Welcome back to the Daily Poem here on the Close Reeds Podcast Network. I'm David Kern.

Today's poem here on Martin Luther King Jr. Day is Sympathy, which is by Paul Lawrence Dunbar.

He was an American poet, novelist, playwright, who lived from 1872 to 1906.

So he died quite young in some ways he's the American Keats, I suppose.

He first published poems by the age of 16 in Dayton, Ohio newspaper.

Interestingly, he wrote the lyrics for In Dahomey, which was a 1903 musical produced

on Broadway, but it was the first all African American musical, and it later toured all around the

world, or at least in the U.S. and in Great Britain. Dunbar was one of the first African-American poets to have a national

reputation, to earn sort of some distinction among the literary set. According to Wikipedia,

the New York Times called him, quote, a true singer of the people, white or black, and Frederick

Douglas once referred to Dunbar as,

quote, one of the sweetest songsters his race has produced and a man of whom he hoped great things,

end quote. I'll go ahead and read the poem and then we can talk about what's going on here.

This is Sympathy by Paul Lawrence Dunbar.

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 the first bud oaps, and the faint perfume from its chalice steals,

I know what the caged bird feels.

I know why the caged bird beats his wings till its blood is red on the cruel bars,

for he must fly back to his perch and cling when he feign

would be on the bow a swing, and a pain still throves in the old, old scars, and they pulse again

with a keener sting.

...