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.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 21, 2023

41 sec read
125

Quick analysis:

Scheme AB CBACX XADXXXXXEFX FDX XE
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 740
Words 139
Stanzas 5
Stanza Lengths 2, 5, 11, 3, 2

Ezra Pound

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

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