POETS AND POETRY.
SOME COLLECTED POEMS BY MR. EZRA POUND.* AN American critic once remarked in the course of conversation that Mr. Ezra Pound made a living by being impudent. Mr. Pound has just published a reprint of some of his earlier poems,
"All that he now wishes to keep in circulation from Personae,'
'Exaltations,' and Ripostes,' with translations from Guido Cavalcanti and Arnaut Daniel." The book is in some ways
melancholy reading. Much of it is so brilliant and, we had sup- posed, so promising. There is, of course, even here a good deal of " hath-doth," and too many of his poems are headed "Praise of Ysolt," " Villonaud for this Yule," "Good Comrade" being even rendered as "Goodly Frere," but what an amusing parody is the following, for example :— " When I behold how black, immortal ink Drips from my deathless pen--ah, well-away ! Why should we stop at all for what I think ? There is enough in what I chance to say. It is enough that we once came together ; What is the use of setting it to rime ? When it is autumn do we get spring weather, Or gather may of harsh northwinclish time?"
What an admirable parodist and satirist he might become ! But will he ? It almost seems as if he were not enough interested in other people to write satire, and he now neglects an even better gift :— ",Golden rose the house, in the portal I saw
thee, a marvel, careen in subtle stuff, a portent. Life died down in the lamp and flickered, caught at the wonder.
Crimson, frosty with dew, the roses bend where thou afar, moving in the glamorous sun, drink'st in life of earth, of the air, the tissue " golden about thee.
Green the ways, the breath of the fields is thine there, open lies the land, yet the steely going darkly has thou dared and the dreaded anther parted before thee."
It has the atmosphere and glamour of Swinbume. But now Mr. Pound entirely shuts up the beauty that he might reveal to us. He never writes a poem in this vein, but gives the world instead crabbed, crackling stuff that is clever and no more.
Until this volume, with its traces of pure gold, came to remind us of what he could do we had almost forgotten what a poet Mr.
Pound had been. Will he never turn again ?
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