Analysis of Homage To Sextus Propertius - III

Ezra Pound 1885 (Hailey) – 1972 (Venice)



Midnight, and a letter comes to me from our mistress:
Telling me to come to Tibur:
At once!!
'Bright tips reach up from twin towers,
'Anienan spring water falls into flat-spread pools.'

What is to be done about it?
Shall I entrust myself to entangled shadows,
Where bold hands may do violence to my person?
Yet if I postpone my obedience
because of this respectable terror,
I shall be prey to lamentations worse than a nocturnal assailant.
And I shall be in the wrong,
it will last a twelve month,
For her hands have no kindness me-ward,

Nor is there anyone to whom lovers are not sacred at midnight
And in the Via Sciro.
If any man would be a lover
he may walk on the Scythian coast,
No barbarism would go to the extent of doing him harm,
The moon will carry his candle,
and the stars will point out the stumbles,
Cupid will carry lighted torches before him
and keep mad dogs off his ankles.
Thus all roads are perfectly safe
and at any hour;
Who so indecorous as to shed the pure gore of a suitor?!
Cypris is his cicerone.

What if undertakers follow my track,
such a death is worth dying.
She would bring frankincense and wreaths to my tomb,
She would sit like an ornament on my pyre.

aid, let not my bones lie in a public location
With crowds too assiduous in their crossing of it;
For thus are tombs of lovers most desecrated.

May a woody and sequestered place cover me with its foliage
Or may I inter beneath the hummock
of some as yet uncatalogued sand;
At any rate I shall not hav.e my epitaph in a high road.


Scheme XABXX CXDBAXEXX XAAXXXFXFXAAX XXXA DCX XEXX
Poetic Form
Metre 1001011111010 1011111 11 11111110 1110101111 11111011 1101110101 111111001110 1110110100 0111010010 111111110010010 0111001 111011 101111011 111101110111011 000101 110111010 111101001 110011100111011 01110110 001111010 101101010011 01111110 11111001 011010 1111110111010 101110 1111011 1011110 1111001111 111111001110 1111110010010 111010011011 111111010010 1010001011011110 111010101 111111 110111111100011
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 1,487
Words 291
Sentences 15
Stanzas 6
Stanza Lengths 5, 9, 13, 4, 3, 4
Lines Amount 38
Letters per line (avg) 31
Words per line (avg) 8
Letters per stanza (avg) 198
Words per stanza (avg) 48
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

1:27 min read
123

Ezra Pound

Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic of the early modernist movement. more…

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