Prayer For His Lady’s Life

Ezra Pound 1885 (Hailey) – 1972 (Venice)



FROM PROPERTIUS, ELEGIAE, LIB. III, 26
Here let thy clemency, Persephone, hold firm,
Do thou, Pluto, bring here no greater harshness.
So many thousand beauties are gone down to Avernus,
Ye might let one remain above with us.

With you is lope, with you the white-gleaming Tyro,
With you is Europa and the shameless Pasiphae,
And all the fair from Troy and all from Achaia,
From the sundered realms, of Thebes and of aged Priamus;
And all the maidens of Rome, as many as they were,
They died and the greed of your flame consumes them.

Here let thy clemency, Persephone, hold firm.
Do thou, Pluto, bring here no greater harshness.
So many thousandfair are gone down to Avernus,
Ye might let one remain above with us.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 16, 2023

38 sec read
155

Quick analysis:

Scheme xABbB cxxbcx ABbB
Closest metre Iambic hexameter
Characters 707
Words 129
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 5, 6, 4

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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