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 the first bud opes,

And the faint perfume from its chalice steals--

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 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;

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

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

Everyone knows what it is to feel trapped. Yet never have I found a clearer representation of it than in the poem "Sympathy," by Paul Lawrence Dunbar. It is obvious that this author was not writing only about a caged bird, but

The rhyming patterns of the poem are basically alike. The first stanza has a pattern of ABAABCC. This is also the pattern of the third stanza. However, the second verse's pattern is ABAABAA. That the second stanza should be different from the first and third is entirely natural. The second verse is where the change in the poem occurs. Both the first and the third are somewhat passive in tone, while the second is much more active.

The second stanza is very different from the first. In the first line, "I know why the caged bird beats his wing," the bird is no longer sadly watching events outside; he is taking action. The next line is an excellent example of imagery. It is easy to imagine the bird beating its wings until they bleed. The "cruel bars" also are given a human-like quality as the poet uses personification. Words such as "throb" and "pulse" stand out because pain so often seems to come in waves. This makes it all the worse, because it is continuous, never stopping long enough to get over it. Also, the phrase "old, old scars" implies that this has happened before and the bird has never been able to get out. There are a lot of hard consonant sounds in this

Some common words found in the essay are:
Lawrence Dunbar, caged bird, beats wing, bird sings, caged bird beats, caged bird sings, Paul Lawrence, Sympathy Paul, bird beats wing, plea upward heaven, heart's deep, bird beats, old scars, sends heart's deep, cruel bars, carol joy, plea upward, prayer sends,
Approximate Word count = 798
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)