Envoi

Ezra Pound (1885–1972) · 1909

iambic tetrameter · 7 lines · from Personae

Beyond sea be thou sped, my song,And, by God, to my Lady sayThat in desirous, grief-filled wayMy nights and my days are full long.And command thou William the Long-SeerTo tell thee to my Lady dear,That comfort be her thoughts among.

About this text

Envoi 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, Envoi, in Personae (1909), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #41162, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/pound-personae/envoi-3.html, id L01223.

Form and metre

Envoi is 7 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 82%). 96% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.3 syllables.

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. 1 ABBACC- songA · sayB · wayB · longA · seerC · dearC · among
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.

LineSyl.Stress
Beyond sea be thou sped, my song,8········
And, by God, to my Lady say8·····/˘·
That in desirous, grief-filled way9··˘/˘··˘·
My nights and my days are full long.8········
And command thou William the Long-Seer9·˘/·/˘···
To tell thee to my Lady dear,8·····/˘·
That comfort be her thoughts among.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.

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