Moeurs Contemporaines Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: A BBCDEBFFBBEBB BBBGGE AH GBEEFEIJJEE AG BBBGKE IG IEAFFJE G IILBM GNO EBEOJN ENGGBENJOB PG AG BJGE G AP GB QBE EOJG E GGB GGR GGR BOE AE EG ESOSAA E ETI | A |
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Mr Styrax | B |
Mr Hecatomb Styrax the owner of a large estate and of large muscles | B |
A 'blue' and a climber of mountains has married at the age of | C |
He being at that age a virgin | D |
The term Virgo' being made male in mediaeval latinity | E |
His ineptitudes | B |
Have driven his wife from one religious excess to another | F |
She has abandoned the vicar | F |
For he was lacking in vehemence | B |
She is now the high priestess | B |
Of a modern and ethical cult | E |
And even now Mr Styrax | B |
Does not believe in asthetics | B |
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His brother has taken to gipsies | B |
But the son in law of Mr H Styrax | B |
Objects to perfumed cigarettes | B |
In the parlance of Niccolo Machiavelli | G |
Thus things proceed in their circle' | G |
And thus the empire is maintained | E |
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II | A |
Clara | H |
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At sixteen she was a potential celebrity | G |
With a distaste for caresses | B |
She now writes to me from a convent | E |
Her life is obscure and troubled | E |
Her second husband will not divorce her | F |
Her mind is as ever uncultivated | E |
And no issue presents itself | I |
She does not desire her children | J |
Or any more children | J |
Her ambition is vague and indefinite | E |
She will neither stay in nor come out | E |
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III | A |
Soir e | G |
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Upon learning that the mother wrote verses | B |
And that the father wrote verses | B |
And that the youngest son was in a publisher's office | B |
And that the friend of the second daughter was undergoing a novel | G |
The young American pilgrim | K |
Exclaimed | E |
'This is a darn'd clever bunch ' | - |
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IV | I |
Sketch b | G |
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At the age of | I |
Its home mail is still opened by its maternal parent | E |
And its office mail may be opened by | A |
its parent of the opposite gender | F |
It is an officer | F |
and a gentleman | J |
and an architect | E |
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V | G |
'Nodier raconte ' | - |
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A t a friend of my wife's there is a photograph | I |
A faded pale brownish photograph | I |
Of the times when the sleeves were large | L |
Silk stiff and large above the lacertus | B |
That is the upper arm | M |
And d collet ' | - |
It is a lady | G |
She sits at a harp | N |
Playing | O |
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And by her left foot in a basket | E |
Is an infant aged about months | B |
The infant beams at the parent | E |
The parent re beams at its offspring | O |
The basket is lined with satin | J |
There is a satin like bow on the harp | N |
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And in the home of the novelist | E |
There is a satin like bow on an harp | N |
You enter and pass hall after hall | G |
Conservatory follows conservatory | G |
Lilies lift their white symbolical cups | B |
Whence their symbolical pollen has been excerpted | E |
Near them I noticed an harp | N |
And the blue satin ribbon | J |
And the copy of Hatha Yoga' | O |
And the neat piles of unopened unopening books | B |
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And she spoke to me of the monarch | P |
And of the purity of her soul | G |
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VI | A |
Stele | G |
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After years of continence | B |
he hurled himself into a sea of six women | J |
Now quenched as the brand of Meleagar | G |
he lies by the poluphloisboious sea coast | E |
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SISTE VIATOR | G |
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VII | A |
I Vecchii | P |
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They will come no more | G |
The old men with beautiful manners | B |
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II tait comme un tout petit gar on | Q |
With his blouse full of apples | B |
And sticking out all the way round | E |
Blagueur 'Con gli occhi onesti e tardi ' | - |
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And he said | E |
h Abelard ' as if the topic | O |
Were much too abstruse for his comprehension | J |
And he talked about 'the Great Mary' | G |
And said Mr Pound is shocked at my levity ' | - |
When it turned out he meant Mrs Ward | E |
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And the other was rather like my bust by Gaudier | G |
Or like a real Texas colonel | G |
He said 'Why flay dead horses | B |
'There was once a man called Voltaire ' | - |
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And he said they used to cheer Verdi | G |
In Rome after the opera | G |
And the guards couldn't stop them | R |
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And that was an anagram for Vittorio | G |
Emanuele Re D' Italia | G |
And the guards couldn't stop them | R |
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Old men with beautiful manners | B |
Sitting in the Row of a morning | O |
Walking on the Chelsea Embankment | E |
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VIII | A |
Ritratto | E |
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And she said | E |
' You remember Mr Lowell | G |
'He was your ambassador here ' | - |
And I said 'That was before I arrived ' | - |
And she said | E |
'He stomped into my bedroom | S |
By that time she had got on to Browning | O |
' stomped into my bedroom | S |
'And said 'Do I | A |
' 'I ask you Do I | A |
' 'Care too much for society dinners ' | - |
'And I wouldn't say that he didn't | E |
'Shelley used to live in this house ' | - |
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She was a very old lady | E |
I never saw her again | T |
Ezra Pound
(1)
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