The Tea Shop
The girl in the tea shopis not so beautiful as she was,The August has worn against her.She does not get up the stairs so eagerly,Yes, she also will turn middle-aged,And the glow of youth that she spread about usas she brought us our muffinsWill be spread about us no longer.She also will turn middle-aged.
About this text
The Tea Shop 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, The Tea Shop, in Lustra (1916), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #55564, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/pound-lustra/the-tea-shop.html, id L01301.
Form and metre
The Tea Shop is 9 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 78%). 93% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.8 syllables. 3 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 33% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in iambic tetrameter.
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 shop · was · her · eagerly · agedA · us · muffins · longer · agedA
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 tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| The girl in the tea shop | 6 | ······ |
| is not so beautiful as she was, | 9 | ···/˘˘··· |
| The August has worn against her. | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| She does not get up the stairs so eagerly, | 11 | ········/˘˘ |
| Yes, she also will turn middle-aged, | 9 | ··/˘··/˘· |
| And the glow of youth that she spread about us | 11 | ··········· |
| as she brought us our muffins | 8 | ····/˘/˘ |
| Will be spread about us no longer. | 9 | ·······/˘ |
| She also will turn middle-aged. | 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.