In each set of three the first stanza is called the
strophe (turn), being intended, probably, for chanting as the chorus moved in one direction; the second stanza is called the antistrophe, chanted as the chorus executed a second, contrasting, movement; and the third stanza the epode, chanted as the chorus stood still.
He belonged to that race of martyrs who, indissolubly wedded to their political convictions as their ancestors were to their faith, are able to smile on pain: while being stretched on the rack, he recited with a firm voice, and scanning the lines according to measure, the first
strophe of the "Justum ac tenacem" of Horace, and, making no confession, tired not only the strength, but even the fanaticism, of his executioners.
The canoes appeared very black on the white hiss of water; turbaned heads swayed back and forth; a multitude of arms in crimson and yellow rose and fell with one movement; the spearmen upright in the bows of canoes had variegated sarongs and gleaming shoulders like bronze statues; the muttered
strophes of the paddlers' song ended periodically in a plaintive shout.
Tradition has preserved some wild
strophes of the barbarous hymn which she chanted wildly amid that scene of fire and of slaughter:
The second
strophe of Germanien describes the privation caused by the flight of the gods.
In the opening lines of narration in Ellie Ga's two-channel video installation
Strophe, a Turning, 2017, the artist discusses Russian poet Osip Mandelstam's comparison, in a 1912 essay, between writing a poem and lobbing a bottled message into the sea.
Oshima deems plausible the attribution of the work to (E)saggil-kinam-ubbib, whose name appears in the sentence spelled out by the first signs of each
strophe. (E)saggil-kinam-ubbib is identified, in the list of kings and their counselors from Uruk, as the ummanu associated with Nebuchadnezzar I and Adad-apla-iddina, so the common conclusion that he was an important scholar in the eleventh century is adopted, though Oshima stops short of associating the poem with particular historical events.
the senses, soaking each
strophe of the evening--this war-marrow, the
we must try to live" is the first line from the last
strophe of the poem Le cimetiere marin (The Graveyard by the Sea, 1920/1922), one of the most important poems of the French literature and Paul Valery's most famous poetical work.
However, it is also strophic (a second
strophe is given without music), and requires improvised rhythmic alterations in subsequent
strophes to be typical of the French concentration on musical rhetoric.
"Burn" is the penultimate poem, followed by a "Coda" entitled "Harp Strings." "Streaming" also makes use of refrains, which, when thinking of the collection as an epic, have the feel of
strophe and antistrophe, especially when at the end of the poem they are combined into an epode.