But this indifferent clay,
This fine, experienced hand
So quiet, and these thoughts
That all unfinished stand,
Feel death as though it were
A shadowy caress;
And win and wear a frail
Archaic wistfulness.
Ezra Pound
Ezra (Loomis) Pound was born at Hailey, Idaho, October 30, 1885; attended Hamilton College and the University of Pennsylvania; and went abroad, seeking fresh material to complete a thesis on Lope de Vega, in 1908. After visiting Spain on a roundabout journey to England, where he took up his residence and where he has lived ever since, Pound halted for a while in Italy. It was there, in Venice, to be precise, that Pound’s first book, A Lume Spento (1908), was printed. The following year Pound went to London and the chief poems of the little volume were incorporated in Personæ (1909), a small collection containing some of Pound’s finest work.