Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.
Impressions of François-Marie Arouet (de Voltaire)Ezra Pound
W
When you could go out in a hired hansom
Without footmen and equipments
And dine in a cheap restaurant?
Clanking the door shut,
and lying;
And carpets from Savonnier, and from Persia,
And your new service at dinner,
And plates from Germain,
And cabinets and chests from Martin (almost lacquer),
And your white vases from Japan,
And the lustre of diamonds,
Etcetera, etcetera and etcetera?
If you’d have me go on loving you
Give me back the time of the thing.
The parks with the swards all over dew,
And grass going glassy with the light on it,
The green stretches where love is and the grapes
Hang in yellow-white and dark clusters ready for pressing.
And if now we can’t fit with our time of life
There is not much but its evil left us.
One to be dull in;
Two deaths—and to stop loving and being lovable,
That is the real death,
The other is little beside it.
Quiet talking is all that is left us—
Gentle talking, not like the first talking, less lively;
And to follow after friendship, as they call it,
Weeping that we can follow naught else.
You’ll wonder that an old man of eighty
Can go on writing you verses …
Birds singing late in the year!
“Delia, I would look on you, dying.”
Forgetting even her beauty.