Analysis of Middle-Aged

Ezra Pound 1885 (Hailey) – 1972 (Venice)



‘Tis but a vague, invarious delight
As gold that rains about some buried king.

As the fine flakes,
When tourists frolicking
Stamp on his roof or in the glazing light
Try photographs, wolf down their ale and cakes
And start to inspect some further pyramid;

As the fine dust, in the hid cell
Beneath their transitory step and merriment,
Drifts through the air, and the sarcophagus
Gains yet another crust
Of useless riches for the occupant,
So I, the fires that lit once dreams
Now over and spent,
Lie dead within four walls
And so now love
Rains down and so enriches some stiff case,
And strews a mind with precious metaphors,

And so the space
Of my still consciousness
Is full of gilded snow,

The which, no cat has eyes enough
To see the brightness of.


Scheme AB CBACX XADXXXXXEFX FDX XE
Poetic Form
Metre 1101101 1111011101 1011 110100 1111100101 110111101 01101110100 10110011 011100101 1101000100 110101 1101010100 110101111 11001 110111 0111 1101010111 0101110100 0101 111100 111101 01111101 110101
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 740
Words 139
Sentences 3
Stanzas 5
Stanza Lengths 2, 5, 11, 3, 2
Lines Amount 23
Letters per line (avg) 26
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 120
Words per stanza (avg) 27
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 21, 2023

41 sec read
125

Ezra Pound

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

All Ezra Pound poems | Ezra Pound Books

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