The Project Gutenberg EBook of Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, by Ezra Pound

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Title: Hugh Selwyn Mauberley

Author: Ezra Pound

Release Date: November 18, 2007 [EBook #23538]

Language: English

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HUGH SELWYN MAUBERLEY ***

Produced by Lewis Jones

Pound, Ezra (1920) Hugh Selwyn Mauberley

Hugh Selwyn
Mauberley

BY

E. P.

THE OVID PRESS 1920

"VOCAT ÆSTUS IN UMBRAM"
           Nemesianus Ec. IV.

H. S. Mauberley

(LIFE AND CONTACTS)

Transcriber's note: Ezra Pound’s Hugh Selwyn Mauberley contains accents, diphthongs and Greek characters. Facsimile images of the poems as originally published are freely available online from the Internet Archive. Please use these images to check for any errors or inadequacies in this electronic text.

           MAUBERLEY
            CONTENTS
             Part I.
            ________

Ode pour l'élection de son sepulcher II. III. IV. V. Yeux Glauques "Siena mi fe', disfecemi Maremma" Brennbaum Mr. Nixon X. 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In a half savage country, out of date;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.

Faun's flesh is not to us,
Nor the saint's vision.
We have the press for wafer;
Franchise for circumcision.

All men, in law, are equals.
Free of Peisistratus,
We choose a knave or an eunuch
To rule over us.

O bright Apollo,
τίν' άνδρα, τίν' ήρωα, τίνα θεον,
What god, man, or hero
Shall I place a tin wreath upon!

IV.

THESE fought, in any case, and some believing, pro domo, in any case . . Some quick to arm, some for adventure, some from fear of weakness, some from fear of censure, some for love of slaughter, in imagination, learning later . . .

some in fear, learning love of slaughter; Died some "pro patria, non dulce non et decor". .

walked eye-deep in hell believing in old men's lies, then unbelieving came home, home to a lie, home to many deceits, home to old lies and new infamy;

usury age-old and age-thick and liars in public places.

Daring as never before, wastage as never before.
Young blood and high blood,
Fair cheeks, and fine bodies;

fortitude as never before

frankness as never before, disillusions as never told in the old days, hysterias, trench confessions, laughter out of dead bellies.

V.

THERE died a myriad,
And of the best, among them,
For an old bitch gone in the teeth,
For a botched civilization,

Charm, smiling at the good mouth,
Quick eyes gone under earth's lid,

For two gross of broken statues,
For a few thousand battered books.

YEUX GLAUQUES

GLADSTONE was still respected,
When John Ruskin produced
"Kings Treasuries"; Swinburne
And Rossetti still abused.

Fœtid Buchanan lifted up his voice
When that faun's head of hers
Became a pastime for
Painters and adulterers.

The Burne-Jones cartons
Have preserved her eyes;
Still, at the Tate, they teach
Cophetua to rhapsodize;

Thin like brook-water,
With a vacant gaze.
The English Rubaiyat was still-born
In those days.

The thin, clear gaze, the same
Still darts out faun-like from the half-ruin'd fac
Questing and passive ….
"Ah, poor Jenny's case"…

Bewildered that a world
Shows no surprise
At her last maquero's
Adulteries.

"SIENA MI FE', DISFECEMI MAREMMA"

AMONG the pickled foetuses and bottled bones,
Engaged in perfecting the catalogue,
I found the last scion of the
Senatorial families of Strasbourg, Monsieur Verog.

For two hours he talked of Gallifet;
Of Dowson; of the Rhymers' Club;
Told me how Johnson (Lionel) died
By falling from a high stool in a pub . . .

But showed no trace of alcohol
At the autopsy, privately performed—
Tissue