Analysis of Homage To Sextus Propertius - VIII
Ezra Pound 1885 (Hailey) – 1972 (Venice)
Jove, be merciful to that unfortunate woman
Or an ornamental death will be held to your debit,
The time is come, the air heaves in torridity,
The dry earth pants against the canicular heat,
But this heat is not the root of the matter:
She did not respect all the gods;
Such derelictions have destroyed other young ladies aforetime,
And what they swore in the cupboard
wind and wave scattered away.
Was Venus exacerbated by the existence of a comparable equal?
Is the ornamental goddess full of envy?
Have you contempted Juno's Pelasgian temples,
Have you denied Pallas good eyes ?
Or is it my tongue that wrongs you
with perpetual ascription of graces?
There comes, it seems, and at any rate
through perils, (so many) and of a vexed life,
The gentler hour of an ultimate day.
Io mooed the first years with averted head,
And now drinks Nile water like a god,
Ino in her young days fled pellmell out of Thebes,
Andromeda was offered to a sea-serpent
and respectably married to Perseus,
Callisto, disguised as a bear,
wandered through the Arcadian prairies
While a black veil was over her stars,
What if your fates are accelerated,
your quiet hour put forward,
You may find interment pleasing,
You will say that you succumbed to a danger identical,
charmingly identical, with Semele's,
And believe it, and she also will believe it,
being expert from experience,
And amid all the gloried and storied beauties of Maeonia
There shall be none in a better seat, not
one denying your prestige,
Now you may bear fate's stroke unperturbed,
Or Jove, harsh as he is, may turn aside your ultimate day.
Old lecher, let not Juno get wind of the matter,
Or perhaps Juno herself will go under,
If the young lady is taken?
There will be, in any case, a stir on Olympus.
Scheme | ABBXCDXEF GXXXXXXXF XXXXH XXXXEX GDBXAXX XFCCAH |
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Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1110011010010 1101011111110 011101101 011101011 11111011010 11101101 11101101101 01110010 1011001 11001001001010100010 10010101110 11110110 11011011 11111111 101001110 111101101 11011001011 01010111001 10101110101 011110101 1001111111 010011010110 00100101100 101101 101010010 101111001 111110100 11010110 111110 111110110100100 100010011 001101101011 101010100 0011010101011 1111001011 1010101 11111101 111111110111001 1101110111010 10110011110 10110110 1110101011010 |
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 1,717 |
Words | 312 |
Sentences | 10 |
Stanzas | 6 |
Stanza Lengths | 9, 9, 5, 6, 7, 6 |
Lines Amount | 42 |
Letters per line (avg) | 33 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 231 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 52 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:34 min read
- 66 Views
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