A Ballad Of The Mulberry Road

Ezra Pound 1885 (Hailey) – 1972 (Venice)



The sun rises in south east corner of things
To look on the tall house of the Shin
For they have a daughter named Rafu,
(pretty girl)
She made the name for herself: 'Gauze Veil,'
For she feeds mulberries to silkworms.
She gets them by the south wall of the town.
With green strings she makes the warp of her basket,
She makes the shoulder-straps of her basket
from the boughs of Katsura,
And she piles her hair up on the left side of her headpiece.

Her earrings are made of pearl,
Her underskirt is of green pattern-silk,
Her overskirt is the same silk dyed in purple,
And when men going by look on Rafu
They set down their burdens,
They stand and twirl their moustaches.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 02, 2023

38 sec read
230

Quick analysis:

Scheme AXBCXXXDDXA CXXBXA
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 663
Words 129
Stanzas 2
Stanza Lengths 11, 6

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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