Analysis of Freedom Isn't Free
I watched the flag pass by one day,
It fluttered in the breeze;
A young Marine saluted it,
And then he stood at ease.
I looked at him in uniform,
So young, so tall, so proud;
With hair cut square and eyes alert,
He’d stand out in any crowd.
I thought . . . how many men like him
Had fallen through the years?
How many died on foreign soil?
How many mothers’ tears?
How many pilots’ planes shot down
How many died at sea
How many foxholes were soldiers’ graves
No, Freedom is not Free.
I heard the sound of Taps one night,
When everything was still;
I listened to the bugler play,
And felt a sudden chill;
I wondered just how many times
That Taps had meant "Amen"
When a flag had draped a coffin
Of a brother or a friend;
I thought of all the children,
Of the mothers and the wives,
Of fathers, sons and husbands.
With interrupted lives.
I thought about a graveyard
At the bottom of the sea,
Of unmarked graves in Arlington.
No. Freedom is not Free!
Scheme | abxb xcxc xxxx xdxD xeae xxxx fxxx xdfD |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (63%) |
Metre | 11011111 110001 01010101 011111 1111010 111111 11110101 1110101 11110111 110101 11011101 110101 11010111 110111 11010101 110111 11011111 11011 1101011 010101 11011101 111101 10111010 1010101 1111010 1010001 1101010 10101 110101 1010101 10110100 110111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 935 |
Words | 182 |
Sentences | 14 |
Stanzas | 8 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 32 |
Letters per line (avg) | 23 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 92 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 23 |
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"Freedom Isn't Free" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 3 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/60287/freedom-isn%27t-free>.
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