The White Stag
I ha' seen them mid the clouds on the heather.Lo! they pause not for love nor for sorrow,Yet their eyes are as the eyes of a maid to her lover,When the white hart breaks his coverAnd the white wind breaks the morn.
"'Tis the white stagy Fame, we're a-hunting,Bid the world's hounds come to horn!"
Words in this poem
- morn n.
- The first part of the day; the morning; -- used chiefly in poetry. [OE. morwen, morgen, AS. morgen; akin to D. morgen, OS. morgan, G. morgen, Icel. morginn, morgunn, Sw. morgon, Dan. morgen, Goth. maúrgins. Cf. Morrow, Morning.]
- stagy a.
- Having an air or manner characteristic of the stage; theatrical; artificial; as, a stagy tone or bearing; --chiefly used depreciatively.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The White Stag 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, The White Stag, in Personae (1909), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #41162, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/pound-personae/the-white-stag.html, id L01228.
Form and metre
The White Stag is 7 lines in 2 stanzas. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic pentameter. 93% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 9.6 syllables. 5 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 --AA- heather · sorrow · loverA · coverA · morn
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 |
|---|---|---|
| I ha' seen them mid the clouds on the heather. | 11 | ·········/˘ |
| Lo! they pause not for love nor for sorrow, | 10 | ········/˘ |
| Yet their eyes are as the eyes of a maid to her lover, | 14 | ············/˘ |
| When the white hart breaks his cover | 8 | ······/˘ |
| And the white wind breaks the morn. | 7 | ······· |
| "'Tis the white stagy Fame, we're a-hunting, | 10 | ···/˘···/˘ |
| Bid the world's hounds come to horn!" | 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.