Exultations Part 5

From this faint world, how full of bitterness Love takes his way and holds his joy deceitful, Sith no thing is but turneth unto anguish And each to-day 'vails less than yestere'en, Let each man visage this young English King That was most valiant mid all worthiest men!

Gone is his body fine and amorous, Whence have we grief, discord and deepest sadness.

Him, whom it pleased for our great bitterness To come to earth to draw us from misventure, Who drank of death for our salvacioun, Him do we pray as to a Lord most righteous And humble eke, that the young English King He please to pardon, as true pardon is, And bid go in with honoured companions There where there is no grief, nor shall be sadness.

Alba Innominata

From the Provencal.

In a garden where the whitethorn spreads her leaves My lady hath her love lain close beside her, Till the warder cries the dawn--Ah dawn that grieves!

Ah G.o.d! Ah G.o.d! That dawn should come so soon!

"Please G.o.d that night, dear night should never cease, Nor that my love should parted be from me, Nor watch cry 'Dawn'--Ah dawn that slayeth peace!

Ah G.o.d! Ah G.o.d! That dawn should come so soon!

"Fair friend and sweet, thy lips! Our lips again!

Lo, in the meadow there the birds give song!

Ours be the love and Jealousy's the pain!

Ah G.o.d! Ah G.o.d! That dawn should come so soon!

"Sweet friend and fair take we our joy again Down in the garden, where the birds are loud, Till the warder's reed astrain Cry G.o.d! Ah G.o.d! That dawn should come so soon!

"Of that sweet wind that comes from Far-Away Have I drunk deep of my Beloved's breath, Yea! of my Love's that is so dear and gay.

Ah G.o.d! Ah G.o.d! That dawn should come so soon!"

_Envoi_.

Fair is this damsel and right courteous, And many watch her beauty's gracious way.

Her heart toward love is no wise traitorous.

Ah G.o.d! Ah G.o.d! That dawns should come so soon!

Planh

_It is of the white thoughts that he saw in the Forest_.

White Poppy, heavy with dreams, O White Poppy, who art wiser than love, Though I am hungry for their lips When I see them a-hiding And a-pa.s.sing out and in through the shadows --There in the pine wood it is, And they are white, White Poppy, They are white like the clouds in the forest of the sky Ere the stars arise to their hunting.

O White Poppy, who art wiser than love, I am come for peace, yea from the hunting Am I come to thee for peace.

Out of a new sorrow it is, That my hunting hath brought me.

White Poppy, heavy with dreams, Though I am hungry for their lips When I see them a-hiding And a-pa.s.sing out and in through the shadows --And it is white they are-- But if one should look at me with the old hunger in her eyes, How will I be answering her eyes?

For I have followed the white folk of the forest.

Aye! It's a long hunting And it's a deep hunger I have when I see them a-gliding And a-flickering there, where the trees stand apart.

But oh, it is sorrow and sorrow When love dies-down in the heart.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Personae

_Choicely Printed at the Chiswick Press on fine paper. Foolscap Octavo, 2s. 6d. net_

SOME EARLY REVIEWS

_The Observer_ says:--"It is something, after all, intangible and indescribable that makes the real poetry. Criticism and praise alike give no idea of it Everyone who pretends to know it when he sees it, should read and keep this little book."

_The Bookman_:--"No new book of poems for years past has had such a freshness of inspiration, such a strongly individual note, or been more alive with undoubtable promise."

_The Daily Chronicle_:--" All his poems are like this, from beginning to end, and in every way, his own, and in a world of his own. For brusque intensity of effect we can hardly compare them to any other work. It is the old miracle that cannot be defined, nothing more than a subtle entanglement of words, so that they rise out of their graves and sing."

From a 3 1/2 page detailed critique, by Mr. Edward Thomas, in _The English Review_.--"He has ... hardly any of the superficial good qualities of modern versifiers;... He has not the current melancholy or resignation or unwillingness to live; nor the kind of feeling for nature that runs to minute description and decorative metaphor. He cannot be usefully compared with any living writers;... full of personality and with such power to express it, that from the first to the last lines of most of his poems he holds us steadily in his own pure, grave, pa.s.sionate world.... The beauty of it ('In praise of Ysolt') is the beauty of pa.s.sion, sincerity and intensity, not of beautiful words and images and suggestions;... the thought dominates the words and is greater than they are. Here ('Idyl for Glaucus') the effect is full of human pa.s.sion and natural magic, without any of the phrases which a reader of modern verse would expect in the treatment of such a subject.

This admirable poet...."

_The Oxford Magazine_:--"This is a most exciting book of poems."

_The Evening Standard_:--"A queer little book which will irritate many readers."

_The Morning Post_:--" Mr. Ezra Pound ... immediately compels our admiration by his fearlessness and lack of self-consciousness."

_The Isis_(Oxford):--"This book has about it the breath of the open air,... physically and intellectually the verse seems to reproduce the personality with a brief fulness and adequacy. It is only in flexible, lithe measures, such as those which Coventry Patmore chose in his 'Unknown Eros,' and Mr. Pound chooses here that a fully suitable form for the recital of spiritual experience is to be found. Mr. Pound has a true and invariable feeling for the measures he employs ... this wonderful little book...."

_The Daily Telegraph_:--"A poet with individuality.... Thread of true beauty.... lifts it out of the ruck of those many volumes, the writers or which toe the line of poetic convention, and please for no more than a single reading."

_Mr. Punch_, concerning a certain Mr. Ezekiel Ton:--"By far the newest poet going, whatever other advertis.e.m.e.nts may say;" and announced as "the most remarkable thing in poetry since Robert Browning," says:--"He has succeeded where all others have failed, in evolving a blend of the imagery of the unfettered west, the vocabulary of Wardour Street, and the sinister abandon of Borgaic Italy."

Mr. Scott-James, in _The Daily News_:--"At first the whole thing may seem to be mere madness and rhetoric, a vain exhibition of force and pa.s.sion without beauty. But, as we read on, these curious metres of his seem to have a law and order of their own; the brute force of Mr.

Pound's imagination seems to impart some quality of infectious beauty to his words.... With Mr. Pound there is no eking out of thin sentiment with a melody or a song. He writes out of an exuberance of incontinently struggling ideas and pa.s.sionate convictions.... He plunges straight into the heart of his theme, and suggests virility in action combined with fierceness, eagerness, and tenderness.... he has individuality, pa.s.sion, force, and an acquaintance with things that are profoundly moving." Mr.

Scott-James begins his half-column review of Mr. Pound's book with a remark that he would "Like much more s.p.a.ce in which to discuss his work," and also notes a certain use of spondee and dactyl which "Comes in strangely and, as we first read it, with the appearance of discord, but afterwards seems to gain a curious and distinctive vigour."