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Home  »  Poetry: A Magazine of Verse  »  Ezra Pound

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

The Lake Isle

Ezra Pound

O GOD, O Venus, O Mercury, patron of thieves,

Give me in due time, I beseech you, a little tobacco-shop,

With the little bright boxes

piled up neatly upon the shelves

And the loose fragrant cavendish

and the shag,

And the bright Virginia

loose under the bright glass cases,

And a pair of scales

not too greasy,

And the volailles dropping in for a word or two in passing,

For a flip word, and to tidy their hair a bit.

O God, O Venus, O Mercury, patron of thieves,

Lend me a little tobacco-shop,

or install me in any profession

Save this damn’d profession of writing,

where one needs one’s brains all the time.