A handwritten and signed “fair copy” of Paul Laurence Dunbar’s most famous poem, “Life.”
Published in all three of his earliest volumes, Oak and Ivy (1893), Majors and Minors (c. 1895), and Lyrics of Lowly Life (1896), the prose is repeated here:
A crust of bread and a corner to sleep in,
A minute to smile and an hour to weep in,
A pint of joy to a peck of trouble,
And never a laugh but the moans come double;
And that is life.
A crust and a corner that love makes precious,
With a smile to warm and the tears to refresh us;
And joy seems sweeter when cares come after,
And a moan is the finest of foils for laughter;
And that is life!