Ite
Go, my songs, seek your praise from the young and from the intolerant,Move among the lovers of perfection alone.Seek ever to stand in the hard Sophoclean lightAnd take your wounds from it gladly.
Words in this poem
- intolerant a.
- Not enduring; not able to endure. [L. intolerans, -antis: cf. F. intolérant. See In- not, and Tolerant.]
- gladly adv.
- Preferably; by choice. [From Glad, a.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Ite 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, Ite, in Lustra (1916), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #55564, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/pound-lustra/ite.html, id L01266.
Form and metre
Ite is 4 lines in a single stanza. The lines average 12.0 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.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Go, my songs, seek your praise from the young and from the intolerant, | 16 | ············˘/˘˘ |
| Move among the lovers of perfection alone. | 12 | ····/˘·˘/˘˘/ |
| Seek ever to stand in the hard Sophoclean light | 12 | ·/˘········· |
| And take your wounds from it gladly. | 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.