After Valerius Catullus
All Hail! young lady with a noseby no means too small,With a foot unbeautiful,and with eyes that are not black,With fingers that are not long, and with a mouth undry,And with a tongue by no means too elegant,You are the friend of Formianus, the vendor of cosmetics,And they call you beautiful in the province,And you are even compared to Lesbia.
Words in this poem
- vendor n.
- A vender; a seller; the correlative of vendee. [See Vender.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
After Valerius Catullus 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, After Valerius Catullus, in Lustra (1916), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #55564, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/pound-lustra/after-valerius-catullus.html, id L01295.
Form and metre
After Valerius Catullus is 9 lines in a single verse paragraph. It is unrhymed, as far as the pronouncing dictionary can tell. 86% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 9.7 syllables. 3 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 11% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
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. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| All Hail! young lady with a nose | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| by no means too small, | 5 | ····· |
| With a foot unbeautiful, | 7 | ······· |
| and with eyes that are not black, | 7 | ······· |
| With fingers that are not long, and with a mouth undry, | 13 | ·/˘·········· |
| And with a tongue by no means too elegant, | 11 | ········/˘˘ |
| You are the friend of Formianus, the vendor of cosmetics, | 15 | ·········/˘·˘/˘ |
| And they call you beautiful in the province, | 11 | ····/˘˘··/˘ |
| And you are even compared to Lesbia. | 10 | ···/˘˘/··· |
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.