A Lazy Day
- Author
- Paul Laurence Dunbar
- Date
- 1905
- Language
- English
- Country
- Form
- Three six-line stanzas, with regular rhyme and a strongly musical, flowing rhythm
- First published
- Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow, 1905
The source
The trees bend down along the stream,
Where anchored swings my tiny boat.
The day is one to drowse and dream
And list the thrush's throttling note.
When music from his bosom bleeds
Among the river's rustling reeds,
No ripple stirs the placid pool,
When my adventurous line is cast,
A truce to sport, while clear and cool,
The mirrored clouds slide softly past.
The sky gives back a blue divine,
And all the world's wide wealth is mine.
A pickerel leaps, a bow of light,
The minnows shine from side to side.
The first faint breeze comes up the tide—
I pause with half uplifted oar,
While night drifts down to claim the shore.
Commentary
Dr. Ruxandra RouxHead of Literary Research & Development
Paul Laurence Dunbar, 1905, from Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow. A man sits in a boat on a quiet river, meaning to fish. He gets as far as casting the line. No real event or person is known behind it, and I would not invent one.
“Lazy” is not an insult here. It is a day off from everything. The sky “gives back a blue divine” on the water, a pickerel flashes out as “a bow of light”, and by the end night “drifts down to claim the shore”. “All the world's wide wealth is mine”, he says, and it has nothing to do with money. Dunbar is usually read through the pressures of his time, and rightly. This poem shows he could also write an afternoon in which nothing happens. That is harder than it looks.
Songs
The song made from A Lazy Day.
