Sonnet
by Ezra Pound

If on the tally-board of wasted days
They daily write me for proud idleness,
Let high Hell summons me, and I confess,
No overt act the preferred charge allays.

To-day I thought what boots it what I thought?
Poppies and gold! Why should I blurt it out?
Or hawk the magic of her name about
Deaf doors and dungeons where no truth is bought?

Who calls me idle? I have thought of her.
Who calls me idle? By God’s truth I’ve seen
The arrowy sunlight in her golden snares.

Let him among you all stand summonser
Who hath done better things ! Let whoso hath been
With worthier works concerned, display his wares!

And the days are not full enough
by Ezra Pound

And the days are not full enough
And the nights are not full enough
And life slips by like a field mouse
      Not shaking the grass

villanelle: the psychological hour - ezra pound

Villanelle: The Psychological Hour
by Ezra Pound

I
I had over-prepared the event,
that much was ominous.
With middle-ageing care
I had lain out just the right books.
I had almost turned down the pages.

Beauty is so rare a thing.
So few drink of my fountain.

So much barren regret,
So many hours wasted!
And now I watch, from the window,
the rain, the wandering busses.

"Their little cosmos is shaken"--
the air is alive with that fact.
In their parts of the city
they are played on by diverse forces.
How do I know?
Oh, I know well enough.
For them there is something afoot.
As for me;
I had over-prepared the event--

Beauty is so rare a thing,
So few drink of my fountain.

Two friends: a breath of the forest...
Friends? Are people less friends
because one has just, at last, found them?
Twice they promised to come.

"Between the night and morning?"

Beauty would drink of my mind.
Youth would awhile forget
my youth is gone from me.

II
("Speak up! You have danced so stiffly?
Someone admired your works,
And said so frankly.

"Did you talk like a fool,
The first night?
The second evening?"

"But they promised again:
'To-morrow at tea-time.'")

III
Now the third day is here--
no word from either;
No word from her nor him,
Only another man's note:
"Dear Pound, I am leaving England."

doria (dorian girl) - ezra pound

Doria (Dorian Girl)
by Ezra Pound

Be in me as the eternal moods
             of the bleak wind, and not
As transient things are--
       gaiety of flowers.
Have me in the strong loneliness
       of sunless cliffs
And of grey waters.
       Let the gods speak softly of us
In days hereafter,
       The shadowy flowers of Orcus
Remember thee.