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A Roadway

Paul Laurence Dunbar

Let those who will stride on their barren roads
And prick themselves to haste with self-made goads,
Unheeding, as they struggle day by day,
If flowers be sweet or skies be blue or gray:
For me, the lone, cool way by purling brooks,
The solemn quiet of the woodland nooks,
A song-bird somewhere trilling sadly gay,
A pause to pick a flower beside the way.
Online text © 1998-2009 Poetry X. All rights reserved.
From The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar | Dodd, Mead And Company, 1922
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