Alf’s Third Bit

Ezra Pound 1885 (Hailey) – 1972 (Venice)



DOLE THE BELL! BELL THE DOLE!

Whom can these duds attack?
Soapy Sime? Slipp'ry Mac?
Naught but a shirt is there
Such as the fascists wear,
Never the man inside
Moving a nation-wide
Disgust with hokum.

Plenty to right of 'em,
Plenty to left of 'em,
Yeh! What is left of 'em,
Boozy, uncertain.
See how they take it all, .
Down there in Clerkenwall
Readin' th' pypers!

Syrup and soothing dope,
Sure, they can live on hope,
Ain't yeh got precedent ?
Ten years and twelve years gone,
Ten more and nothing done,
GOD save Britannia!

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

29 sec read
152

Quick analysis:

Scheme A BBCCDDX EEEFXAX GGXXFX
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 513
Words 97
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 1, 7, 7, 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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