I’m indebted to the poet E. Anthony Gray. He found Pound’s early work, bought a copy, and put it up. People think it needs footnotes.

Such people did not read when it was published, for all then knew the mythos of the ancients and the saving theology of Christ.

The Tree

I stood still and was a tree amid the wood
Knowing the truth of things unseen before,
Of Daphne and the laurel bow
And that god-feasting couple olde
That grew elm-oak amid the wold.
’twas not until the gods had been
Kindly entreated and been brought within
Unto the hearth of their heart’s home
That they might do this wonder-thing.
Nathless I have been a tree amid the wood
And many new things understood
That were rank folly to my head before.

Ezra Pound.

But Ezra is the master. Consider his Canto, and Grey’s reply.

(CANTO XLV)

With usura hath no man a house of good stone
each block cut smooth and well fitting
that design might cover their face,
with usura
hath no man a painted paradise on his church wall
harpes et luz
or where virgin receiveth message
and halo projects from incision,

E. Pound.

With usura
hath no man a song of his elders
but those long dead and forgotten
and those from foreigners bought cheap.
With usura
hath no man the ideas of his blood
but the ideas of Boston
financed to ‘enlighten’ the world.

E.A. Gray

Pound uses an old word for usury: debt. The artist may be poor, but must be free to build over time and well, or make art where the Virgin is honoured. But Pound lived in a Christian age. Gray lives now: and his reply is shallow, plastic, and reflects the managerial bugmen (of which he is not one) who consider everything a commodity.

Pound gave up his sanity in rebellion against the modern age that would have reduced his poetry to Grays: and Gray is a good poet. He did not quench is spirit. Are you prepared to pay that cost?