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.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 19, 2023

21 sec read
67

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABBACDDC
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 355
Words 66
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 8

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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    "A Summer's Night" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Mar. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/28640/a-summer's-night>.

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