“Compensation” | Paul Laurence Dunbar

Compensation is a matter dear to lawyers’ hearts, white-collar and otherwise.  Here’s a poem (via www.poets.org) by Paul Laurence Dunbar:

Compensation

Because I had loved so deeply,
Because I had loved so long,
God in His great compassion
Gave me the gift of song.

Because I have loved so vainly,
And sung with such faltering breath,
The Master in infinite mercy
Offers the boon of Death.

Paul Laurence Dunbar was born in Dayton, Ohio, in 1872.

He wrote numerous books of poems, including Majors and Minors (1895), as well as several novels and a play. He died in 1906 in Dayton, Ohio.  “Compensation” was originally published in Dunbar’s 1905 collection Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow.