The Full Text of “Sympathy”
1I know what the caged bird feels, alas!
2When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;
3When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass,
4And the river flows like a stream of glass;
5When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,
6And the faint perfume from its chalice steals—
7I know what the caged bird feels!
8I know why the caged bird beats his wing
9Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;
10For he must fly back to his perch and cling
11When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;
12And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars
13And they pulse again with a keener sting—
14I know why he beats his wing!
15I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
16When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,—
17When he beats his bars and he would be free;
18It is not a carol of joy or glee,
19But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core,
20But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings—
21I know why the caged bird sings!
The Full Text of “Sympathy”
1I know what the caged bird feels, alas!
2When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;
3When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass,
4And the river flows like a stream of glass;
5When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,
6And the faint perfume from its chalice steals—
7I know what the caged bird feels!
8I know why the caged bird beats his wing
9Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;
10For he must fly back to his perch and cling
11When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;
12And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars
13And they pulse again with a keener sting—
14I know why he beats his wing!
15I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
16When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,—
17When he beats his bars and he would be free;
18It is not a carol of joy or glee,
19But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core,
20But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings—
21I know why the caged bird sings!
-
“Sympathy” Introduction
-
The influential American poet and novelist Paul Laurence Dunbar wrote "Sympathy" while he was working as an attendant at the Library of Congress. He published it in his 1899 collection Lyrics of the Hearthside. The poem's speaker empathizes deeply with a bird in a cage, lamenting its imprisonment and admiring its persistent drive to escape—and to sing, in spite of it all. Dunbar was a Black man born to formerly enslaved parents, and "Sympathy" is typically read as a cry against racist oppression in the United States The poem provided the title for Maya Angelou's famous 1969 autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
-
-
“Sympathy” Summary
-
I understand how the caged bird feels, poor thing! It's stuck in its cage while, outside, the sun shines brightly on the hillside, the wind plays gently through the fresh green grass, and the river sparkles bright and clear, like glass. The first bird of spring sings its song, and the first flower opens, sending out delicate fragrances from its little cup—and I know how the caged bird feels!
I also understand why the caged bird beats its wings bloody against the cage bars: he only has his artificial perch to land on, when he should be outside swinging on the branch of a tree. His trauma aches in his ancient scars, and they hurt more and more—and I understand why!
I understand (oh, so sadly) why the caged bird sings, even when his wings are battered and his chest hurts—even while he throws himself against the bars of the cage, desperate to be free. His song is not a happy one. Instead, it's a prayer from his heart, a desperate request that he sends up to Heaven. And I sympathize with him and his song!
-
-
“Sympathy” Themes
-
Oppression and the Longing to be Free
Paul Lawrence Dunbar's "Sympathy" uses the symbol of a caged bird to rail against societal oppression. The speaker sympathizes deeply with the plight of a bird in a cage, observing that it flaps its wings and sings in spite of its imprisonment. The caged bird (and the speaker’s intense “sympathy” with it) symbolically suggests that oppressed people retain an innate human desire for autonomy, equality, and self-expression—one that can't be quelled by their oppression.
The poem paints a vivid picture of a caged bird longing to fly freely. Stuck inside its prison, the caged bird longs for the sunny "slopes," "springing grass," and green branches of the outside world. As the poem’s title, “Sympathy,” suggests, the speaker knows exactly how the “caged bird feels.” Their sympathetic connection with the bird suggests they too are denied a free life. Perhaps not literally caged, they’re nonetheless “caged” by oppression, longing for the free life that their society denies them.
In spite of its imprisonment and its longing for the outside world, the caged bird dauntlessly keeps on trying to escape. Though it beats itself against its cage until its “blood is red on the cruel bars,” it persists; though it suffers from the “old, old scars” of past failed attempts to escape, it persists. Again, the speaker fully understands this: the speaker, readers gather, also resists their oppressors in spite of the fact that doing so is difficult, painful, and gets results slowly, if at all.
Other than beat its wings, the caged bird can do little else but sing. The speaker describes the bird's song as "a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core” and “a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings." The song thus represents a powerful, poignant act of resistance, a cry of hope that true freedom might one day be possible. The speaker again recognizes themselves in the bird, underscoring the vital importance of expression, creativity, faith, and hope even when struggling with an oppressive society. Through singing, perhaps, the bird both expresses its belief in a better life and demonstrates that it hasn’t been broken by its terrible conditions. In this sense, the poem itself becomes the speaker's own song—a way of acknowledging the pain of oppression while also sounding a quiet note of hope for the future.
No wonder, then, that this poem became an important one to the thinkers of the American Civil Rights movement (and gave a title to Maya Angelou’s classic memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings). Dunbar, a Black American born to formerly enslaved parents, speaks here from the position of one who has suffered terribly under American racism and sings nonetheless.
- See where this theme is active in the poem.
-
-
Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Sympathy”
-
Lines 1-7
I know what the caged bird feels, alas!
When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;
When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass,
And the river flows like a stream of glass;
When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,
And the faint perfume from its chalice steals—
I know what the caged bird feels!As the poem begins, the speaker looks with deep empathy (or indeed "Sympathy") on a bird in a cage. "I know what the caged bird feels, alas!" the speaker cries: to sympathize with this bird is to suffer.
That's because the bird is trapped. Lines 2-6 use pleasant natural imagery to contrast the bird's cage with the world outside, tantalizingly out of its reach. Out there, the sun shines "bright on the upland slopes" and the wind "stirs soft through the springing grass." Both of these lines depict nature as a place of beauty, pleasure, and wide-open freedom. And the "springing grass" might suggest not just fresh, bouncy turf but the season of spring, symbolic of glorious new life.
Line 4, meanwhile, uses a simile to develop this evocative picture of the natural world, describing a "river [that] flows like a stream of glass." This is a vision of nature polished so bright and squeaky clean it almost looks heavenly.
The speaker also appeals to the senses of smell (with the "faint perfume" of flowers in spring) and hearing (when the "first bird sings"). Again, there's a stress on the sights, sounds, and smells of early spring here: outside the bird's cage, a whole new year full of promise is beginning. The diacope on the word "first" in line 5 ("When the first bird sings and the first bud opes") stresses that newness.
The "first bird" that sings out in the meadows, of course, is not stuck in a cage; it's living the life the caged bird longs for. If spring represents life in all its glory, the caged bird stands in for imprisonment in all its misery.
In line 7, the speaker repeats the opening line (except for that cry of "alas"). The other lines in the stanza have four stresses each, but this closing line has only three:
I know what the caged bird feels!
This shortening of the line makes the speaker's cry of sympathy feel intense and impassioned, while the rhyming couplet (steals / feels) completes the stanza's ABAABCC rhyme scheme and adds extra emphasis.
That closing line underscores the poem's central symbolism. if the caged bird can't get to the beautiful springy world, then nor, symbolically, can the speaker. This will be a poem about what it feels like to live under restriction and oppression—and to try to make a life anyway, singing in spite of suffering.
This poem (which lent a title to Maya Angelou's famous memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings) played an important role in the American Civil Rights movement, and while it doesn't explicitly mention race, it's often read as a cry against racist oppression in the United States.
-
Lines 8-14
I know why the caged bird beats his wing
Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;
For he must fly back to his perch and cling
When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;
And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars
And they pulse again with a keener sting—
I know why he beats his wing! -
Lines 15-21
I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,—
When he beats his bars and he would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core,
But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings—
I know why the caged bird sings!
-
-
“Sympathy” Symbols
-
The Caged Bird
The caged bird acts as a powerful symbol of oppressed people. Though the poem never states this directly, many readers interpret this poem as a depiction of the plight of Black Americans under pervasive racial discrimination. The bird's cage, then, symbolizes racist oppression.
In this reading, the bird's attempts to escape suggest the ongoing struggle for civil rights and freedom. This struggle hurts those who undertake it, leaving them with both fresh wounds and "old, old scars." The image suggests that both oppression and the struggle against it traumatize the oppressed.
The bird's longing to be free suggests an innate human desire for autonomy, self-expression, and equality. The caged bird can do nothing but sing—but this singing shows the bird's resilience and its refusal to be broken by its harsh conditions. The bird's song thus becomes a powerful and gently hopeful act of resistance, representing the ability to maintain one's spiritual strength and creativity even in the face of adversity.
- See where this symbol appears in the poem.
-
-
“Sympathy” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
-
Alliteration
"Sympathy" uses alliteration to evoke its setting and capture emotion.
The first stanza, for instance, is full of delicate music:
When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;
When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass,
And the river flows like a stream of glass;
When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,
And the faint perfume from its chalice steals—These pleasantly echoing /s/, /w/, /f/, and /b/ sounds create an idyllic picture of the world outside the bird's cage (where the bird should be living freely). They bring nature to life on the page, chiming together nicely to capture spring in all its glory and natural harmony. Of course, this only makes the bird's situation seem all the more tragic and unfair. All those beautiful sights, smells, and sensations, and it has access to none of them!
Elsewhere, the poem uses a plosive /b/ sound to describe the bird's repeated attempts to escape the cage—for instance, in lines 15-17):
I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,—
When he beats his bars and he would be free;As the bird beats its own wings bloody against the cage, these intense /b/ sounds evoke the pain—and sound—of this self-inflicted violence.
- See where this poetic device appears in the poem.
-
Imagery
- See where this poetic device appears in the poem.
-
Metaphor
- See where this poetic device appears in the poem.
-
Repetition
- See where this poetic device appears in the poem.
-
-
"Sympathy" 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.
- Alas
- Upland slopes
- Springing
- Opes
- Perfume
- Chalice
- Fain
- Bough
- Keener sting
- Ah me
- Bosom
- Carol
-
A cry of grief, pity, or concern.
- See where this vocabulary word appears in the poem.
-
Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Sympathy”
-
Form
"Sympathy" consists of three seven-line stanzas (a.k.a. septets), each focused on a different aspect of the caged bird's life. The strict stanza shape subtly mirrors the bird's imprisonment: like the bird's cage, each stanza has clearly defined and unbending borders.
Note, too, the last line of each stanza circles back—almost verbatim—to the first: for instance, "I know what the caged bird feels, alas!" in line 1 is echoed in "I know what the caged bird feels!" in line 7. This evolving refrain might also suggest confinement. Just as the bird's attempts at flight only lead back to the same perch, each stanza returns to its start.
On the other hand, though, those repetitions stress the speaker's deep "Sympathy" with the bird, making their voice sound all the more fervent—and reminding the reader to draw a symbolic connection between the bird's experience and the speaker's.
-
Meter
"Sympathy" is written in accentual meter, which means that its lines use a regular number of beats, but don't stick to any one kind of metrical foot (like iambs or trochees). In this case, the first six lines of each stanza use four stresses, while the seventh and final lines have just three. Here's how that sounds in lines 20-21:
But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings—
I know why the caged bird sings!This rhythm means that every stanza ends on a short, urgent line that echoes the first line of each stanza (as in the match between "I know why the caged bird beats his wing" in line 8 and "I know why he beats his wing" in line 14). That return to the same idea, only in more compressed form, keeps the speaker's desperate "Sympathy" for the bird front and center.
-
Rhyme Scheme
"Sympathy" uses an ABAABCC rhyme scheme. Through these steady, melodic rhymes, the poem begins to feel like the speaker's own song, its music sweet and repeated as the bird's warbling. That fits right in with the poem's image of birdsong as a form of prayer and an act of resistance.
In particular, the repeating A rhymes in each stanza's first, third, and fourth lines suggest the way a bird's song might linger on the same run of notes for a while: it's as if the poem is imitating a trill.
-
-
“Sympathy” Speaker
-
"Sympathy" features a first-person speaker who intimately understands the struggles of a caged bird. While the poem does not explicitly mention the speaker's identity, their voice is often interpreted as Dunbar's own, capturing his experiences and feelings as a Black American in a racist society.
The "Sympathy" of the title, then, belongs to the speaker. They see themselves in the figure of the caged bird (and repeatedly say so). Their cries of "alas" and "ah me" strengthen this emotional connection, subtly asking the reader to consider how the speaker's own sufferings might overlap with those of the caged bird.
By describing the bird's plight in a lyric poem, the speaker transforms painful experience into something beautiful and gently hopeful. The poem, then, acts like the speaker's own version of the bird's song.
-
-
“Sympathy” Setting
-
"Sympathy" isn't grounded in a specific time or place. Rather, it focuses on the timeless plight of a caged bird to create an atmosphere of confinement, injustice, and pain. The reader knows the bird is a symbol of the speaker's own experiences (because the speaker repeatedly says so!).
The principal setting of the poem is the bird's cage: a small, oppressive one with "cruel bars." This cage serves as a powerful symbol for societal restraints that similarly prevent people from being free: the limitations imposed by systemic racism and discrimination.
The poem contrasts the cage with the natural world outside (where the bird more rightly belongs). References to the "upland slopes," "springing grass," and a "river [that] flows like a stream of glass" juxtapose the beauty and freedom of nature with the restrictive cage, suggesting that a big part of the pain of oppression is being able to clearly see how good life could be without it.
-
-
Literary and Historical Context of “Sympathy”
-
Literary Context
Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906) was an American poet, novelist, and playwright. He was the son of formerly enslaved parents, and his father was a Civil War veteran. Growing up in the post-war era, Dunbar faced racial segregation and limited opportunities for Black Americans. But he showed exceptional literary talent from a young age, publishing his first poems when he was just sixteen.
Many of Dunbar's poems were written in an African American dialect associated with the southern United States in the mid 19th century. "Sympathy," though, is more reminiscent of British Romantic poetry in its tone and its descriptions of the natural world. The poem was published in Dunbar's Lyrics of the Hearthside in 1899.
Dunbar's literary contemporaries included activists and writers W. E .B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, and Frederick Douglass, as well as James D. Corrothers (who wrote poems specifically citing Dunbar, such as "Me 'n' Dunbar" and "Paul Laurence Dunbar") and his own wife, poet and musician Alice Moore Dunbar Nelson. Alice recalled that "Sympathy" was written while Dunbar was working in the Library of Congress: "The iron grating of the book stacks in the Library of Congress suggested to him the bars of the bird’s cage," she wrote.
Poet and activist Maya Angelou cites Dunbar as a major literary influence: the title of her memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is a line from this poem.
Historical Context
Dunbar was a poet of the post-Reconstruction era. Reconstruction, which lasted from 1863 to 1877, was a significant era in the history of civil rights in the United States, marking the end of both slavery and the southern states' secession. The term "Reconstruction" refers to attempts to transform and reintegrate the former Confederate states into the U.S. after the Civil War.
Reconstruction, alas, did not offer emancipated Black Americans much in the way of new freedoms. During this period, the "Black Codes" were established in the American South: racist laws restricting the Black population in an attempt to maintain white people's political and social dominance. The Black Codes eventually evolved into the Jim Crow laws, which established racial segregation. The Reconstruction era also saw the beginnings of terrorist group the Ku Klux Klan, which targeted Black leaders with racist violence.
Thus, while slavery had been outlawed in the United States by Dunbar's day, this certainly did not mark an end to discrimination against Black Americans.
-
-
More “Sympathy” Resources
-
External Resources
-
The Poem Out Loud — Listen to influential poet Maya Angelou reciting the poem that gave her autobiography its title.
-
Dunbar's Life and Legacy — Learn more about Paul Laurence Dunbar's life and work via the Poetry Foundation.
-
More Poems by Dunbar — Dive into more of the poet's work, including the collection in which this poem was published.
-
A Dunbar Podcast — Listen to a Princeton Ideas Podcast episode on the life and work of the poet.
-
-
LitCharts on Other Poems by Paul Laurence Dunbar
-
