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Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906)

We Wear the Mask


              1We wear the mask that grins and lies,
              2It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,--
              3This debt we pay to human guile;
              4With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
              5And mouth with myriad subtleties.

              6Why should the world be overwise,
              7In counting all our tears and sighs?
              8Nay, let them only see us, while
              9We wear the mask.

            10We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
            11To thee from tortured souls arise.
            12We sing, but oh the clay is vile
            13Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
            14But let the world dream otherwise,
            15We wear the mask!

Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.

Original text: The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar (New York: Dodd, Mead, and Co., 1913), Facsimile in The Collected Poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar, ed. Joanne M. Braxton (Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia, 1993), p. 71. PS 1556 AI 1993 Robarts Library.
First publication date: 1895
RPO poem editor: Ian Lancashire
RP edition: RPO 1998.
Recent editing: 4:2002/4/3

Rhyme: aabba aabc aabbac

Other poems by Paul Laurence Dunbar

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