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-passing 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-passing 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, passionate world.... The beauty of it ('In praise of Ysolt') is the beauty of passion, 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 passion 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 advertisements 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 passion 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 passionate convictions.... He plunges straight into the heart of his theme, and suggests virility in action combined with fierceness, eagerness, and tenderness.... he has individuality, passion, 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 space 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."