Analysis of Texas Cowboy
Karle Wilson Baker 1878 (Little Rock) – 1960
From garden-beds I tend, it is not far
To those great ranges where he used to ride;
Time’s shadowy Door still stands a rift ajar,
And Fancy, glancing backward and aside,
May glimpse him whirling in a storm, of dust,
A flashing bronze against a burning sky,
Before a sea of tossing horns up-thrust,
A peril thousand-pronged, to breast or die;
Or lying with locked hands beneath his head,
Watching the stars beside a lonely fire,
About him dim immensity outspread
Within, dim gulfs of question and desire.
He is a Thought; he is not flesh-and-bone;
He is immortal Youth astride a Dream:
The hungry flame that eats to ash and stone
The gorgeous fruitage of the things that seem;
And I (who sand, with pang and toil enough,
My roots at last down to the nether springs,
Yet, born to coax the shapely from the rough,
Have shunned the red and jagged edge of things),
A Woman with a bird, a book , a flower,
Who, sifting life, has kept the quiet part,
Whose days like pearls are sorted, hour by hour -
Why is it that he gallops through my heart?
Scheme | ABABCDCDEFBFGHGHIJIJFKFK |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1101111111 1111011111 11001110101 0101010001 1111000111 0101010101 0101110111 0101011111 1101110111 10010101010 011111 01111100010 1101111101 1101010101 0101111101 010110111 0111110101 1111110101 1111010101 110101111 01010101010 1101110101 111111010110 111111111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,024 |
Words | 194 |
Sentences | 3 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 24 |
Lines Amount | 24 |
Letters per line (avg) | 33 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 803 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 193 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 23, 2023
- 58 sec read
- 150 Views
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"Texas Cowboy" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 27 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/24835/texas-cowboy>.
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