When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore, – When he fain would be on the bough a-swing Īnd a pain still throbs in the old, old scarsĪnd they pulse again with a keener sting –
When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,Īnd the faint perfume from its chalice steals –įor he must fly back to his perch and cling When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass,Īnd the river flows like a stream of glass When the sun is bright on the upland slopes
The dry dust of the dry books (ironic incongruity!–a poet shut up with medical works), rasped sharply in his hot throat, and he understood how the bird felt when it beats its wings against its cage. The torrid sun poured its rays down into the courtyard of the library and heated the iron grilling of the book stacks until they were like prison bars in more senses than one. All out of doors called and the trees of the shaded streets of Washington were tantalizingly suggestive of his beloved streams and fields. The iron grating of the book stacks in the Library of Congress suggested to him the bars of the bird’s cage. Alice Dunbar Nelson, Dunbar's wife, later wrote in a 1914 article that: : xxii He wrote "Sympathy" at least in part because he was feeling "like he was trapped in a cage" while working there. He was hired to work as an attendant at the Library of Congress on September 30, 1897, but the experience was unpleasant and strained his declining health. Dunbar, who was twenty-seven when he wrote "Sympathy", : xxi had already published several poetry collections which had sold well. Born to freed slaves, he became one of the most prominent African-American poets of his time in the 1890s. Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872–1906) was an American poet. Maya Angelou titled her autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings from a line in the poem and referenced its themes throughout her autobiographies. The poem is often considered to be about the struggle of African-Americans. Dunbar, one of the most prominent African-American writers of his time, wrote the poem while working in unpleasant conditions at the Library of Congress. " Sympathy" is an 1899 poem written by Paul Laurence Dunbar. "Sympathy" as first published in Lyrics of the Hearthside, 1899
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