The Old Tramp
A Old Tramp slep' in our stable wunst,An' The Raggedy Man he caughtAn' roust him up, an' chased him offClean out through our back lot!
An' th' Old Tramp hollered back an' said,--"You're a purty man!--You air!--With a pair o' eyes like two fried eggs,An' a nose like a Bartlutt pear!"
Words in this poem
- roust v. t.
- To rouse; to disturb; as, to roust one out.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Old Tramp is in the public domain. This text is taken from Riley Child-Rhymes, Project Gutenberg ebook #9777; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: James Whitcomb Riley, The Old Tramp, in Riley Child-Rhymes (1890), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #9777, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/riley-child-rhymes/the-old-tramp.html, id L25045.
Form and metre
The Old Tramp is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 81%).
See other poems in iambic tetrameter.
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 wunst · caughtA · off · lotA
- 2 -A-A said · airA · eggs · pearA
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 tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| A Old Tramp slep' in our stable wunst, | 9 | ·····//˘· |
| An' The Raggedy Man he caught | 8 | ··/˘˘··· |
| An' roust him up, an' chased him off | 8 | ········ |
| Clean out through our back lot! | 7 | ···/˘·· |
| An' th' Old Tramp hollered back an' said,-- | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| "You're a purty man!--You air!-- | 7 | ······· |
| With a pair o' eyes like two fried eggs, | 9 | ········· |
| An' a nose like a Bartlutt pear!" | 8 | ········ |
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.