Roger Heston
Oh many times did Ernest Hyde and IArgue about the freedom of the will.My favorite metaphor was Prickett’s cowRoped out to grass, and free you know as farAs the length of the rope.One day while arguing so, watching the cowPull at the rope to get beyond the circleWhich she had eaten bare,Out came the stake, and tossing up her head,She ran for us.“What’s that, free-will or what?” said Ernest, running.I fell just as she gored me to my death.
Words in this poem
- prickett n.
- A buck in his second year. See Note under 3d Buck. [Perhaps so called from the state of his horns. See Prick, and cf. Brocket.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Roger Heston is in the public domain. This text is taken from Spoon River Anthology, Project Gutenberg ebook #1280; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Edgar Lee Masters, Roger Heston, in Spoon River Anthology (1915), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1280, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/masters-spoon-river/roger-heston.html, id L07841.
Form and metre
Roger Heston is 12 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 81%). 90% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 9.0 syllables. 2 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 42% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in iambic pentameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 --A--A------ i · will · cowA · far · rope · cowA · circle · bare · head · us · running · death
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against iambic pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Oh many times did Ernest Hyde and I | 10 | ·/˘··/˘··· |
| Argue about the freedom of the will. | 10 | /˘···/˘··· |
| My favorite metaphor was Prickett’s cow | 10 | ·/˘/˘˘·/˘· |
| Roped out to grass, and free you know as far | 10 | ·········· |
| As the length of the rope. | 6 | ······ |
| One day while arguing so, watching the cow | 10 | ···/˘·/˘·· |
| Pull at the rope to get beyond the circle | 11 | ·········/˘ |
| Which she had eaten bare, | 6 | ···/˘· |
| Out came the stake, and tossing up her head, | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| She ran for us. | 4 | ···· |
| “What’s that, free-will or what?” said Ernest, running. | 11 | ·······/˘/˘ |
| I fell just as she gored me to my death. | 10 | ·········· |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.