Paul Laurence Dunbar: Collected Lyrics
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Public-domain lyrics

After The Quarrel

Paul Laurence Dunbar

“After The Quarrel” as printed in The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar (1913).

Paul Laurence Dunbar: Collected Lyrics Text 16 1913 · historical text
Public domainSong lyricsDialect song
Complete public-domain lyrics

This text comes from The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar, a historical songbook transcribed on Wikisource and reproduced from the pinned revision linked below.

Verse 1

So we, who've supped the selfsame cup,

To-night must lay our friendship by;

Your wrath has burned your judgment up,

Hot breath has blown the ashes high.

You say that you are wronged—ah, well,

I count that friendship poor, at best

A bauble, a mere bagatelle,

That cannot stand so slight a test.

Verse 2

I fain would still have been your friend,

And talked and laughed and loved with you;

But since it must, why, let it end;

The false but dies, ’tis not the true.

So we are favored, you and I,

Who only want the living truth.

It was not good to nurse the lie;

’Tis well it died in harmless youth.

Verse 3

I go from you to-night to sleep.

Why, what's the odds? why should I grieve?

I have no fund of tears to weep

For happenings that undeceive.

The days shall come, the days shall go

Just as they came and went before.

The sun shall shine, the streams shall flow

Though you and I are friends no more.

Verse 4

And in the volume of my years,

Where all my thoughts and acts shall be,

The page whereon your name appears

Shall be forever sealed to me.

Not that I hate you over-much,

’Tis less of hate than love defied;

Howe'er, our hands no more shall touch,

We'll go our ways, the world is wide.

Credits

Written by Paul Laurence Dunbar

Words by Paul Laurence Dunbar. Historical text published in The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar (1913); public domain. No claim to a modern recording or arrangement.

Source & text edition

The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar (1913), “After The Quarrel”

Every text in this collected edition is by Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906); his works entered the public domain in life-plus-70 jurisdictions in 1977, and the 1913 edition is in the public domain in the United States. The edition carries a Wikisource PD-old determination.

How to read this historical text and its source

Read the source on Wikisource

View copyright evidence · Transcription terms (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Retrieved 2026-10-27. Line spacing and section labels are adapted for reading. The displayed text follows the linked edition. Editorial notes and abstract artwork are by 52lyrics.
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