Troy
Whither, O city, are your profits and your gilded shrines,And your barbecues of great oxen,And the tall women walking your streets, in gilt clothes,With their perfumes in little alabaster boxes?Where is the work of your home-born sculptors?
Time’s tooth is into the lot, and war’s and fate’s too.Envy has taken your all,Save your douth and your story.
Words in this poem
- whither adv.
- To what place; -- used interrogatively; as, whither goest thou [OE. whider. AS. hwider; akin to E. where, who; cf. Goth. hvadre whither. See Who, and cf. Hither, Thither.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Troy 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, Troy, in Lustra (1916), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #55564, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/pound-lustra/troy.html, id L01332.
Form and metre
Troy is 8 lines in 2 verse paragraphs. It is unrhymed, as far as the pronouncing dictionary can tell. 84% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.5 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Whither, O city, are your profits and your gilded shrines, | 14 | /˘·/˘··/˘··/˘· |
| And your barbecues of great oxen, | 9 | ··/˘···/˘ |
| And the tall women walking your streets, in gilt clothes, | 12 | ···/˘/˘····· |
| With their perfumes in little alabaster boxes? | 13 | ··˘/·/˘/˘·˘/˘ |
| Where is the work of your home-born sculptors? | 10 | ········/˘ |
| Time’s tooth is into the lot, and war’s and fate’s too. | 12 | ············ |
| Envy has taken your all, | 7 | /˘·/˘·· |
| Save your douth and your story. | 7 | ·····/˘ |
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.