POETRY FRIDAY: Sympathy

Paul Laurence Dunbar, born to freed slaves in Kentucky in 1872, became one of the first influential Black poets in American literature, presenting the plight of Black people in America through language that was simultaneously lush and romantic, vivid and realistic. 

"Sympathy" is a potent synthesis of poetic form (the rhythm and the rhyme, the alliteration and the imagery) and social commentary (the caged bird with bloody wings contrasted with the sensorial beauties of spring, metaphors each for the oppressed and the oppressor).

The poem was first published in 1893 - more than 100 years ago - yet it still beats and throbs today. The bird is still caged, still bruised and sore from years of systemic abuse.

Sympathy

Paul Laurence Dunbar (1893)

I know what the caged bird feels, alas!

    When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;

When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass,

And the river flows like a stream of glass;

    When the first bird sings and first bud opes,

And the faint perfume from its chalice steals --

I know what the caged bird feels!

I know why the caged bird beats his wing

    Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;

For he must fly back to his perch and cling

When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;

    And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars

And they pulse again with a keener sting --

I know why he beats his wing!

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,

    When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore, --

When he beats his bars and he would be free;

It is not a carol of joy or glee,

    But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core,

But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings --

I know why the caged bird sings!