Hugh Selwyn Mauberley

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Title: Hugh Selwyn Mauberley
Author: Ezra Pound
Release Date: November 18, 2007 [EBook #23538]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
0. 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In a half savage country, out
of date;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;

_{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH PSILI AND
OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER DELTA~}{~GREEK
SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER
EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~} {~GREEK
SMALL LETTER GAMMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER
ALPHA WITH TONOS~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}
{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER
OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~} {~GREEK
SMALL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA
WITH TONOS~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~} {~GREEK
SMALL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA
WITH TONOS~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK
SMALL LETTER THETA~}', {~GREEK SMALL LETTER
OMICRON WITH TONOS~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER
SIGMA~}' {~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON WITH
TONOS~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL
LETTER IOTA~} {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER
TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL
LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA
WITH TONOS~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA~}_ 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
_{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER
OMICRON~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER KAPPA~}{~GREEK
SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER
LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH
TONOS~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}_ 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,
_{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK
SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH TONOS~}{~GREEK SMALL
LETTER NU~}' {~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH
TONOS~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL
LETTER DELTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER

RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}, {~GREEK
SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA
WITH TONOS~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}' {~GREEK
SMALL LETTER ETA WITH TONOS~}{~GREEK SMALL
LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER
OMEGA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}, {~GREEK
SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA
WITH TONOS~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK
SMALL LETTER ALPHA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER
THETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK
SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER
NU~}_, 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