Causa
I join these words for four people,Some others may overhear them,O world, I am sorry for you,You do not know these four people.
Words in this poem
- overhear v. t.
- To hear more of (anything) than was intended to be heard; to hear by accident or artifice. [AS. oferhiéran.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Causa 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, Causa, in Lustra (1916), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #55564, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/pound-lustra/causa.html, id L01254.
Form and metre
Causa is 4 lines in a single stanza. The lines average 8.0 syllables. 2 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
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.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 A--A peopleA · them · you · peopleA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| I join these words for four people, | 8 | ······/˘ |
| Some others may overhear them, | 8 | ·/˘·/˘/· |
| O world, I am sorry for you, | 8 | ····/˘·· |
| You do not know these four people. | 8 | ······/˘ |
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.