He had his dream, and all through life,
Worked up to it through toil and strife.
Afloat fore’er before his eyes,
It colored for him all his skies:
The storm-cloud dark
Above his bark,
The calm and listless vault of blue
Took on its hopeful hue,
It tinctured every passing beam -
He had his dream.
He labored hard and failed at last,
His sails too weak to bear the blast,
The raging tempests tore away
And sent his beating bark astray.
But what cared he
For wind or sea!
He said, “The tempest will be short,
My bark will come to port.”
He saw through every cloud a gleam -
He had his dream.
The first thing I notice about this poem is that the rhyme scheme goes AABBCCDD …etc. This is something that I actually have not seen in a while. Lately I’ve been seeing a lot of ababab terza rima. In other words, this poem contains a lot of couplets. The diction of this poem but Paul Dunbar has a very sophisticated diction with words such as toil, tinctured, etc. The diction makes me feel that this was written in the victiorian era. It definitely has that type of mood to it. There are two stanzas. The fifth and sixth lines of both stanzas are further indented than their predecesors. Then the indention goes back to normal, but then the last lines of both stanzas are also indented. These are indented more to emphasize those particular lines. Overall this is a very simple, elegant poem.
