Alba Belingalis
Phoebus shineth ere his splendour fliethAurora drives faint light athwart the landAnd the drowsy watcher crieth,"ARISE."
Words in this poem
- phoebus n.
- Apollo; the sun god.
- splendour n.
- Great brightness; brilliant luster; brilliancy; as, the splendor ot the sun. B. Jonson. [L. fr. splendere to shine: cf. F. splendeur.]
- aurora n.
- The rising light of the morning; the dawn of day; the redness of the sky just before the sun rises. [L. aurora, for ausosa, akin to Gr. ushas, and E. east.]
- watcher n.
- One who watches; one who sits up or continues; a diligent observer; specifically, one who attends upon the sick during the night.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Alba Belingalis is in the public domain. This text is taken from Personae, Project Gutenberg ebook #41162; 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, Alba Belingalis, in Personae (1909), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #41162, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/pound-personae/alba-belingalis.html, id L01220.
Form and metre
Alba Belingalis is 4 lines in a single stanza. The lines average 7.0 syllables.
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- fliethA · land · criethA · arise
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Phoebus shineth ere his splendour flieth | 9 | /˘/˘··/˘· |
| Aurora drives faint light athwart the land | 10 | ······˘/·· |
| And the drowsy watcher crieth, | 7 | ··/˘/˘· |
| "ARISE." | 2 | ˘/ |
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.