[Skip Navigation]

Poetry Archives

A continuing selection of classic and contemporary poems.

Ballad

Paul Laurence Dunbar

I know my love is true,
  And oh the day is fair.
The sky is clear and blue,
The flowers are rich of hue,
  The air I breathe is rare,
  I have no grief or care;
For my own love is true,
  And oh ‘the day is fair.

My love is false I find,
  And oh the day is dark.
Blows sadly down the wind,
While sorrow holds my mind;
  I do not hear the lark,
  For quenched is life’s dear spark,—
My love is false I find,
  And oh the day is dark!

For love doth make the day
  Or dark or doubly bright;
Her beams along the way
Dispel the gloom and gray.
  She lives and all is bright,
  She dies and life is night.
For love doth make the day,
 Or dark or doubly bright.
Online text © 1998-2008 Poetry X. All rights reserved.
From The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar | Dodd, Mead And Company, 1922
Add Keyword Tags

Separate each tag with a space. You may add as many tags as you'd like to each poem.

What are tags?
Tags, sometimes called “folksonomies,” are words that describe or categorize a poem, like “20th century modernism” or “Italian sonnet”. Tags can help you find poems that have something in common, based on how other people classify them.

More Info

This site will work and look better in a browser that supports web standards, but it is accessible to any Internet device.