How Brilliant

Mar 10, 2006 00:44

This is a poem by Paul Lawrence Dunbar...it took me a while to understand it, but it really explains pretty wee how I feel a lot of the time. I dunno, maybe I'm just being whiny, but this feels like a pretty accurate depiction of the world...most of it anyway.

We Wear The Mask-

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

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

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