Who 's for the road?

Up and away in the hush of the morning,
Who 's for the road?
Vagabond he, all conventions a-scorning,
Who 's for the road?
Music of warblers so merrily singing,
Draughts from the rill from the roadside up-springing,
Nectar of grapes from the vines lowly swinging,
These on the road.

Now every house is a hut or a hovel,
Come to the road:
Mankind and moles in the dark love to grovel,
But to the road.
Throw off the loads that are bending you double;
Love is for life, only labor is trouble;
Truce to the town, whose best gift is a bubble:
Come to the road!


Scheme aBaBcccB aBaBaaab dBdbdddB
Poetic Form
Metre 11011010110 11101 11011011110 11101 10111010 11010011010 11111010110 11101 10010011010 11101 1001101001 11101 10110110010 1101101110 10111011010 1101 110011011010 1101 11010011110 1101 11011110110 11111010110 11011111010 1101
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 843
Words 167
Sentences 9
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 8, 8, 8
Lines Amount 24
Letters per line (avg) 27
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 219
Words per stanza (avg) 55
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

50 sec read
73

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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