A Choice

Paul Laurence Dunbar begins by rejecting poetry that feels like a disguised sermon. The poem is spoken by a reader-listener who wants art to offer pleasure first, not moral correction wrapped in elaborate language. Although the world clearly has suffering and wrongdoing, the poem argues that verse should not become a medicinal lecture every time it addresses human pain.

The poem moves through a series of sharp contrasts: solemn songs versus genuine song, remedies versus delight, duty versus sweetness. Dunbar does not deny social or moral responsibility, but he resists reducing poetry to instruction alone. The final image, with its nectar-like delicacy, suggests that the highest poetry may nourish by beauty and feeling rather than by direct preaching. The tension at the center of the poem is between art as lesson and art as pleasure, and Dunbar firmly chooses the latter without ignoring the former.

Tone in A Choice

Dunbar's tone is witty, selective, and lightly rebellious; he sounds like a poet who knows exactly what kind of art he wants and is unafraid to dismiss what feels overbearing. The mood for the reader is bright and refined, with a sense of sweetness and ease rather than solemn correction. Even the poem's refusals feel graceful, because the language itself is polished, musical, and pleasing.

Themes in A Choice

• Art as pleasure - The poem defends poetry as something to savor, offering delight and emotional richness rather than serving only as a vehicle for moral instruction.
• Resistance to didacticism - The poem pushes back against verse that sounds like a sermon, suggesting that art loses vitality when it becomes too obviously preachy.
• Beauty as nourishment - Images of wine, dew, and honey present poetry as a subtle kind of sustenance, able to feed the spirit without heavy-handed correction.
• Balance between conscience and pleasure - While the poem admits that the world has real wrongs, it insists that a poem need not become a treatment or lecture every time it addresses them.
• Compression and refinement - The brief lyric form itself mirrors the argument: the poem prefers concentrated sweetness over bulky moral explanation.

Literary Devices in A Choice

• Metaphor - Poetry is compared to wine, a remedy, and a sweet drink, each image helping define what the poet wants verse to be and what he wants it not to be.
• Contrast - The poem repeatedly sets opposing ideas against one another, such as sermons versus song and medicine versus pleasure, to sharpen its argument.
• Imagery - Taste and drink imagery make the poem vivid and sensuous, reinforcing the desire for poetry that is pleasurable rather than merely corrective.
• Allusion - The mention of sermons evokes religious preaching, creating a recognizable standard for moral instruction that the poem resists.
• Repetition - The recurring emphasis on what the poet does not want creates firmness and rhythm, making the preference for sweetness feel deliberate and emphatic.
• Sound patterning - The musical phrasing and clustered soft sounds echo the poem's admiration for lyrical beauty and help enact the very song it praises.

Symbolism in A Choice

• Solemn songs - These stand for poetry that is heavy, serious, and overly moralizing, the kind of art the poem refuses.
• Sermons - Sermons symbolize direct instruction and moral pressure, suggesting the danger of turning poetry into preaching.
• Simples - These remedies represent poetry as medicine, useful perhaps, but not the experience the poet most values.
• Spirit-wine - This image symbolizes poetry's richer power to gladden and elevate the soul through beauty and vitality.
• Dew-drop in a honey cup - This delicate final image symbolizes poetry as a small, pure, and intensely sweet pleasure.

Historical Context of A Choice

Paul Laurence Dunbar wrote within a literary culture that often expected poetry to carry moral, social, or uplift-oriented messages, especially in the traditions of nineteenth-century lyric and didactic verse. His work frequently demonstrates technical elegance and a strong ear for musical language, qualities that connect him to both popular lyric traditions and more formal poetic craftsmanship.

At the same time, Dunbar was writing in a period when African American writers were negotiating expectations that literature should educate, improve, or represent racial experience in clearly purposeful ways. This poem fits that larger context by defending artistic sweetness and autonomy, arguing that poetry need not always function as argument, sermon, or social lesson.

Poems Similar to A Choice

• To a Waterfowl - William Cullen Bryant
• The Builders - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• Beauty - Claude McKay
• Ars Poetica - Archibald MacLeish
• The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock - T. S. Eliot