Exultations: "The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough"

By Ezra Pound

Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was born on October 30th, 1885 in Hailey, Idaho.

Pound lived a complicated life that is, in parts, difficult to understand and reconcile with. He was an early founder of the Imagist Movement and was instrumental in helping to shape and publish the works of such luminaries as T.S Eliot, James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway and Robert Frost.

Much of his life was spent abroad initially working on various literary magazines as he attempted to start his own career as a poet. However his ideas tended to change radically and these are clearly charted in his numerous books of poems that he published.

After the First World War he became a strident critic of International capitalism. Unlike many who moved to the left Pound moved more and more to the right. He began to write various economic tracts and eventually was a supporter of both Mussolini and Hitler. During the war he recorded and aired several hundred radio broadcasts for the Italian Government, many of them vile in content and virulently anti-Semitic.

Arrested by American forces on charges of treason he spent months in isolation before, being deemed unfit to stand trial, was placed in St Elizabeth’s Psychiatric Hospital for 12 years.

During this time he also worked on his masterwork, The Pisan Cantos, published in 1948 and very controversially awarded the Bollingen Prize in 1949 by the Library of Congress.

He was eventually released from St Elizabeth’s in 1958 and returned to Italy to live until his death in 1972.

"VOCAT ÆSTUS IN UMBRAM"

Nemesianus Ec. IV.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Portable Poetry
• Release date: Jan 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781787376922

Book preview

Exultations by Ezra Pound

I am an eternal spirit and the things I

make are but ephemera, yet I endure:

Yea, and the little earth crumbles beneath

our feet and we endure.

Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was born on October 30th, 1885 in Hailey, Idaho.

Pound lived a complicated life that is, in parts, difficult to understand and reconcile with.  He was an early founder of the Imagist Movement and was instrumental in helping to shape and publish the works of such luminaries as T.S Eliot, James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway and Robert Frost.

Much of his life was spent abroad initially working on various literary magazines as he attempted to start his own career as a poet. However his ideas tended to change radically and these are clearly charted in his numerous books of poems that he published.

After the First World War he became a strident critic of International capitalism.  Unlike many who moved to the left Pound moved more and more to the right.  He began to write various economic tracts and eventually was a supporter of both Mussolini and Hitler.  During the war he recorded and aired several hundred radio broadcasts for the Italian Government, many of them vile in content and virulently anti-Semitic.

Arrested by American forces on charges of treason he spent months in isolation before, being deemed unfit to stand trial, was placed in St Elizabeth’s Psychiatric Hospital for 12 years.

During this time he also worked on his masterwork, The Pisan Cantos, published in 1948 and very controversially awarded the Bollingen Prize in 1949 by the Library of Congress.

He was eventually released from St Elizabeth’s in 1958 and returned to Italy to live until his death in 1972. 

Index of Contents

GUIDO INVITES YOU THUS

NIGHT LITANY

SANDALPHON

SESTINA: ALTAFORTE

PIERE VIDAL OLD

BALLAD OF THE GOODLY FERE

HYMN III FROM THE LATIN OF FLAMINIUS

SESTINA FOR YSOLT

PORTRAIT (FROM LA MÈRE INCONNUE)

FAIR HELENA

LAUDANTES DECEM

AUX BELLES DE LONDRES

FRANCESCA

GREEK EPIGRAM

COLUMBUS' EPITAPH

PLOTINUS

ON HIS OWN FACE IN A GLASS

HISTRION

THE EYES

DEFIANCE

SONG

NEL BIANCHEGGIAR

NILS LYKKE

A SONG OF THE VIRGIN MOTHER

PLANH FOR THE YOUNG ENGLISH KING

ALBA INNOMINATA

PLANH

EXULTATIONS

GUIDO INVITES YOU THUS[1]

"Lappo I leave behind and Dante too,

Lo, I would sail the seas with thee alone!

Talk me no love talk, no bought-cheap fiddl'ry,

Mine is the ship and thine the merchandise,

All the blind earth knows not th' emprise

Whereto thou calledst and whereto I call.

Lo, I have seen thee bound about with dreams,

Lo, I have known thy heart and its desire;

Life, all of it, my sea, and all men's streams

Are fused in it as flames of an altar fire!

Lo, thou hast voyaged not! The ship is mine."

[Footnote 1: The reference is to Dante's sonnet Guido vorrei....]

NIGHT LITANY

O Dieu, purifiez nos cœurs!

           purifiez nos cœurs!

Yea the lines hast thou laid unto me

                  in pleasant places,

And the beauty of this thy Venice

                  hast thou shown unto me

Until is its loveliness become