Life’s tragedy
Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poem “Life’s Tragedy” was published in 1913.
Paul Laurence Dunbar was born on 27 June 1872 in Dayton, Ohio, US, and he died on 9 February 1906 in Dayton, Ohio, US, at the age of 33.A poet, novelist, and short story writer, Dunbar was born to parents who had been enslaved in Kentucky before the US Civil War. He began writing stories and verse when he was a child and published his first poems at the age of 16. Dunbar became one of the first African-American writers to establish an international reputation. He is considered the first important African-American sonnet writer.
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It may be misery not to sing at all And to go silent through the brimming day. It may be sorrow never to be loved, But deeper griefs than these beset the way.
To have come near to sing the perfect song And only by a half–tone lost the key, There is the potent sorrow, there the grief, The pale, sad staring of life’s tragedy.
To have just missed the perfect love, Not the hot passion of untempered youth, But that which lays aside its vanity And gives thee, for thy trusting worship, truth —
This, this it is to be accursed indeed; For if we mortals love, or if we sing, We count our joys not by the things we have, But by what kept us from the perfect thing.