Image from D’Orleans
Young men riding in the streetIn the bright new seasonSpur without reason,Causing their steeds to leap.
And at the pace they keepTheir horses’ armoured feetStrike sparks from the cobbled streetIn the bright new season.
Words in this poem
- armoured a.
- Clad with armor.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Image from D’Orleans 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, Image from D’Orleans, in Lustra (1916), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #55564, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/pound-lustra/image-from-d-orleans.html, id L01292.
Form and metre
Image from D’Orleans is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. It is in rhyming couplets, 50% of the lines. The metre is iambic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 88%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 6.1 syllables. 3 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 62% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in rhyming couplets, other poems in iambic trimeter.
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 -AA- street · seasonA · reasonA · leap
- 2 -AA- keep · feetA · streetA · season
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 trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Young men riding in the street | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| In the bright new season | 6 | ····/˘ |
| Spur without reason, | 5 | ···/˘ |
| Causing their steeds to leap. | 6 | /˘···· |
| And at the pace they keep | 6 | ······ |
| Their horses’ armoured feet | 6 | ·/˘/˘· |
| Strike sparks from the cobbled street | 7 | ····/˘· |
| In the bright new season. | 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.