Passing
Flawless as Aphrodite,Thoroughly beautiful,Brainless,The faint odour of your patchouli,Faint, almost, as the lines of cruelty about your chin,Assails me, and concerns me almost as little.
Words in this poem
- flawless a.
- Free from flaws. Boyle.
- aphrodite n.
- The Greek goddess of love, corresponding to the Venus of the Romans.
- brainless a.
- Without understanding; silly; thougthless; witless.
- odour n.
- Any smell, whether fragrant or offensive; scent; perfume. [OE. odor, odour, OF. odor, odour, F. odeur, fr. L. odor; akin to olere to smell, Gr. Olfactory, Osmium, Ozone, Redolent.]
- patchouli n.
- A mintlike plant (Pogostemon Patchouli) of the East Indies, yielding an essential oil from which a highly valued perfume is made. [CF. F. patchouli; prob. of East Indian origin.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Passing 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, Passing, in Lustra (1916), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #55564, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/pound-lustra/passing.html, id L01279.
Form and metre
Passing is 6 lines in a single verse paragraph. It is unrhymed, as far as the pronouncing dictionary can tell. The lines average 8.2 syllables. 4 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Flawless as Aphrodite, | 7 | /˘··˘/˘ |
| Thoroughly beautiful, | 6 | /˘˘/˘˘ |
| Brainless, | 2 | /˘ |
| The faint odour of your patchouli, | 9 | ··/˘····· |
| Faint, almost, as the lines of cruelty about your chin, | 13 | ·/·····/˘···· |
| Assails me, and concerns me almost as little. | 12 | ˘/··˘/·/··/˘ |
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.