The Ballad Of Rudolph Reed Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABAB CDED FAGA HIJI KLLL MAAA HNON PLNL AMMQ RNHN QSTS HOUO VWAW ADXD YZWA2Rudolph Reed was oaken | A |
His wife was oaken too | B |
And his two good girls and his good little man | A |
Oakened as they grew | B |
- | |
I am not hungry for berries | C |
I am not hungry for bread | D |
But hungry hungry for a house | E |
Where at night a man in bed | D |
- | |
May never hear the plaster | F |
Stir as if in pain | A |
May never hear the roaches | G |
Falling like fat rain | A |
- | |
Where never wife and children need | H |
Go blinking through the gloom | I |
Where every room of many rooms | J |
Will be full of room | I |
- | |
Oh my home may have its east or west | K |
Or north or south behind it | L |
All I know is I shall know it | L |
And fight for it when I find it | L |
- | |
The agent's steep and steady stare | M |
Corroded to a grin | A |
Why you black old tough old hell of a man | A |
Move your family in | A |
- | |
Nary a grin grinned Rudolph Reed | H |
Nary a curse cursed he | N |
But moved in his House With his dark little wife | O |
And his dark little children three | N |
- | |
A neighbor would look with a yawning eye | P |
That squeezed into a slit | L |
But the Rudolph Reeds and children three | N |
Were too joyous to notice it | L |
- | |
For were they not firm in a home of their own | A |
With windows everywhere | M |
And a beautiful banistered stair | M |
And a front yard for flowers and a back for grass | Q |
- | |
The first night a rock big as two fists | R |
The second a rock big as three | N |
But nary a curse cursed Rudolph Reed | H |
Though oaken as man could be | N |
- | |
The third night a silvery ring of glass | Q |
Patience arched to endure | S |
But he looked and lo small Mabel's blood | T |
Was staining her gaze so pure | S |
- | |
Then up did rise our Roodoplh Reed | H |
And pressed the hand of his wife | O |
And went to the door with a thirty four | U |
And a beastly butcher knife | O |
- | |
He ran like a mad thing into the night | V |
And the words in his mouth were stinking | W |
By the time he had hurt his first white man | A |
He was no longer thinking | W |
- | |
By the time he had hurt his fourth white man | A |
Rudolph Reed was dead | D |
His neighbors gathered and kicked his corpse | X |
Nigger his neighbors said | D |
- | |
Small Mabel whimpered all night long | Y |
For calling herself the cause | Z |
Her oak eyed mother did no thing | W |
But change the bloody gauze | A2 |
Gwendolyn Brooks
(1)
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