Analysis of The River Song
Ezra Pound 1885 (Hailey) – 1972 (Venice)
This boat is of shato-wood, and its gunwales are cut
magnolia,
Musicians with jewelled flutes and with pipes of gold
Fill full the sides in rows, and our wine
Is rich for a thousand cups.
We carry singing girls, drift with the drifting water,
Yet Sennin needs
A yellow stork for a charger, and all our seamen
Would follow the white gulls or ride them.
Kutsu's prose song
Hangs with the sun and moon.
King So's terraced palace
is now but barren hill,
But I draw pen on this barge
Causing the five peaks to tremble,
And I have joy in these words
like the joy of blue islands.
(If glory could last forever
Then the waters of Han would flow northward.)
And I have moped in the Emperor's garden, awaiting an
order-to-write !
I looked at the dragon-pond, with its willow-coloured
water
Just reflecting the sky's tinge,
And heard the five-score nightingales aimlessly singing.
The eastern wind brings the green colour into the island
grasses at Yei-shu,
The purple house and the crimson are full of Spring
softness.
South of the pond the willow-tips are half-blue and
bluer,
Their cords tangle in mist, against the brocade-like
palace.
Vine-strings a hundred feet long hang down from
carved railings,
And high over the willows, the fine birds sing to each
other, and listen,
Crying—‘Kwan, Kuan,' for the early wind, and the feel
of it.
The wind bundles itself into a bluish cloud and wanders
off.
Over a thousand gates, over a thousand doors are the
sounds of spring singing,
And the Emperor is at Ko.
Five clouds hang aloft, bright on the purple sky,
The imperial guards come forth from the golden house
with their armour a-gleaming.
The Emperor in his jewelled car goes out to inspect his
flowers,
He goes out to Hori, to look at the wing-flapping storks,
He returns by way of Sei rock, to hear the new
nightingales,
For the gardens at Jo-run are full of new nightingales,
Their sound is mixed in this flute,
Their voice is in the twelve pipes here.
Scheme | XAXXBCXDEXX FXXXXXCG DXGCXH IJHFICXFEXXDXXKXAHXXXHXKBJBBXX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11111101111 010 01011101111 1101010101 1110101 1101011101010 111 01011010011010 110011111 111 110101 111010 111101 1111111 10011110 0111011 1011110 11011010 1010111110 011100100100101 1011 111010111110 10 1010011 01011110010 0101101101010 10111 010100101111 10 11010111110 10 111001010011 10 1101011111 110 011001011111 10010 101110101001 11 011001010101010 1 10010110010110 11110 00100111 11101110101 0010011110101 1110010 01000111111011 10 11111011101101 101111111101 1 101011111111 1111011 11100111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,902 |
Words | 349 |
Sentences | 15 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 11, 8, 6, 30 |
Lines Amount | 55 |
Letters per line (avg) | 28 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 383 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 87 |
Font size:
Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 24, 2023
- 1:45 min read
- 175 Views
Citation
Use the citation below to add this poem analysis to your bibliography:
Style:MLAChicagoAPA
"The River Song" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 19 Sep. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/13391/the-river-song>.
Discuss this Ezra Pound poem analysis with the community:
Report Comment
We're doing our best to make sure our content is useful, accurate and safe.
If by any chance you spot an inappropriate comment while navigating through our website please use this form to let us know, and we'll take care of it shortly.
Attachment
You need to be logged in to favorite.
Log In