Produced by Lewis Jones

Pound, Ezra (1920) Hugh Selwyn Mauberley

Hugh Selwyn
Mauberley

BY

E. P.

THE OVID PRESS1920

"VOCAT ÆSTUS IN UMBRAM"
           Nemesianus Ec. IV.

H. S. Mauberley

(LIFE AND CONTACTS)

Transcriber's note: Ezra Pound’s Hugh Selwyn Mauberleycontains accents, diphthongs and Greek characters. Facsimileimages of the poems as originally published are freely availableonline from the Internet Archive. Please use these images tocheck for any errors or inadequacies in this electronic text.

           MAUBERLEY
            CONTENTS
             Part I.
            ________

Ode pour l'élection de son sepulcherII.III.IV.V.Yeux Glauques"Siena mi fe', disfecemi Maremma"BrennbaumMr. NixonX.XI.XII.

____________

            ENVOI
            1919
        ____________

Part II. 1920 (Mauberley)

I.
II.
III. "The age demanded"
IV.
V. Medallion

E.P.ODE POUR SELECTION DE SON SEPULCHRE

FOR three years, out of key with his time,
He strove to resuscitate the dead art
Of poetry; to maintain "the sublime"
In the old sense. Wrong from the start—

No hardly, but, seeing he had been born
In a half savage country, out of date;
Bent resolutely on wringing lilies from the acorn;
Capaneus; trout for factitious bait;

ἴδμεν γάρ τοι πάν πάνθ', όσ' ένι Τροίη
Caught in the unstopped ear;
Giving the rocks small lee-way
The chopped seas held him, therefore, that year.

His true Penelope was Flaubert,
He fished by obstinate isles;
Observed the elegance of Circe's hair
Rather than the mottoes on sun-dials.

Unaffected by "the march of events,"
He passed from men's memory in l'an trentiesme
De son eage; the case presents
No adjunct to the Muses' diadem.

II.

THE age demanded an image
Of its accelerated grimace,
Something for the modern stage,
Not, at any rate, an Attic grace;

Not, not certainly, the obscure reveries
Of the inward gaze;
Better mendacities
Than the classics in paraphrase!

The "age demanded" chiefly a mould in plaster,
Made with no loss of time,
A prose kinema, not, not assuredly, alabaster
Or the "sculpture" of rhyme.

III.

THE tea-rose tea-gown, etc.
Supplants the mousseline of Cos,
The pianola "replaces"
Sappho's barbitos.

Christ follows Dionysus,
Phallic and ambrosial
Made way for macerations;
Caliban casts out Ariel.

All things are a flowing,
Sage Heracleitus says;
But a tawdry cheapness
Shall reign throughout our days.

Even the Christian beauty
Defects—after Samothrace;
We see το καλόν
Decreed in the market place.

...