Analysis of A Rolling Stone
There's sunshine in the heart of me,
My blood sings in the breeze;
The mountains are a part of me,
I'm fellow to the trees.
My golden youth I'm squandering,
Sun-libertine am I;
A-wandering, a-wandering,
Until the day I die.
I was once, I declare, a Stone-Age man,
And I roomed in the cool of a cave;
I have known, I will swear, in a new life-span,
The fret and the sweat of a slave:
For far over all that folks hold worth,
There lives and there leaps in me
A love of the lowly things of earth,
And a passion to be free.
To pitch my tent with no prosy plan,
To range and to change at will;
To mock at the mastership of man,
To seek Adventure's thrill.
Carefree to be, as a bird that sings;
To go my own sweet way;
To reck not at all what may befall,
But to live and to love each day.
To make my body a temple pure
Wherein I dwell serene;
To care for the things that shall endure,
The simple, sweet and clean.
To oust out envy and hate and rage,
To breathe with no alarm;
For Nature shall be my anchorage,
And none shall do me harm.
To shun all lures that debauch the soul,
The orgied rites of the rich;
To eat my crust as a rover must
With the rough-neck down in the ditch.
To trudge by his side whate'er betide;
To share his fire at night;
To call him friend to the long trail-end,
And to read his heart aright.
To scorn all strife, and to view all life
With the curious eyes of a child;
From the plangent sea to the prairie,
From the slum to the heart of the Wild.
From the red-rimmed star to the speck of sand,
From the vast to the greatly small;
For I know that the whole for good is planned,
And I want to see it all.
To see it all, the wide world-way,
From the fig-leaf belt to the Pole;
With never a one to say me nay,
And none to cramp my soul.
In belly-pinch I will pay the price,
But God! let me be free;
For once I know in the long ago,
They made a slave of me.
In a flannel shirt from earth's clean dirt,
Here, pal, is my calloused hand!
Oh, I love each day as a rover may,
Nor seek to understand.
To enjoy is good enough for me;
The gipsy of God am I;
Then here's a hail to each flaring dawn!
And here's a cheer to the night that's gone!
And may I go a-roaming on
Until the day I die!
Then every star shall sing to me
Its song of liberty;
And every morn shall bring to me
Its mandate to be free.
In every throbbing vein of me
I'll feel the vast Earth-call;
O body, heart and brain of me
Praise Him who made it all!
Scheme | ababcdcD efefgaga ehehxiji klklxmxm nopoxxxp xqaqrjrj ininxaxa xriradssxD aaaaajaj |
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Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1100111 111001 01010111 110101 11011100 11011 01000100 010111 1111010111 011001101 11111100111 01001101 111011111 1101101 011010111 0010111 11111111 1101111 1110111 1111 11110111 111111 111111101 11101111 111100101 011101 111011101 010101 111100101 111101 110111100 011111 11111101 011101 111110101 10111001 111111001 1111011 111110111 011111 111101111 101001101 10111010 101101101 1011110111 10110101 1111011111 0111111 11110111 10111101 110011111 011111 010111101 111111 111100101 110111 001011111 1111101 1111110101 11101 101110111 011111 110111101 010110111 01110101 010111 110011111 111100 010011111 11111 010010111 110111 11010111 111111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 2,501 |
Words | 502 |
Sentences | 22 |
Stanzas | 9 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 10, 8 |
Lines Amount | 74 |
Letters per line (avg) | 25 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 203 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 56 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 2:33 min read
- 72 Views
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"A Rolling Stone" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/31955/a-rolling-stone>.
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