Analysis of Why Freedom's Stripes Are Red
I don’t need a weatherman to tell me of this cloudy day,
I wasn’t playing against them when they took my rooks away,
I saw the pigeons fly as all the clouds were turned to gray,
And I hear the peoples cry, “We’ve got to make them pay!”
Who covered streets and people with such a dirty snow?
No one takes the blame whichever way we go,
Who has burned our books that we had stacked so tall?
We are now not running, for we can only crawl.
A saw a black man turn white and a white man turn red,
If we are not frightened then why have we fled?
The children were orphaned as their poor fathers leapt,
We mourn much more now than when their fathers wept.
I say all five sides were the wrong sides to strike,
And recall of pasts sins of the kings we don’t like,
But we didn’t bear arms or capture the game,
Out of our sloth march the bloody and lame.
Call up neighbor and brother to make use of your hands,
Don’t strip stars of freedom from all of our lands,
Lower your Glory and save all the dying,
All our heart was poured out in our sorrowful crying.
All they could do then was shed their blood,
All we can do now is give our blood,
All we can do is take more blood with the dead,
Twas the price of our freedom that stained our stripes red.
Scheme | AAAA BBCC DDEE FFGG HHII JJDD |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11101011111101 11100111111101 11010111010111 0110101111111 1101010110101 11101010111 111101111111 111110111101 0101111001111 11111011111 010010111101 11111111101 11111001111 01111101111 1111111001 11101101001 1110010111111 111110111101 10110011010 110111101010010 111111111 1111111101 11111111101 10111010111011 |
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 1,228 |
Words | 250 |
Sentences | 9 |
Stanzas | 6 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 24 |
Letters per line (avg) | 40 |
Words per line (avg) | 10 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 159 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 42 |
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Submitted on May 01, 2011
Modified on April 11, 2023
- 1:15 min read
- 36 Views
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"Why Freedom's Stripes Are Red" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 19 Sep. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/91202/why-freedom%27s-stripes-are-red>.
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