A Song of the Degrees II
The wind moves above the wheat--With a silver crashing,A thin war of metal.
I have known the golden disc,I have seen it melting above me.I have known the stone-bright place,The hall of clear colours.
Words in this poem
- crashing n.
- The noise of many things falling and breaking at once.
- disc n.
- A flat round plate; (Biol.) [See Disk, Dish.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
A Song of the Degrees II is in the public domain. This text is taken from Lustra of Ezra Pound, Project Gutenberg ebook #55564; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Ezra Pound, A Song of the Degrees II, in Lustra (1916), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #55564, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/pound-lustra/a-song-of-the-degrees-ii.html, id L01264.
Form and metre
A Song of the Degrees II is 7 lines in 2 verse paragraphs. It is unrhymed, as far as the pronouncing dictionary can tell. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 83%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 6.9 syllables. 3 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
See other poems in iambic tetrameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against iambic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| The wind moves above the wheat-- | 7 | ······· |
| With a silver crashing, | 6 | ··/˘/˘ |
| A thin war of metal. | 6 | ····/˘ |
| I have known the golden disc, | 7 | ····/˘· |
| I have seen it melting above me. | 9 | ····/˘··· |
| I have known the stone-bright place, | 7 | ······· |
| The hall of clear colours. | 6 | ····/˘ |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.