Analysis of The Logical Conclusion

Ezra Pound 1885 (Hailey) – 1972 (Venice)



When earth's last thesis is copied
From the theses that went before,
When idea from fact has departed
And bare-boned factlets shall bore,
When all joy shall have fled from study
And scholarship reign supreme;
When truth shall 'baaa' on the hill crests
And no one shall dare to dream;

When all the good poems have been buried
With comment annoted in full
And art shall bow down in homage
To scholarship's zinc-plated bull,
When there shall be nothing to research
But the notes of annoted notes,
And Baalam's ass shall inquire
The price of imported oats;

Then no one shall tell him the answer
For each shall know the one fact
That lies in the special ass-ignment
From which he is making his tract.
So the ass shall sigh uninstructed
While each in his separate book
Shall grind for the love of grinding
And only the devil shall look.

Against the 'germanic' system of graduate study and insane specialization in the Inanities.


Scheme ABXBXCDC AEXEXFXF XGAGAHXH D
Poetic Form
Metre 11110110 10101101 1010111010 011111 111111110 010101 11111011 0111111 1101101110 110101 01111010 111101 111110101 101111 011101 0110101 111111010 1111011 11001011 11111011 101111 1101101 11101110 01001011 010010101100100010010001
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 907
Words 165
Sentences 4
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 8, 8, 8, 1
Lines Amount 25
Letters per line (avg) 30
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 185
Words per stanza (avg) 41
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 12, 2023

50 sec read
112

Ezra Pound

Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic of the early modernist movement. more…

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