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We Wear the Mask

A Hello Doggo musical setting of Paul Laurence Dunbar’s “We Wear the Mask”.

Tempo: 78 BPM

Music, recording and artwork: CC0 1.0. Source-poem rights are separate: Poem is public domain. Source and provenance.

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We Wear the Mask — release page

Source poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar

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 over-wise,
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!

Poem is public domain.

The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar

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