Paul Laurence Dunbar on Sympathy

On this fourth Saturday of Black History Month, we turn from Frederick Douglass to the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, who gave us a poem with an important message about connections.

You may recognize the words "I know why the caged bird sings" from the title of a famous autobiography by Maya Angelou, but do you know where they originally appeared?

They come from a poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar. Born in 1872 to a mother and father who had been enslaved in Kentucky, Dunbar was a prolific author of poetry and fiction.

The poem "Sympathy," in which these words appear, can be read as an expression of the suffering experienced by black Americans. It is indeed a powerful expression when read this way – but it also has a message about literature, a message relevant to all of us.

Let's take it one stanza at a time. The first one reads:

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!

There's nothing like a provocative opening line to draw us into a poem, and Dunbar certainly crafted one here. The speaker makes a bold claim when he says he can get inside the mind of a bird imprisoned in a cage, knowing what this bird feels. Reading the poem for the first time, we are likely to wonder how such a thing could be possible, and so we are drawn into the poem to find out. Before satisfying our curiosity, however, Dunbar presents us with some marvelous imagery, which itself is a draw. Who would not be attracted to sunshine on the slopes, a breeze blowing through the grass, and a river's glassy surface?

All, however, are beyond the reach of a bird in a cage. For this reason, we are well positioned to understand the next stanza, which reads:

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!

This stanza contains more vivid imagery, but it is the exact reverse of the pleasant, calming imagery of the first stanza. The words call on us to see a bird beating his wings on the bars of the cage, blood on these bars, and scars on the bird. Imprisonment has literally left a mark on the bird and on the cage itself.

The final stanza begins with the famous words I mentioned at the beginning of this podcast, words that create even more suspense because of the paradox they contain. This stanza reads:

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!

Within the stanza, the speaker resolves the paradox. While we might associate singing with "joy or glee," we now understand that it can be something else: "a prayer" or "a plea." The poem ends with the same words that opened this final stanza: "I know why the caged bird sings." Here again, the speaker claims to understand the feelings experienced by a bird, but this time we, too, understand the feeling, thanks to Dunbar's ability to express it in words.

The understanding that Dunbar helps us to achieve brings us back to what may be the most important word in the entire poem – that is, the title, "Sympathy." The speaker is claiming sympathy with the caged bird, but the title challenges us to feel sympathy, as well – not only with the bird, but also with the human being, who knows what the bird feels, even feels what the bird feels.

This is what literature often does: it builds bridges to connect writers and readers, humans and nature, all of us.

Dunbar tells us, through his poem, that he was capable of sympathy. Are we?