He Knew Why the Caged Bird Sings ...

…even before Maya Angelou knew. Paul Laurence Dunbar, a great Black American poet who died of tuberculosis at age 33 (thanks, Wikipedia!), wrote “Sympathy” in the late 1800s. In his brief lifetime he managed to write and publish four novels and several books of short stories, in addition to 12 books of poetry. Yet today he is relatively unknown in America. Here is his poem “Sympathy”: I’ve always felt that somebody should set it to music.

Sympathy

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 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!

from The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar. (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 2004

Paul Laurence dunbar: a great american.