The Dover Anthology of American Literature Volume II (69 page)

S
OURCE:
Ezra Pound.
Lustra of Ezra Pound with Earlier Poems
. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1917.

Lament
of the Frontier Guard
(1917)

    
By the North Gate, the wind blows full of sand,

    
Lonely from the beginning of time until now!

    
Trees fall, the grass goes yellow with autumn.

    
I climb the towers and towers

        
to watch out the barbarous land:

    
Desolate castle, the sky, the wide desert.

    
There is no wall left to this village.

    
Bones white with a thousand frosts,

    
High heaps, covered with trees and grass;

    
Who brought this to pass?

    
Who has brought the flaming imperial anger?

    
Who has brought the army with drums and with kettle-drums?

    
Barbarous kings.

    
A gracious spring, turned to blood-ravenous autumn,

    
A turmoil of wars-men, spread over the middle kingdom,

    
Three hundred and sixty thousand,

    
And sorrow, sorrow like rain.

    
Sorrow to go, and sorrow, sorrow returning,

    
Desolate, desolate fields,

    
And no children of warfare upon them,

        
No
longer the men for offence and defence.

    
Ah, how shall you know the dreary sorrow at the North Gate,

    
With Rihoku's name forgotten,

    
And we guardsmen fed to the tigers.

By Rihaku.

S
OURCE:
Ezra Pound.
Lustra of Ezra Pound with Earlier Poems
. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1917.

Exile's
Letter
(1917)

To So-Kin of Rakuyo, ancient friend, Chancellor of Gen.

Now I remember that you built me a special tavern

By the south side of the bridge at Ten-Shin.

With yellow gold and white jewels, we paid for songs and laughter

And we were drunk for month on month, forgetting the kings and princes.

Intelligent men came drifting in from the sea and from the west border,

And with them, and with you especially

There was nothing at cross purpose,

And they made nothing of sea-crossing or of mountain crossing,

If only they could be of that fellowship,

And we all spoke out our hearts and minds, and without regret.

And then I was sent off to South Wei,    smothered in laurel groves,

And you to the north of Raku-hoku,

Till we had nothing but thoughts and memories in common.

And then, when separation had come to its worst,

We met, and travelled into Sen-Go,

Through all the thirty-six folds of the turning and twisting waters,

Into a valley of the thousand bright flowers,

That was the first valley;

And into ten thousand valleys full of voices and pine-winds.

And with silver harness and reins of gold,

Out came the East of Kan foreman and his company.

And
there came also the “True man” of Shi-yo to meet me,

Playing on a jewelled mouth-organ.

In the storied houses of San-Ko they gave us more Sennin music,

Many instruments, like the sound of young phoenix broods.

The foreman of Kan Chu, drunk, danced because his long sleeves wouldn't keep still

With that music playing.

And I, wrapped in brocade, went to sleep with my head on his lap,

And my spirit so high it was all over the heavens,

And before the end of the day we were scattered like stars, or rain.

I had to be off to So, far away over the waters,

You back to your river-bridge.

And your father, who was brave as a leopard,

Was governor in Hei Shu, and put down the barbarian rabble.

And one May he had you send for me, despite the long distance.

And what with broken wheels and so on, I won't say it wasn't hard going,

Over roads twisted like sheep's guts.

And I was still going, late in the year, in the cutting wind from the North,

And thinking how little you cared for the cost, and you caring enough to pay it.

And what a reception:

Red jade cups, food well set on a blue jewelled table,

And I was drunk, and had no thought of returning.

And you would walk out with me to the western corner of the castle,

To the dynastic temple, with water about it clear as blue jade,

With boats floating, and the sound of mouth-organs and drums,

With ripples like dragon-scales, going grass green on the water,

Pleasure lasting, with courtezans, going and coming without hindrance,

With the willow flakes falling like snow,

And the vermilioned girls getting drunk about sunset,

And the water a hundred feet deep reflecting green eyebrows

—Eyebrows painted green are a fine sight in young moonlight,

Gracefully painted—

And
the girls singing back at each other,

Dancing in transparent brocade,

And the wind lifting the song, and interrupting it,

Tossing it up under the clouds.

And all this comes to an end.

And is not again to be met with.

I went up to the court for examination,

Tried Layu's luck, offered the Choyo song,

And got no promotion,

and went back to the East Mountains

            
white-headed.

And once again, later, we met at the South bridge-head.

And then the crowd broke up, you went north to San palace,

And if you ask how I regret that parting:

It is like the flowers falling at Spring's end

            
Confused, whirled in a tangle.

What is the use of talking, and there is no end of talking,

There is no end of things in the heart.

I call in the boy,

Have him sit on his knees here

            
To seal this,

And send it a thousand miles, thinking.

By Rihaku.

S
OURCE:
Ezra Pound.
Lustra of Ezra Pound with Earlier Poems
. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1917.

Separation
on the River Kiang
(1917)

                
Ko-jin goes west from Ko-kaku-ro,

                
The smoke-flowers are blurred over the river.

                
His lone sail blots the far sky.

                
And now I see only the river,

                    
The long Kiang, reaching heaven.

By Rihaku.

S
OURCE:
Ezra Pound.
Lustra of Ezra Pound with Earlier Poems
. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1917.

Homage
to Sextus Propertius (Sections VII, IX)
(1921)

VII.

    
Me happy, night, night full of brightness;

    
Oh couch made happy by my long delectations;

    
How many words talked out with abundant candles;

    
Struggles when the lights were taken away;

    
Now with bared breasts she wrestled against me,

                
Tunic spread in delay;

    
And she then opening my eyelids fallen in sleep,

    
Her lips upon them; and it was her mouth saying:

        
Sluggard!

    
In how many varied embraces, our changing arms,

    
Her kisses, how many, lingering on my lips.

    
“Turn not Venus into a blinded motion,

            
Eyes are the guides of love,

    
Paris took Helen naked coming from the bed of Menelaus,

    
Endymion's naked body, bright bait for Diana,”

            
—such at least is the story.

    
While our fates twine together, sate we our eyes with love;

    
For long night comes upon you

                
and a day when no day returns.

    
Let the gods lay chains upon us

                
so that no day shall unbind them.

    
Fool who would set a term to love's madness,

    
For the sun shall drive with black horses,

                
earth shall bring wheat from barley,

    
The flood shall move toward the fountain

            
Ere love know moderations,

            
The fish shall swim in dry streams.

    
No, now while it may be, let not the fruit of life cease.

            
Dry wreaths drop their petals,

                
their stalks are woven in baskets,

            
To-day we take the great breath of lovers,

                
to-morrow fate shuts us in.

    
Though
you give all your kisses

                
you give but a few.

    
Nor can I shift my pains to other,

            
Hers will I be dead,

    
If she confers such nights upon me,

                
long is my life, long in years,

    
If she give me many,

        
God am I for the time.

IX.

    
1

    
The twisted rhombs ceased their clamour of accompaniment;

    
The scorched laurel lay in the fire-dust;

    
The moon still declined to descend out of heaven,

    
But the black ominous owl hoot was audible.

    
And one raft bears our fates

                        
on the veiled lake toward Avernus

    
Sails spread on Cerulean waters, I would shed tears for two;

    
I shall live, if she continue in life,

        
If she dies, I shall go with her.

    
Great Zeus, save the woman,

                
or she will sit before your feet in a veil,

                
and tell out the long list of her troubles.

    
2

    
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.

    
3

    
My light, light of my eyes,

                        
you are escaped from great peril,

    
Go back to Great Dian's dances bearing suitable gifts,

    
Pay up your vow of night watches

                        
to Dian goddess of virgins,

    
And unto me also pay debt:

        
the ten nights of your company you have promised me.

S
OURCE:
Ezra Pound.
Poems 1918–21, Including Three Portraits and Four Cantos
. New York: Boni and Liveright, 1921.

EDITH
WHARTON

Edith Wharton (1862–1937) hit her stride as a novelist in her early forties. This grimly romantic novel opens with a long introduction telling of the male narrator's interest in the mystery of the hard life of Ethan Frome and concludes with his reflections and discoveries; the middle, the bulk of the story, is told in the third person. “The qualities that make Wharton a great writer,” observes her excellent biographer Hermione Lee, “her mixture of harshly detached, meticulously perceptive, disabused realism, with a language of poignant feeling and deep passion, and her setting of the most confined of private lives in a thick, complex network of social forces—were the product of years of observation, reading, practice and refinement.”
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