In the first stanza, the free bird is described. "leaps", "floats", "dares", "claim" are used to describe the free bird, which indicates how courageous, powerful and arrogant it is.
However, the song doesn't have a happy tune. It's a desperate cry for freedom. There's a description of the cage that the bird is in, "bars of rage". It shows similarities to being in a prison.
There are no descriptions of landscape from the caged bird, "of things unknown/ but longed for still". He can't see, he doesn't know
In the third stanza, it says that the tone that the bird is singing on it is a sad and depressed tone (fearful trill). It sings for things that it has never experience but is desperate to. It sings so loud that it is heard all the way on a 'distant hill‘. Distant hill can also mean that the hope that the bird is singing for it is still very far.
In the fourth stanza, it goes back to the free bird who is thinking now of changing its location. We can know this because it writes 'thinks of another breeze‘. The free bird can experience all the comforts, the soft winds and the rich food. It leads a very luxurious life.
In the fifth stanza, it comes back to the caged bird. The first and second sentence - “But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams
his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream" this tells us that the caged bird is very disappointed and losing hope. His screams for help are now hollow echoes because long neglect and abuse has broken his heart.
The last stanza is the same as the third stanza. This is because the writer wanted to emphasis the point that yet hope is still far and nothing is changing.