THE RIVER-

MERCHANT’S
WIFE: A LETTER
BY EZRA POUND
STRUCTURE

• The work is broken up into stanzas (unlike the original) to indicate the different
ages and the different sensibilities of the narrator.
• 5 stanzas: the first of 6 lines, and the second, third, and fourth of 4 lines each.
• Each of the first four stanzas is image-centered, focusing an emotional point in
the history of the relationship between the river-merchant’s wife and her
husband.
STRUCTURE

• The final stanza of 10 lines and a dropped half-line begins with the presentation
of a similar central image that collects an enhancing detail in each line until
line 25 shifts into direct emotional statement.
• The last four lines mix this direct letter-writing style with the final image
closing the physical and emotional distance between the river-merchant and his
wife.
• “Free-verse” technique. That is to say, from one line to the next, the poem
follows no consistent metrical or rhyming pattern.
WHICH THEMES
CAN YOU
IDENTIFY?
H I N T: T H E R E A R E AT L E A S T 3
ANALYSIS

• Central image of the river-merchant and his wife as a child, (little girl with her hair
cut in bangs.) (An adult woman in the ancient Chinese culture had uncut long hair.)
• The repetition in three separate lines of the verb "playing" to describe the little
girl's activity at the front gate, as well as the little boy's presence on stilts and his
circling around where she sits, emphasizes the natural, contented activity of
children — almost as a part of the natural world referred to here by "flowers" and
"blue plums."
• This stanza establishes the presence of the "I" and the "you“.
ANALYSIS

• The second stanza places the girl and the boy, the "I" and the "you," as a
woman and man in the adult world.
• Lines 8-9 establish the child-wife's shyness in this formal adult situation by
offering a picture of her bent head and averted eyes, a shyness so extreme that
she could not respond to her husband, no matter how many efforts he made.
ANALYSIS

• The central image of the third stanza is the growth of love between the young
husband and wife.
• Her face, which in the first stanza has the bangs of childhood across her
forehead, in the second stanza is averted and unsmiling, "stops scowling" in the
third stanza.
• The vows of the marriage ceremony, "till death us do part," are evoked in lines
12 and 13 and poignantly reinforced by the triple repetition in line 13 of
"forever."
ANALYSIS

• An image of separation is developed in lines 15-18 as the husband takes on his

role as a river-merchant and travels the waters, conducting his work in the
world on a distant island.
• The wife's statement of the length of his absence is expressed in one line,
giving it full and emphatic force. And in line 18 the effect of this long absence
is brought to full comprehension by the use of the natural image of the sounds
of the monkeys that reflect back to her the sound of her own sorrow.
ANALYSIS

• Line 19 indicates that he was as averse to this separation as she was.

• In line 20 the phrase "by the gate" indicates that she has returned to this gate
and in her memory sees him reluctantly leaving again. For her it is the scene of
the beginning of his absence.
ANALYSIS

• In line 22 the sadness of the river-merchant's wife is again reflected back to her
by the natural world, by the falling leaves and wind of autumn. This image
becomes more defined with her observation of the butterflies in the garden, for
they are "paired" as she is not, and they are becoming "yellow" changing with
the season, growing older together.
• The butterflies "hurt" her because they emphasize the pain of her realization
that she is growing older, but alone, not with her husband. 
ANALYSIS

• In the closing lines of the poem and the "letter" the river-merchant's wife
reaches out from her lonely world of sorrow to her husband in a direct request:
Please let me know when and by what route you are returning, so that I may
come to meet you. This, however, conveys more than it would at first appear.
Her village is a suburb of Nanking and she is willing to walk to a beach several
hundred miles upstream from there to meet her husband, so deeply does she
yearn to close the distance between them.
IMAGISM
IMAGISM

• Wrote free verse and were devoted to "clarity of expression through the use of
precise visual images."
• A strand of modernism, Imagism was officially launched in 1912 when Ezra Pound
read and marked up a poem by Hilda Doolittle, signed it "H.D. Imagiste," and sent
it to Harriet Monroe at Poetry magazine.
• The movement sprang from ideas developed by T.E. Hulme. The first tenet of the
Imagist manifesto was "To use the language of common speech, but to employ
always the exact word, not the nearly-exact, nor the merely decorative word."
IMAGISM

• Pound's definition of the image was "that which presents an intellectual and
emotional complex in an instant of time."
• Pound defined the tenets of Imagist poetry as:
I. Direct treatment of the "thing," whether subjective or objective.
II. To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation.
III. As regarding rhythm: to compose in sequence of the musical phrase, not in
sequence of the metronome.
A VIRGINAL

BY EZRA POUND
STRUCTURE

•  Fourteen-line Petrarchan sonnet: two stanzas, the octave (the first eight lines)
followed by the answering sestet (the final six lines).
• Rhyme ABBAABBA, CDEECD
ANALYSIS

• Emphasis on the purity of the speaker's beloved. The title suggests that she is a
virgin, there are additional images of purity. White symbolizes purity and
innocence.
• Several images of spring, which is the season of new growth and budding
flowers. Virgins are often associated with buds that have yet to bloom.
• However, the speaker is pulled in two different directions. He introduces his
rejection with two strong beats, "No, no!“ because he feels pain while in the
presence of another woman.
ANALYSIS

• His virgin has "bound" him with her "magic."

• He even uses sexual imagery, referring to his "sheath", but claiming that he
cannot "spoil it" with "lesser brightness." The speaker is wrestling with his
sexual urges.
• The blossoming springtime is more alluring than seasons of "lesser brightness,"
or pursuits that are less than pure.
• He believes that his virgin will be able to erase his past sins.
IDENTIFY
LITERARY
DEVICES
I M A G E R Y – A L L I T E R AT I O N - M E TA P H O R
What is an elegy?
TO AN ATHLETE
DYING YOUNG
BY A.E.HOUSMAN
STRUCTURE

• The poem has seven stanzas. Each stanza consists of two pairs of end-rhyming
lines, or couplets. Many of the lines are in iambic tetrameter, having four feet
that each consist of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. Lines
1 and 2 are examples of iambic tetrameter:
• The TIME..|..you WON..|..your TOWN..|..the RACE
• We CHAIRED..|..you THROUGH..|..the MAR..|..ket-PLACE
STRUCTURE

• Some lines are in trochaic tetrameter with catalexis at the end. Lines 13 and 14
are examples of trochaic tetrameter with catalexis:
• EYES the..|..SHA dy..|..NIGHT has..|..SHUT
• CAN not..|..SEE the..|..REC ord..|..CUT
• Notice that in the second example the fourth foot of each line has only one
syllable (catalexis).
POP QUIZ!
IDENTIFY RHYME SCHEME
ANALYSIS

• Themes: death and glory

• Stanza 1: The speaker is addressing the young athlete, reminding the young
man of the time the athlete won a race for the citizens of his town. The cheered
and were merry as they carried the young winner on their shoulders "through
the market-place." All the people stood by watching the parade, cheering him
on, no doubt puffing with pride for their race winner.
ANALYSIS

• Stanza 2: Immediately, the cheering scene of happiness and excitement shift to one
of somber sadness. Again, the townspeople are carrying the young athlete "shoulder-
high," but now instead of cheering they are mourning for the young man has died.
• Stanza 3: The young man ia a "smart lad" for dying and leaving this place where as
soon as one finds glory, the next minute that glory is gone. The "laurel" may grow
early but it vanishes faster than roses do. The speaker is making an interesting
analogy comparing the natural blooming of two flowers to the natural earthly events
of human experience.
ANALYSIS

• Stanza 4: By dying the young athlete will not see his "record cut." Death thus
becomes a kind of savior providing a soundless atmosphere that surely is not
worse than the cheers the young man will no longer experience if someone else
wins.
• Stanza 5: Instead of becoming just another old athlete to see himself be
replaced, he will not "swell the rout." Other athletes´ "names" died before they
did, a painful experience that this dying runner will not have to undergo.
ANALYSIS

• Stanza 6: The speaker then commands the young dead lad to metaphorically
hold up his winning cup and feel the pride that he had engendered.
• Stanza 7: The speaker then paints an extremely odd picture of many ghost-like
creatures gathering around the young deceased lad, where they find his head
still garlanded with the winning laurels of victory. Those laurels will remain
"unwithered" for his lad.
LOVELIEST OF
TREES
BY A.E.HOUSMAN
STRUCTURE

• Lyric Poem
• Three four-line stanzas
• Rhyme scheme AABB CCDD EEFF
• Each stanza is composed of two couplets
ANALYSIS

• Nature, time and death are its themes.

• The seasonal imagery of the poem, then, is matched by the speaker's own
reflections on youth and old age. In other words, even though this poem is
about a cherry tree in Shropshire, it's really about more than that. That cherry
tree in Shropshire is actually a metaphor for the "woodlands" of life.
ANALYSIS

• https://www.owleyes.org/text/loveliest-of-trees/read/text-of-the-poem#