Tally-O
What ho! the wind is up and eloquent.Through all the Winter's halls he crieth Spring.Now will I get me up unto mine own forestsAnd behold their bourgeoning.
About this text
Tally-O 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, Tally-O, in Personae (1909), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #41162, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/pound-personae/tally-o.html, id L01207.
Form and metre
Tally-O is 4 lines in a single stanza. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic pentameter. 92% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 9.5 syllables. 2 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
See other poems in iambic pentameter.
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 eloquent · springA · forests · bourgeoningA
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 pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| What ho! the wind is up and eloquent. | 10 | ·······/˘˘ |
| Through all the Winter's halls he crieth Spring. | 9 | ···/˘···· |
| Now will I get me up unto mine own forests | 12 | ··········/˘ |
| And behold their bourgeoning. | 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.