Early Writings
Page 40
Eighth Canto
Eleanor (she spoiled in a British climate)
Envoi (1919)
E. P. Ode Pour L’Election de Son Sepulchre
Exile’s Letter
For this agility chance found
For three years, out of key with his time
Fratres Minores
Further Instructions
Gladstone was still respected
Go, dumb-born book
Go, my songs, seek your praise from the young and from the intolerant
Go, my songs, to the lonely and the unsatisfied
Great bulk, huge mass, thesaurus
Green arsenic smeared on an egg-white cloth
Ha’ we lost the goodliest fere o’ all
Hang it all, there can be but one Sordello!
Here we are, picking the first fern-shoots
Histrion
Homage to Sextus Propertius
Hugh Selwyn Mauberley
I am homesick after mine own kind
I am worn faint
I had over-prepared the event
I make a pact with you, Walt Whitman—
I sing the gaudy to-day and cosmopolite civilization
I would shake off the lethargy of this our time
In a Station of the Metro
In Durance
In the cream gilded cabin of his steam yacht
Ité
L’Art, 1910
Leave Casella
Let us deride the smugness of “The Times”:
L’Homme Moyen Sensuel
Lighthearted I walked into the valley wood
Like a skein of loose silk blown against a wall
Liu Ch’e
Luini in porcelain!
Mana Aboda
Mana Aboda, whose bent form
Mauberley 1920
May I for my own self song’s truth reckon
Medallion
Mr. Nixon
My City, my beloved, my white! Ah, slender
Na Audiart
Near Perigord
1915: February
No man hath dared to write this thing as yet
“N.Y.,”
Once, in finesse of fiddles found I ecstasy
Palace in smoky light
Piere Vidal Old
Portrait d’Une Femme
Provincia Deserta
Redondillas, or Something of That Sort
Rest me with Chinese colours
Revolt
Salutation the Third
See, they return; ah, see the tentative
Sestina: Altaforte
Shades of Callimachus, Coan ghosts of Philetas
Siena Mi Fe’: Disfecemi Maremma
Song of the Bowmen of Shu
Tenzone
The Age Demanded
The apparition of these faces in the crowd
The Coming of War: Actœn
The Complete Poetical Works of T.E. Hulme
The Embankment
The Encounter
The Fifth Canto
The Fourth Canto
The Garden
The Return
The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter
The River Song
The rustling of the silk is discontinued
The Seafarer
The Seventh Canto
The Sixth Canto
The sky-like limpid eyes
The smeared, leather-coated, leather-greaved engineer
“The tale of thy deeds, Odysseus!” and Tolosan
This boat is of shato-wood, and its gunwales are cut magnolia
Though thou well dost wish me ill
Three Cantos of a Poem of Some Length
’Tis of my country that I would endite
To So-Kin of Rakuyo, ancient friend, Chancellor of Gen.
To the Rapbaelite Latinists
To Whistler, American
Towards the Noel that morte saison
Turned from the “eau-forte
Und Drang
Villanelle: The Psychological Hour
Villonaud for This Yule
What hast thou, O my soul, with paradise?
When I but think upon the great dead days
While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
Will people accept them?
Winter is icummen in
With minds still hovering above their testicles
Ye fellowship that sing the woods and spring
Yeux Glauques
You also, our first great
You’d have men’s hearts up from the dust
Your mind and you are our Sargasso Sea
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a T. E. Hulme, “Romanticism and Classicism,” Speculations, ed. Herbert Read (London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1924) 126-27, 131-32.
b Reincarnate.
c Signum Nativitatis.
d Mr Pound has grossly exaggerated my age.—T.E.H.
e (Note: It is through no fault of my own that this diversion was not given to the reader two years ago; but the commercial said it would not add to their transcendent popularity, and the vers-libre fanatics pointed out that I had used a form of terminal consonance no longer permitted, and my admirers (j’en ai), ever nobly desirous of erecting me into a sort of national institution, declared the work “unworthy” of my mordant and serious genius. So a couple of the old gentlemen are dead in the interim, and, alas, two of the great men mentioned in passing, and the reader will have to accept the opusculus for what it is, some rhymes written in 1915. I would give them now with dedication “To the Anonymous Compatriot Who Produced the Poem ‘Fanny,’ Somewhere About 1820,” if this form of centennial homage be permitted me. It was no small thing to have written, in America, at that distant date, a poem of over forty pages which one can still read without labour. E. P.)
f Pronounce like respectable Russians: “Mussqu.”
g In this ballata, Guido speaks of seeing issue from his lady’s lips a subtle body, from that a subtler body, from that a star, from that a voice, proclaiming the ascent of the virtu. For effect upon t
he air, upon the soul, etc., the “lady in Tuscan poetry has assumed all the properties of the Alchemist’s stone.
h Let me admit at once that a recent lecture by Mr. Mead on Simon Magus has opened my mind to a number of new possibilities. There would seem to be in the legend of Simon Magus and Helen of Tyre a clearer prototype of “chivalric love” than in anything hereinafter discussed. I recognize that all this matter of mine may have to be reconstructed or at least re-oriented about that tradition. Such rearrangement would not, however, enable us to dispense with a discussion of the parallels here collected, nor would it materially affect the manner in which they are treated. (1916.)
i The Italian, not the recent American brand.
j Ovid, outside his poetry, perhaps, superficially had one.
k From Hymns to Christ.
l From Ode on St. Colum.
m There is a magnificent thesis to be written on the role of Fortune, coming down through the Middle Ages, from pagan mythology, via Seneca, into Guido and Dante.
n Purgatorio, Canto 26.
o Editor’s Note—In response to many requests for information regarding Imagism and the Imagistes, we publish this note by Mr. Flint, supplementing it with further exemplification by Mr. Pound. It will be seen from these that Imagism is not necessarily associated with Hellenic subjects, or with vers libre as a prescribed form.
p Walter Morse Rummel’s Neuf Chansons de Troubadours, pub. Augener, Ltd., etc; also the settings by Aubry.
q Poetical composition, literally ‘to find’.
r For love of the fair time and soft, / And because fine love calls me to it.
s Milord Savaric, generous / To thy last bond, men find thee thus, / That thy rich acts are food for praise / And courtly are thy words and days.
t For a long time have I stood toward Love / Humble and frank, and have done his commands.
u For example Piere Bermon and Palazol.
v Richard of Brebezieu (disia sons).
w The ‘joglar’ was the player and singer, the ‘troubadour’ the ‘finder’ or composer of songs and words.
x Accidente, used as a purely technical term of his scholastic philosophy.
y Blind Optimism A.D. 1913.
z A group of early essays and notes which appeared under this title in Pavannes and Divisions (1918). ‘A Few Dont’s’ was first printed in Poetry, I, 6 (March, 1913).
aa This is for rhythm, his vocabulary must of course be found in his native tongue.
ab Vide infra.
ac Poetry and Drama (then the Poetry Review, edited by Harold Monro), Feb. 1912.
ad Dante, De Volgari Eloquio.
ae (Dec. 1911)
af Let me date this statement 20 Aug. 1917.
ag Ford Madox Ford, the novelist. He changed his name from Hueffer to Ford at some time after the outbreak of the war of 191-18.—Ed.
ah or at any rate a canzone.
ai The image has been defined as “that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time.”
aj Appearing in the July number of Blast.
ak Mr. Flint and Mr. Rodker have made longer poems depending on a similar presentation of matter. So also have Richard Aldington, in his In Via Sestina, and “H. D.” in her Oread, which latter poems express much stronger emotions than that in my lines here given. Mr. Hueffer gives an interesting account of a similar adventure of his own in his review of the Imagiste anthology.
al [The apology was unnecessary, but Professor Fenollosa saw fit to make it, and I therefore transcribe his words. E.P.]
am [Style, that is to say, limpidity, as opposed to rhetoric. E.P.]
an [Axe striking something; dog attending man=dogs him.] [Vide Plate 2, col. 3.]
ao [Even Latin, living Latin, had not the network of rules they foist upon unfortunate school-children. These are borrowed sometimes from Greek grammarians, even as I have seen English grammars borrowing oblique cases from Latin grammars. Sometimes they sprang from the grammatising or categorising passion of pedants. Living Latin had only the feel of the cases: the ablative and dative emotion. E.P.]
ap [A good writer would use ‘shine’ (i.e. to shine), ‘shining’, and ‘the shine’ or ‘sheen’, possibly thinking of the German ’schöne’ and ’Schönheit’; but this does not invalidate Professor Fenollosa’s contention. E.P.]
aq [This is a bad example: we can say ‘I look a fool’. ‘Look’, transitive, now means resemble. The main contention is, however, correct. We tend to abandon specific words like resemble and substitute, for them, vague verbs with prepositional directors, or riders. E.P.]
ar [Cf. principle of Primary apparition, ‘Spirit of Romance’. E.P.]
as [Compare Aristotle’s Poetics: ‘Swift perception of relations, hallmark of genius’. E.P.]
at [Vide also an article on ‘Vorticism’ in the Fortnightly Review for September 1914. ‘The language of exploration’ now in my ‘Gaudier-Brzeska’. E.P.]
au [I would submit in all humility that this applies in the rendering of ancient texts. The poet, in dealing with his own time, must also see to it that language does not petrify on his hands. He must prepare for new advances along the lines of true metaphor, that is interpretative metaphor, or image, as diametrically opposed to untrue, or ornamental, metaphor. E.P.]
av [Compare Dante’s definition of ‘rectitudo’ as the direction of the will.]
aw [Professor Fenollosa is borne out by chance evidence. Gaudier-Brzeska sat in my room before he went off to war. He was able to read the Chinese radicals and many compound signs almost at pleasure. He was used to consider all life and nature in the terms of planes and of bounding lines. Nevertheless he had spent only a fortnight in the museum studying the Chinese characters. He was amazed at the stupidity of lexicographers who could not, for all their learning discern the pictorial values which were to him perfectly obvious and apparent. A few weeks later Edmond Dulac, who is of a totally different tradition, sat here, giving an impromptu panegyric on the elements of Chinese art, on the units of composition, drawn from the written characters. He did not use Professor Fenollosa’s own words—he said ‘bamboo’ instead of ‘rice’. He said the essence of the bamboo is in a certain way it grows; they have this in their sign for bamboo, all designs of bamboo proceed from it. Then he went on rather to disparage vorticism, on the grounds that it could not hope to do for the Occident, in one lifetime, what had required centuries of development in China. E.P.]
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