Ezra Pound

“ Saw her stretched on her bed,—
it was no glimpse in a mirror;
No gawds on her snowy hands, no orfevrerie,
Sad garment draped on her slender arms.
Her escritoires lay shut by the bed-feet.
Sadness hung over the house, and the desolated female attendants
Were desolated because she had told them her dreams.
She was veiled in the midst of that place,
Damp wooly handkerchiefs were stuffed into her undryable eyes,
And a querulous noise responded to our solicitous reprobations.
For which things you will get a reward from me, Lygdamus?
To say many things is equal to having a home. ”

“ Nor houses modelled upon that of Jove in East Elis,
Nor the monumental effigies of Mausolus,
are a complete elucidation of death.
Flame burns, rain sinks into the cracks
And they all go to rack ruin beneath the thud of the years.
Stands genius a deathless adornment,
a name not to be worn out with the years.
II
I HAD been seen in the shade, recumbent on cushioned Helicon,
the water dripping from Bellerophon’s horse,
Alba, your kings, and the realm your folk
have constructed with such industry
Shall be yawned out on my lyre—with such industry. ”

“ WHO, who will be the next man to entrust his girl to a friend?
Love interferes with fidelities;
The gods have brought shame on their relatives;
Each man wants the pomegranate for himself;
Amiable and harmonious people are pushed incontinent into duels,
A Trojan and adulterous person came to Menelaus under the rites of hospitium,
And there was a case in Colchis, Jason and that woman in Colchis ”

“ Though you heave into the air upon the gilded Pegasean back,
Though you had the feathery sandals of Perseus
To lift you up through split air,
The high tracks of Hermes would not afford you shelter.
Amor stands upon you, Love drives upon lovers,
a heavy mass on free necks. ”

“ A petrification of air.
The old room of the tawdry class asserts itself.
The young men, never!
Only the husk of talk.
O voi che siete in piccioletta barca,
Dido choked up with sobs for her Sicheus
Lies heavy in my arms, dead weight
Drowning with tears, new Eros,
And the life goes on, mooning upon bare hills;
Flame leaps from the hand, the rain is listless,
Yet drinks the thirst from our lips,
solid as echo,
Passion to breed a form in shimmer of rain-blurr ”

“ Persephone and Dis, Dis, have mercy upon her,
There are enough women in hell,
quite enough beautiful women,
Iope, and Tyro, and Pasiphae, and the formal girls of Achaia,
And out of Troad, and from the Campania,
Death has its tooth in the lot,
Avernus lusts for the lot of them,
Beauty is not eternal, no man has perennial fortune,
Slow foot, or swift foot, death delays but for a season. ”

“ Without an inferno, without Achilles attended of gods,
Without Ixion, and without the sons of Menoetius and
the Argo and without Jove’s grave and the Titans.
And my ventricles do not palpitate to Caesarial ore rotundos,
Nor to the tune of the Phrygian fathers.
Sailor, of winds; a plowman, concerning his oxen;
Soldier, the enumeration of wounds; the sheep-feeder, of ewes;
We, in our narrow bed, turning aside from battles:
Each man where he can, wearing out the day in his manner. ”

“ Probes for old wills and friendships, and the big locust-casques
Bend to the tawdry table,
Lift up their spoons to mouths, put forks in cutlets,
And make sound like the sound of voices.
Lorenzaccio
Being more live than they, more full of flames and voices.
Ma si morisse!
Credesse caduto da se, ma si morisse.
And the tall indifference moves,
a more living shell,
Drift in the air of fate, dry phantom, but intact,
O Alessandro, chief and thrice warned, watcher,
Eternal watcher of things,
Of things, of men, of passions.
Eyes floating in dry, dark air ”

“ If any man would be a lover
he may walk on the Scythian coast,
No barbarism would go to the extent of doing him harm,
The moon will carry his candle,
the stars will point out the stumbles,
Cupid will carry lighted torches before him
and keep mad dogs off his ankles.
Thus all roads are perfectly safe
and at any hour;
Who so indecorous as to shed the pure gore of a suitor? ”

“ And still Old Harry keeps grip on Gisors
And Neufchastel and Neauphal and Vexis;
And two years war, and never two years go by
but come new forays, and “The wheel
“Turns, Conrad, turns, and in the end toward ill.” ”

“ WHEN the springtime is sweet
And the birds repeat
Their new song in the leaves,
’Tis meet
A man go where he will.
But from where my heart is set
No message I get;
My heart all wakes and grieves ”

“ My vote coming from the temple of Phoebus in Lycia, at Patara,
And in the mean time my songs will travel,
And the devirginated young ladies will enjoy them
when they have got over the strangeness,
For Orpheus tamed the wild beasts—
and held up the Threician river;
And Citharaon shook up the rocks by Thebes and danced them into a bulwark at his pleasure,
And you, O Polyphemus? Did harsh Galatea almost
Turn to your dripping horses, because of a tune, under Aetna?
We must look into the matter. ”

“ And even this infamy would not attract numerous readers
Were there an erudite or violent passion,
For the nobleness of the populace brooks nothing below its own altitude.
One must have resonance, resonance and sonority ... ”

“ And of Hannibal,
and of Jove protected by geese.
And Phoebus looking upon me from the Castalian tree,
Said then “You idiot! What are you doing with that water;
“Who has ordered a book about heroes?
You need, Propertius, not think
“About acquiring that sort of a reputation.
“Soft fields must be worn by small wheels,
“Your pamphlets will be thrown, thrown often into a chair
“Where a girl waits alone for her lover;
“Why wrench your page out of its course?
“No keel will sink with your genius
“Let another oar churn the water,
“Another wheel, the arena; mid-crowd is as bad as mid-sea.” ”

“ What foot beat out your time-bar, what water has mellowed your whistles?
Out-weariers of Apollo will, as we know, continue their Martian generalities.
We have kept our erasers in order,
A new-fangled chariot follows the flower-hung horses;
A young Muse with young loves clustered about her
ascends with me into the aether, ...
And there is no high-road to the Muses.
Annalists will continue to record Roman reputations,
Celebrities from the Trans-Caucasus will belaud Roman celebrities
And expound the distentions of Empire,
But for something to read in normal circumstances? ”

“ Shall have Gisors and Vexis and Neauphal, Neufchastel;
But if no issue, Gisors shall revert
And Vexis and Neufchastel and Neauphal to the French crown.
“Si tuit li dol el plor el marrimen
Del mon were set together they would seem but light
Against the death of the young English King,
Harry the Young is dead and all men mourn, a song,
Mourn all good courtiers, fighters, cantadors.” ”

“ Let every cow keep her calf.”
“This wind is held in gauze curtains....”
“No wind is the king’s....”
The camel drivers sit in the turn of the stairs,
look down to Ecbatan of plotted streets,
“Danae! Danae!
What wind is the king’s?”
Smoke hangs on the stream,
The peach-trees shed bright leaves in the water,
Sound drifts in the evening haze,
The barge scrapes at the ford.
Gilt rafters above black water;
three steps in an open field
Gray stone-posts leading nowhither.
The Spanish poppies swim in an air of glass. ”

“ And you also follow him “neath Phrygian pine shade:
Thyrsis and Daphnis upon whittled reeds,
And how ten sins can corrupt young maidens;
Kids for a bribe and pressed udders,
Happy selling poor loves for cheap apples. ”

“ Small talk comes from small bones. ”

“ Ino in her young days fled pellmell out of Thebes,
Andromeda was offered to a sea-serpent
and respectably married to Perseus,
Callisto, disguised as a bear,
wandered through the Arcadian prairies
While a black veil was over her stars,
What if your fates are accelerated ”

“ The worm of the Procession bores in the soup of the crowd
The blue thin voices against the crash of the crowd
Et “Salve regina.”
In trellises
Wound over with small flowers, beyond Adige
In the but half-used room, thin film of images,
(by Stefano)
Age of unbodied gods, the vitreous fragile images
Thin as the locust’s wing
Haunting the mind ... as of Guido ...
Thin as the locust’s wing. The Centaur’s heel
Plants in the earth-loam.
THE FIFTH CANTO
GREAT bulk, huge mass, thesaurus ”

“ Slander is up betimes.
But Varchi of Florence,
Steeped in a different year, and pondering Brutus,
Then
SIGA MAL AUTHIS DEUTERON!
“Dog-eye!!” (to Alessandro)
“Whether for Love of Florence,” Varchi leaves it,
Saying, “I saw the man, came up with him at Venice,
“I, one wanting the facts,
“And no mean labour.
Or for a privy spite?”
Good Varchi leaves it,
But: “I saw the man. Se pia?
“O empia? For Lorenzaccio had thought of stroke in the open
“But uncertain (for the Duke went never unguarded) ... ”

“ Discreeter gilding, and the panelled wood
Not present, but suggested, for the leasehold is
Touched with an imprecision ... about three squares;
The house a shade too solid, and the art
A shade off action, paintings a shade too thick. ”