Society
The family position was waning,And on this account the little Aurelia,Who had laughed on eighteen summers,Now bears the palsied contact of Phidippus.
Words in this poem
- waning n.
- The act or process of waning, or decreasing.
- palsied a.
- Affected with palsy; paralyzed.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Society 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, Society, in Lustra (1916), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #55564, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/pound-lustra/society.html, id L01291.
Form and metre
Society is 4 lines in a single stanza. The lines average 10.2 syllables. 3 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 |
|---|---|---|
| The family position was waning, | 10 | ·/˘˘˘/˘·/˘ |
| And on this account the little Aurelia, | 12 | ···˘/·/˘˘/˘˘ |
| Who had laughed on eighteen summers, | 8 | ····˘//˘ |
| Now bears the palsied contact of Phidippus. | 11 | ···/˘/····· |
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.