The Full Text of “Yet Do I Marvel”
1I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind,
2And did He stoop to quibble could tell why
3The little buried mole continues blind,
4Why flesh that mirrors Him must some day die,
5Make plain the reason tortured Tantalus
6Is baited by the fickle fruit, declare
7If merely brute caprice dooms Sisyphus
8To struggle up a never-ending stair.
9Inscrutable His ways are, and immune
10To catechism by a mind too strewn
11With petty cares to slightly understand
12What awful brain compels His awful hand.
13Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:
14To make a poet black, and bid him sing!
The Full Text of “Yet Do I Marvel”
1I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind,
2And did He stoop to quibble could tell why
3The little buried mole continues blind,
4Why flesh that mirrors Him must some day die,
5Make plain the reason tortured Tantalus
6Is baited by the fickle fruit, declare
7If merely brute caprice dooms Sisyphus
8To struggle up a never-ending stair.
9Inscrutable His ways are, and immune
10To catechism by a mind too strewn
11With petty cares to slightly understand
12What awful brain compels His awful hand.
13Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:
14To make a poet black, and bid him sing!
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“Yet Do I Marvel” Introduction
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"Yet Do I Marvel" is a sonnet by the American poet Countee Cullen, published in his 1925 collection Color. This poem grapples with an ancient question: why would a good and loving God allow so much suffering in the world? In the poem's final couplet, the speaker relates this idea to his own circumstances, asking why God would make a Black man a poet in a time of extreme racial prejudice. The fact that Cullen remains one of the best-known poets of the Harlem Renaissance adds both to the poem's poignancy and its power: Cullen was up against terrible odds, but "s[a]ng" anyway.
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“Yet Do I Marvel” Summary
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I have no doubt that God is virtuous, that he has good intentions, and that he's loving. I also have no doubt that if he were to lower himself enough to argue over something trivial, he could explain why the small mole burrowing through the dirt is unable to see, or why human beings who were modeled in God's image have to eventually die. I'm sure God could explain why Tantalus (a figure from Greek mythology punished with endless hunger and thirst) is taunted with fruit that's constantly just out of his reach, and I'm sure God could clarify whether it was just some cruel whim that doomed Sisyphus (another figure from Greek myth) to push a boulder uphill forever. God's ways are unknowable, and can't be comprehended by a human mind that's too full of trivial concerns to even begin to grasp the awe-inspiring motivations behind God's terrible actions. And still, I am filled with wonder and astonishment at the strange and unusual fact that God made a Black man (me) a poet, and then commanded him to sing!
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“Yet Do I Marvel” Themes
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God and Human Suffering
The poem’s speaker asks an ancient question: why does an all-powerful, loving God allow for so much suffering in the world? On the one hand, the speaker believes that God is inherently good and has a plan for everything. On the other hand, he can’t help but wonder why God would allow human beings to struggle in ways that seem so never-ending and senseless. In the end, the speaker says that God’s “ways” are simply “inscrutable,” unknowable and beyond reproach—leaving the speaker to simply look on with amazement and confusion.
The speaker says he does not doubt that “God is good, well-meaning, kind.” In other words, he knows God is not malicious (even if the extent of human suffering might sometimes suggest otherwise). He believes God has a plan for all, and that suffering is somehow accounted for within this plan. If God were to stop and explain himself, the speaker reasons, he would have an answer for everything. The fact that humans don’t have access to these answers doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
At the same time, the speaker can’t help but struggle to understand why an all-seeing and all-knowing God would allow human beings to suffer in such seemingly pointless ways. The speaker references struggles large and small—from the difficulty a sightless mole faces when tunneling through the earth to the anguish people feel when confronting mortality. Why would God make humans so similar to himself, the speaker wonders, and yet unlike himself in that they are doomed to a finite existence?
The speaker also refers to two figures from Greek myth, Tantalus and Sisyphus, who were condemned to eternal torture. These allusions suggest that the speaker has at least entertained the possibility that the Christian God is not so different from the gods of the Greek pantheon: that is, cruel, capricious, tormenting mortals just because they can. The speaker also seems to contradict his earlier stance on the goodness of God when he describes the “awful brain [that] compels [God’s] awful hand.” In other words, what kind of dreadful being would allow for such suffering in the world? But the word “awful” might also suggest the root word “awe,” illustrating the speaker’s sense of wonder and amazement at something that extends so far beyond his own “petty cares” and understanding.
Ultimately, the speaker’s God is one who both inspires and baffles him. The speaker considers God’s ways “inscrutable,” again insinuating that everything must happen according to God’s will, and if only God’s plan was made clear, all would make sense. He “marvel[s]” at the fact that God would create him and “bid him sing” while also making him suffer. The speaker’s awe and astonishment shows how he struggles to reconcile his belief that god is an all mighty loving being with the existence of so much suffering in the world. The poem doesn’t solve this paradox, but rather suggests that people aren’t meant to understand it. Human beings can only “marvel” at God’s ways, which are too mysterious to fathom.
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The Difficulty of Being a Black Poet
The poem doesn't just ask why a loving God allows for so much suffering, but why God would make the speaker both a poet and a Black person. The speaker finds this curious because a poet creates beauty—and yet this was a time when to be Black was to face immense hardship and prejudice. The speaker believes that God has called him to “sing”—that is, to write poems which rejoice in the beauty of the world. But he is also faced with a seemingly endless source of difficulty: the world’s treatment of him as a Black man.
The speaker says he can’t help but “marvel” at the “curious” fact that God would create a Black poet. To understand why this would be “curious,” consider the poem’s context: Cullen lived in a time when there was intense prejudice against Black people. Black people were not expected to be educated or to make art, and though Cullen came of age during a time of Black intellectual and artistic revival (and would become one of the most famous poets of the Harlem Renaissance), he himself had very few Black poets to look up to.
The poem's allusions to Tantalus and Sisyphus—both classical figures doomed to eternal struggle—represent the speaker’s own struggle living in a racist society. While he finds beauty and purpose in writing poetry, he is also painfully aware of the injustice and prejudice which make it almost impossible for a Black poet to "make it." In other words, he’s been called to “sing": but to whom exactly is he meant to sing?
The speaker pits his race and his calling as a poet against each other in the final line of the poem, suggesting that there is no easy path for a Black person who is called to “sing.” The “curious” nature of the speaker’s predicament comes from this particular combination: it is difficult enough making one’s way as a poet, but as a poet who is also Black? It seems the speaker is doomed to struggle against the conventions of poetry, conventions created by and for white people.
Despite the difficulty of being a Black poet in a time in which such a thing feels nearly impossible, the speaker also has a sense of purpose that renders his struggle meaningful. The speaker “marvels” at the uniqueness of his situation, a situation which he feels was chosen for him by God. If God made him Black and also “bid him sing,” then there must be a reason for his struggles.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Yet Do I Marvel”
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Line 1
I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind,
"Yet Do I Marvel" deals with an ancient and difficult question: if God is inherently good, why does he let bad things happen?
In the opening line of the poem, the speaker establishes that he believes that the Christian God he worships is "good, well-meaning, kind." Yet the poem's title shows that no matter how much the speaker believes in the goodness of God, he is still left to "marvel" at God's ways, not quite able to make sense of them. From the start, this poem is expressing something more complicated than either "God is good" or "if God were good there wouldn't be suffering." Instead, it's trying to reconcile these two seemingly opposite ideas: that God is good, and that he allows humans to suffer terribly.
The asyndeton in this first line helps to establish the pace and direction of the poem. Without a coordinating conjunction between "well-meaning" and "kind," the poem doesn't linger too long on this opening statement, making it seem as if God's goodness is just something the speaker takes for granted. In other words, the poem isn't here to argue whether God is good and kind, but rather to explore the ways that God's inherent goodness may appear to be in conflict with the human suffering which he allows.
The alliteration in this first line also draws attention to the relationship between "God" and "good[ness]," while the poem's steady, regular iambic pentameter ("I doubt | not God | is good, | well-mean- | ing, kind") evokes the speaker's belief in God's guiding omnipotence. This tightly structured first line gives the reader a sense that the speaker knows where he is going: his faith and his poetry are both firm.
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Lines 2-4
And did He stoop to quibble could tell why
The little buried mole continues blind,
Why flesh that mirrors Him must some day die, -
Lines 5-6
Make plain the reason tortured Tantalus
Is baited by the fickle fruit, -
Lines 7-8
If merely brute caprice dooms Sisyphus
To struggle up a never-ending stair. -
Lines 9-12
Inscrutable His ways are, and immune
To catechism by a mind too strewn
With petty cares to slightly understand
What awful brain compels His awful hand. -
Lines 13-14
Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:
To make a poet black, and bid him sing!
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“Yet Do I Marvel” Symbols
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The Mole
The mole symbolizes the limited or partial knowledge of human beings compared to God's all-knowing view of the world. The speaker says that if he wanted to, God could explain "why / The little buried mole continues blind." The fact that the mole is described as "buried" speaks to the difficulty of being able to understand a situation when it is pressing in around you. And the mole's blindness resonates with the speaker's own inability to see the whole picture, the plan God has in store for him. Though he struggles to understand what compels the mole to "continue" despite not being able to see or understand why it lives as it does, the speaker ultimately trusts that there is a reason: it simply isn't available to him.
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Tantalus's Fruit
Tantalus's fruit symbolizes the good things that are forever just out of the speaker's reach. In the myth the poem alludes to, Zeus condemns Tantalus to eternally stand under a tree whose branches move away whenever he reaches for the fruit hanging right in front of him. (Tantalus's name is the root of the word "tantalizing"!) Like Tantalus, the speaker perhaps feels that good things are in sight but out of reach. As a Black person he is particularly aware of the wealth of opportunities that are denied him only because of the color of his skin. In other words, for a Black person, living in a racist society is a punishment similar to Tantalus's; by design, Black hungers go unsatisfied.
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Sisyphus's Stairs
The "never-ending stair" Sisyphus is doomed to climb is a symbol for grueling struggle—especially the grueling struggles of Black Americans. The allusion to the Greek myth of Sisyphus, who was forced to eternally push a boulder up a hill, evokes the speaker's frustration at the injustices Black people face in a racist society.
More generally, it sometimes seems as if all humans are doomed to repeat the same struggles over and over without ever really getting anywhere. It's hard for the speaker to see God's plan amid so much repetitive pain. The endlessness of Sisyphus's struggle makes the speaker wonder, if only momentarily, whether God is motivated only by "brute caprice," or in other words, sheer meanness.
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“Yet Do I Marvel” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Diacope
Diacope only appears once in this poem, toward the end, when the speaker argues that people simply can't fathom "What awful brain compels [God's] awful hand." That repetition draws attention to this important word—which can mean both "awe-inspiring" and "fearsome."
The "awful" things that God allows to happen are "inscrutable," or incomprehensible to humans. But the repetition of the word implies a certain logic exists, even if human beings aren't privy to it. God isn't just acting on a whim, but making an all-knowing decision and then acting upon it. So if people trust that God is inherently good and kind and has everyone's best interest at heart, then they must also trust that somehow God's ways make sense, even if they seem "awful" from the perspective of those who are suffering in any given moment.
The use of diacope in this particular example may also signal the presence of antanaclasis: that is, the word "awful" is repeated, but it means something different each time it is used. While the effects of God's hand may seem "awful" (as in terrible or dreadful) to people who don't understand His motivations, if they could only fathom the "awful" (as in awe-inspiring) brain behind that hand, everything would make sense. In other words, the speaker might be saying that humans can't comprehend the amazing mind behind the suffering that seems like proof of a cruel and capricious God.
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Asyndeton
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Alliteration
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Assonance
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Enjambment
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Allusion
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Imagery
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Irony
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"Yet Do I Marvel" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Stoop
- Quibble
- Tantalus
- Baited
- Fickle
- Merely
- Brute
- Caprice
- Sisyphus
- Inscrutable
- Immune
- Catechism
- Strewn
- Petty
- Awful
- Marvel
- Bid
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To bend down; to lower oneself.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Yet Do I Marvel”
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Form
The poem is an inventive kind of sonnet: it doesn't totally follow the conventions of either an Italian or an English sonnet, but borrows formally from both. As is typical in an Italian sonnet, for instance, the first eight lines propose a question or problem. In this case, the problem is an old one: why and how would a benevolent God allow so much suffering?
A slight turn, or volta, appears between lines 8 and 9 (where the volta would traditionally appear in an Italian sonnet) as the speaker moves from considering the paradox of God's goodness and human suffering to arguing that God's ways are simply "inscrutable" and it is not for people to understand them. This turn suggests a kind of answer or conclusion to the question or problem posed in the first eight lines.
However, the real volta appears in the final couplet, as is generally true in English sonnets. While the last couplet in an English sonnet often alters or reframes the solution in lines 9-12, poking a hole in it or flipping it on its head, this one attempts to keep the mystery intact. Rather than coming to any hard and fast conclusion, the speaker allows himself to "marvel" at the conundrum at the root of his poem: of all the inscrutable things God's done, the speaker can't help but wonder about the fact that he himself was made both Black and a poet!
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Meter
"Yet Do I Marvel" is written in iambic pentameter. This means the poem follows a very predictable and pleasing rhythm, using five iambs per line—that is, five metrical feet that go da-DUM. Here's how that sounds in the last line:
"To make | a po- | et black, | and bid | him sing!"
Many poems in iambic pentameter break from that meter occasionally for effect, but this poem is very consistent. This steady, musical rhythm underlines the speaker's belief that God has a plan for everything. Even as the poem describes terrible suffering, it maintains its smooth cadence, suggesting that no matter how bad things might seem in any given moment, everything is still in its place, and the tapestry of the universe is still intact, still beautifully woven.
But this meter also points to the poem's wider context. Just like the speaker, Cullen was a Black poet in a time when the conventions of poetry were defined by white people, and the majority of the people reading poetry were white as well. Though Cullen wanted to write about both the struggle and beauty of being Black, he also had to keep a largely white audience in mind. His perfect deployment of one of the most conventional forms in English poetry—the sonnet—was a way for him to prove that Black people could write within the perimeters of tradition. While many poets today pride themselves on rebelling against those perimeters, it's important to note that in Cullen's time there were far fewer roads to being taken seriously. By appealing to a largely white audience with his perfect metrical form, Cullen was able to open a door that had long been shut to Black people.
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Rhyme Scheme
This poem follows a straightforward rhyme scheme, built around an eight-line first section (called an octave) and a six-line second section (called a sestet). The octave follows this pattern:
ABABCDCD
The sestet is divided into three sets of couplets, like this:
EEFFGG
(Note that while the poem is a conventional sonnet in most ways, the rhyme scheme is innovative, and doesn't follow either the traditional Italian or English sonnet rhyme patterns.)
Along with its pattern of end rhymes, the poem uses an internal rhyme in lines 6 and 7 ("fruit" and "brute") as well as assonance (such as the /oo/ sounds in "brute" and "dooms" in line 7) and consonance (the /k/ sounds in "make" and "black" in line 14). All these matched and echoing sounds give the poem texture and intensity.
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“Yet Do I Marvel” Speaker
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The speaker of this poem is a poet and a Black man, and as such, resembles Cullen himself in some important ways.
A Black poet writing in the early 1900s, Cullen lived through a great revival of Black American art and literature, and became a key player in the Harlem Renaissance (see the Context section for more on that). But when he started out, there were very few Black poets for him to look up to, and no clear path for him to take. While the poem doesn't need to be read autobiographically to work, the bemused, soulful speaker can easily be read as an avatar of the author.
Whether or not he's autobiographical, the speaker is someone who is struggling to make sense of human pain and suffering—and to reconcile that pain and suffering with his belief in a kind and caring God. The speaker doesn't really reach a satisfying conclusion or solution, but he does seem to find some degree of acceptance. Like Job in the Old Testament, he admits he can't "understand" God; he can only "marvel" at his mysterious ways, which he continues to believe are purposeful and beyond reproach.
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“Yet Do I Marvel” Setting
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There is no physical setting in this poem: it all takes place as an argument or exploration in the speaker's mind. While the speaker uses examples from nature (the mole) and mythology (Tantalus and Sisyphus) to illustrate his point, he doesn't set these figures in any specific landscape.
The closest thing there is to a setting in this poem is hinted at through the speaker's own identity as a Black poet in a hostile white society. But the speaker only subtly alludes to the external difficulties of being Black. Mostly, this poem takes place in his own fertile inner world.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Yet Do I Marvel”
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Literary Context
"Yet Do I Marvel," one of Countee Cullen's most famous poems, was first published in his 1925 collection Color. Though Color was his first book, Cullen had already made a name for himself with works like "I Have a Rendezvous with Life" (1920), a poem he wrote and published while he was still in high school. After it won a local competition, this poem was printed in newspapers, magazines, and anthologies across the country. In 1924, Cullen's poem "The Shroud of Color" made him one of the best-known Black writers in America, and helped to usher in the Harlem Renaissance. Among Cullen's peers during this time were Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Claude McKay, and Jean Toomer.
Most influenced by the English Romantic poets (especially Keats), Cullen's work appealed to a largely white audience, and has more in common stylistically with white literary conventions than with the experimentation of other Black American poets of Cullen's day. As many Cullen's Harlem Renaissance contemporaries rejected the white literary canon in favor of writing authentically about Black culture, Cullen tried to distance himself from being seen as a "Negro poet" early in his career, and discouraged other Black poets from writing explicitly about race. (However, much of Cullen's work, including "Yet Do I Marvel," flies in the face of his own advice.)
While many of his contemporaries, including Langston Hughes, would eventually criticize Cullen for being too conservative and for "aspiring to a kind of whiteness," Cullen's depictions of Black joy and suffering continue to resonate. Cullen's poetry wrestled with timeless themes of beauty, love, mortality, and—despite his stated ambition to write on more "universal" themes—race.
Historical Context
Countee Cullen was born in 1903. Though he would later refer to New York as his birthplace, it's more likely that he was born in Louisville, Kentucky. At the age of nine he was separated from his mother, Elizabeth Thomas Lucas, and brought to New York by Amanda Porter, who was most likely his paternal grandmother. Though Porter would care for him until she died, Cullen was adopted at the age of 15 by Frederick and Carolyn Cullen. Frederick Cullen was a Methodist pastor and would go on to have a great influence on Cullen's life, inspiring his lifelong devotion (however conflicted) to the Christian God.
Cullen attended a predominantly white high school and went on to study at New York University and Harvard. He rose to literary prominence very early in his life, though in later years his star faded as his more conventional verse fell out of favor. In spite of this setback, he remains one of the best-known poets of the Harlem Renaissance.
Known in its day as "The New Negro Movement," the Harlem Renaissance grew out of The Great Migration, which saw many out-of-work Black people leaving the South in the wake of World War I. Many of these Black migrants settled in Harlem, New York—a down-at-heel neighborhood that became a vibrant nucleus for Black art and intellectual life. The ideas which originated there would spread out across the U.S., and also deeply influenced many African American and Caribbean writers who had emigrated to Paris. Cullen was just one of many Black writers and artists who rose to prominence during this surge of creativity—a joyful upswell that would last until the Great Depression.
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More “Yet Do I Marvel” Resources
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External Resources
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A Reading of the Poem — Watch a reading and discussion of the poem by Todd Hellems for the Favorite Poem Project.
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Biography and Poems — Read a biography of Countee Cullen and find links to more of his work at the Poetry Foundation.
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The Harlem Renaissance — Read an introduction to the Harlem Renaissance, the movement with which Cullen is most associated.
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Countee Cullen Reads Aloud — Listen to a recording of Cullen reading one of his most famous poems, "Heritage."
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An Essay on Cullen — Read an essay on Countee Cullen by Major Jackson, adapted from his introduction to Countee Cullen: The Collected Poems.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Countee Cullen
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