Life
A crust of bread and a corner to sleep in,A minute to smile and an hour to weep in,A pint of joy to a peck of trouble,And never a laugh but the moans come double;And that is life!
A crust and a corner that love makes precious,With a smile to warm and the tears to refresh us;And joy seems sweeter when cares come after,And a moan is the finest of foils for laughter;And that is life!
About this text
Life is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar, Project Gutenberg ebook #18338; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Paul Laurence Dunbar, Life, in The Complete Poems (1893–1905), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #18338, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/dunbar-poems/life.html, id L00486.
Form and metre
Life is 10 lines in 2 stanzas of 5 lines each. It is in rhyming couplets, 80% of the lines. 87% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 9.5 syllables. 4 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
See other poems in rhyming couplets.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 AABB- inA · inA · troubleB · doubleB · life
- 2 AABB- preciousA · usA · afterB · laughterB · life
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| A crust of bread and a corner to sleep in, | 11 | ······/˘··· |
| A minute to smile and an hour to weep in, | 11 | ·/˘····/··· |
| A pint of joy to a peck of trouble, | 10 | ········/˘ |
| And never a laugh but the moans come double; | 10 | ·/······/˘ |
| And that is life! | 4 | ···· |
| A crust and a corner that love makes precious, | 11 | ····/˘···/˘ |
| With a smile to warm and the tears to refresh us; | 12 | ·········˘/· |
| And joy seems sweeter when cares come after, | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| And a moan is the finest of foils for laughter; | 12 | ·····/˘···/˘ |
| And that is life! | 4 | ···· |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.