Piccadilly
Beautiful, tragical faces,Ye that were whole, and are so sunken;And, O ye vile, ye that might have been loved,That are so sodden and drunken,Who hath forgotten you?
The gross, the coarse, the brazen,God knows I cannot pity them, perhaps, as I should do,But, oh, ye delicate, wistful faces,Who hath forgotten you?
Words in this poem
- tragical a.
- Of or pertaining to tragedy; of the nature or character of tragedy; as, a tragic poem; a tragic play or representation. [L. tragicus, Gr.tragique.]
- wistful a.
- Longing; wishful; desirous. [For wishful; perhaps influenced by wistly, which is probably corrupted from OE. wisly certainly (from Icel. viss certain, akin to E. wit). See Wish.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Piccadilly 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, Piccadilly, in Personae (1909), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #41162, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/pound-personae/piccadilly.html, id L01229.
Form and metre
Piccadilly is 9 lines in 2 stanzas. The metre is dactylic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 82%). 89% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.7 syllables. 5 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
See other poems in dactylic 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 -A-A- faces · sunkenA · loved · drunkenA · you
- 2 -A-A brazen · doA · faces · youA
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 dactylic trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Beautiful, tragical faces, | 8 | /˘˘···/˘ |
| Ye that were whole, and are so sunken; | 9 | ·······/˘ |
| And, O ye vile, ye that might have been loved, | 10 | ·········· |
| That are so sodden and drunken, | 8 | ···/˘·/˘ |
| Who hath forgotten you? | 6 | ··˘/˘· |
| The gross, the coarse, the brazen, | 7 | ·····/˘ |
| God knows I cannot pity them, perhaps, as I should do, | 14 | ···/˘/˘·˘/···· |
| But, oh, ye delicate, wistful faces, | 10 | ···/˘˘/˘/˘ |
| Who hath forgotten you? | 6 | ··˘/˘· |
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.