Poems 1918-21, Including Three Portraits and Four Cantos

Poems 1918-21
Ezra Pound’s work is now contained in the following volumes:
BY EZRA POUND BONI AND LIVERIGHT PUBLISHERS NEW YORK Poems 1918-1921 Copyright, 1921, by Boni and Liveright, Inc. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Certain poems in this volume have appeared in “The Dial,” “The New Age,” “The Little Review,” “Poetry,” and private issues of Egoist and Ovid Press.
SHADES of Callimachus, Coan ghosts of Philetas It is in your grove I would walk, I who come first from the clear font Bringing the Grecian orgies into Italy, and the dance into Italy. Who hath taught you so subtle a measure, in what hall have you heard it; 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? For a few pages brought down from the forked hill unsullied? I ask a wreath which will not crush my head. And there is no hurry about it; I shall have, doubtless, a boom after my funeral, Seeing that long standing increases all things regardless of quality.
And who would have known the towers pulled down by a deal-wood horse; Or of Achilles withstaying waters by Simois Or of Hector spattering wheel-rims,
Or of Polydmantus, by Scamander, or Helenus and Deiphoibos? Their door-yards would scarcely know them, or Paris. Small talk O Ilion, and O Troad twice taken by Oetian gods, If Homer had not stated your case!
And I also among the later nephews of this city shall have my dog’s day With no stone upon my contemptible sepulchre, 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. Bacchus and Apollo in favour of it, There will be a crowd of young women doing homage to my palaver, Though my house is not propped up by Taenarian columns from Laconia (associated with Neptune and Cerberus), Though it is not stretched upon gilded beams; My orchards do not lie level and wide as the forests of Phaecia, the luxurious and Ionian, Nor are my caverns stuffed stiff with a Marcian vintage, (My cellar does not date from Numa Pompilius, Nor bristle with wine jars) Yet the companions of the Muses will keep their collective nose in my books, And weary with historical data, they will turn to my dance tune.