Ezra Pound Poems

After Li Po

While my hair was still cut straight
across my forehead
...

No, no! Go from me. I have left her lately.
I will not spoil my sheath with lesser brightness,
For my surrounding air hath a new lightness;
Slight are her arms, yet they have bound me straitly
...

For the seven lakes, and by no man these verses:
Rain; empty river; a voyage,
Fire from frozen cloud, heavy rain in the twilight
Under the cabin roof was one lantern.
...

I
Rest me with Chinese colours,
For I think the glass is evil.
...

It rests me to be among beautiful women
Why should one always lie about such matters?
I repeat:
It rests me to converse with beautiful women
...

Ha' we lost the goodliest fere o' all
For the priests and the gallows tree?
Aye lover he was of brawny men,
O' ships and the open sea.
...

Kung walked
by the dynastic temple
and into the cedar grove,
and then out by the lower river,
...

(From the early Anglo-Saxon text)

May I for my own self song's truth reckon,
Journey's jargon, how I in harsh days
...

Be in me as the eternal moods
of the bleak wind, and not
As transient things are—
gaiety of flowers.
...

En robe de parade. Samain

Like a skein of loose silk blown against a wall
She walks by the railing of a path in Kensington Gardens,
...