We Wear the Mask
Paul Laurence Dunbar Written: 1895 • Published: 1896
This poem is in the public domain and may be freely reproduced.
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!
Curator's Note
One of the most powerful poems about the psychological cost of racism, 'We Wear the Mask' introduced a metaphor that has defined discussions of Black identity in America. Written when Dunbar was only twenty-three, the poem captures what W.E.B. Du Bois would later call 'double consciousness'—the exhausting necessity of presenting one face to the world while hiding true feelings of pain and rage. The mask 'grins and lies,' a survival mechanism that protects but also imprisons. The poem's formal perfection—its tight rhyme scheme and measured rhythms—mirrors the control required to maintain the mask. That this is a 'we' poem rather than an 'I' poem extends the experience beyond the individual to the collective, making it an anthem of endurance and a cry of protest. The final invocation of Christ adds layers of suffering and sacrifice to what is ultimately a poem about the brutal cost of dignity under oppression.
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