Analysis of Her Monument, The Image Cut Thereon
Ezra Pound 1885 (Hailey) – 1972 (Venice)
FROM THE ITALIAN OF LEOPARDI
Such wast thou,
Who art now
But buried dust and rusted skeleton.
Above the bones and mire,
Motionless, placed in vain,
Mute mirror of the flight of speeding years,
Sole guard of grief
Sole guard of memory
Standeth this image of the beauty sped.
O glance, when thou wast still as thou art now,
How hast thou set the fire
A-tremble in men's veins; lip curved high
To mind me of some urn of full delight,
O throat girt round of old with swift desire,
O palms of Love, that in your wonted ways
Not once but many a day
Felt hands turn ice a-sudden, touching ye,
That ye were once! of all the grace ye had
That which remaineth now
Shameful, most sad
Finds 'neath this rock fit mould, fit resting place!
And still when fate recalleth,
Even that semblance that appears amongst us
Is like to heaven's most 'live imagining.
All, all our life's eternal mystery!
To-day, on high
Mounts, from our mighty thoughts and from the fount
Of sense untellable, Beauty
That seems to be some quivering splendour cast
By the immortal nature on this quicksand,
And by surhuman fates
Given to mortal state
To be a sign and an hope made secure
Of blissful kingdoms and the aureate spheres;
And on the morrow, by some lightsome twist,
Shameful in sight, abject, abominable
All this angelic aspect can return
And be but what it was
With all the admirable concepts that moved from it
Swept from the mind with it in its departure.
Infinite things desired, lofty visions
'Got on desirous thoughts by natural virtue,
And the wise concord, whence through delicious seas
The arcane spirit of the whole Mankind
Turns hardy pilot . . . and if one wrong note
Strike the tympanum,
Instantly
That paradise is hurled to nothingness.
O mortal nature,
If thou art
Frail and so vile in all,
How canst thou reach so high with thy poor sense;
Yet if thou art
Noble in any part
How is the noblest of thy speech and thought
So lightly wrought
Or to such base occasion lit and quenched?
Scheme | A BBXXXCXDA BEFAEXADABAX BGXDFAAAA XAXCAXXXAE XAXAAXDG EAXXAAAAA |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1001011 111 111 1101010100 010101 100101 1101011101 1111 111100 111010101 1111111111 1111010 010011111 1111111101 11111111010 111110111 1111001 1111010101 1101110111 1111 1011 1111111101 01111 10110101011 11110110100 11101010100 1111 11101010101 11110 1111110011 1001010111 0111 101101 1101011101 110100011 010101111 10011001000 11101101 011111 1101000101111 11011101010 10010101010 110101110010 0011110101 011010111 1101001111 10100 100 110111100 11010 111 101101 1111111111 1111 100101 1101011101 1101 1111010101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,917 |
Words | 358 |
Sentences | 13 |
Stanzas | 7 |
Stanza Lengths | 1, 9, 12, 9, 10, 8, 9 |
Lines Amount | 58 |
Letters per line (avg) | 27 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 222 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 51 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:48 min read
- 125 Views
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"Her Monument, The Image Cut Thereon" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/13252/her-monument%2C-the-image-cut-thereon>.
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