Jon,
Subject: Poem: Excerpt from H. S. Mauberley (Life and Contacts) [Part I]
by Ezra Pound
"These lines gain considerably in irony by the way the Sapphic meter
(symbolic here and elsewhere in Pound of the poetic purity of the classical
style) subtly underlies them"
It never occured to me to make the connection -- thanks for pointing this
out.
With Pound, I'd have thought of the more obvious "Apparuit". (Eddie Marsh
was reportedly -- reported by Robert Graves? -- more than a little scathing
over Pound's ability to handle classical metrics there.) Are there any
other places in Pound where the sapphic stanza surfaces?
APPARUIT
Golden rose the house, in the portal I saw
thee, a marvel, carven in subtle stuff, a
portent. Life died down in the lamp and flickered,
caught at the wonder.
Crimson, frosty with dew, the roses bend where
thou afar, moving in the glamorous sun,
drinkst in life of earth, of the air, the tissue
golden about thee.
Green the ways, the breath of the fields is thine there,
open lies the land, yet the steely going
darkly hast thou dared and the dreaded ęther
parted before thee.
Swift at courage thou in the shell of gold, cast
ing a-loose the cloak of the body, camest
straight, then shone thine oriel and the stunned light
faded about thee.
Half the carven shoulder, the throat aflash with
strands of light inwoven about it, loveli
est of all things, frail alabaster, ah me!
swift in departing.
Clothed in goldish weft, delicately perfect,
gone as wind! The cloth of the magical hands!
Thou a slight thing, thou in access of cunning
dar'dst to assume this?
You might get more out of Maginn's game with Southey than I do -- I can
simply numbly admire (and suspect it went over the heads of most of Maginn's
readers even in Edinburgh in the 1820s). Here's the URL of the text online.
Maginn, _Miscellaneous Writings_ (Odoherty Papers, vol. 2), pp. 10ff.
http://books.google.com/books?id=D2iSEHsCh5QC&dq
Robin
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