E. P. ODE POUR SELECTION DE SON SEPULCHRE
By Ezra Pound
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In a half savage country, out of date;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;
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.