Famam Librosque Cano
Your songs?Oh! The little mothersWill sing them in the twilight,And when the nightShrinketh the kiss of the dawnThat loves and kills,What time the swallow fillsHer note, the little rabbit folkThat some call children,Such as are up and wideWill laugh your verses to each other,Pulling on their shoes for the day's business,Serious child business that the worldLaughs at, and grows stale;Such is the tale--Part of it--of thy song-life
Words in this poem
- folk n.
- In Anglo-Saxon times, the people of a group of townships or villages; a community; a tribe. [AS. folc; akin to D. volk, OS. & OHG. folk, G. volk, Icel. f, Sw. & Dan. folk, Lith. pulkas crowd, and perh. to E. follow.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Famam Librosque Cano 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, Famam Librosque Cano, in Personae (1909), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #41162, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/pound-personae/famam-librosque-cano.html, id L01200.
Form and metre
Famam Librosque Cano is 16 lines in a single stanza. The metre is trochaic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 75%). 99% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 6.2 syllables. 4 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 56% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in trochaic trimeter.
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 --AABCC-B----DD- songs · mothers · twilightA · nightA · dawnB · killsC · fillsC · folk · childrenB · wide · other · business · world · staleD · taleD · life
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 trochaic trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Your songs? | 2 | ·· |
| Oh! The little mothers | 6 | ··/˘/˘ |
| Will sing them in the twilight, | 7 | ·····/· |
| And when the night | 4 | ···· |
| Shrinketh the kiss of the dawn | 7 | /˘····· |
| That loves and kills, | 4 | ···· |
| What time the swallow fills | 6 | ···/˘· |
| Her note, the little rabbit folk | 8 | ···/˘/˘· |
| That some call children, | 5 | ···/˘ |
| Such as are up and wide | 6 | ······ |
| Will laugh your verses to each other, | 9 | ···/˘··/˘ |
| Pulling on their shoes for the day's business, | 10 | /˘······/˘ |
| Serious child business that the world | 9 | /˘˘·/˘··· |
| Laughs at, and grows stale; | 5 | ····· |
| Such is the tale | 4 | ···· |
| --Part of it--of thy song-life | 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.