ODE POUR L'ELECTION DE SON SEPULCHRE I F OR 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 Wrong from the start-- No, hardly but, seeing he had been born In a half savage country, out of date; Bent resolutely on wringing lilies from the acorn; Capaneus; trout for factitious bait; ????? ??? ??? ????', ??' ??? ????? 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. IITHE 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. IIITHE 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 outlast our days. Even the Christian beauty Defects—after Samothrace; We see t? ?a??? 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, t??’ ??d?a, t??’ ????, t??a ?e??, Shall I place a tin wreath upon! IVTHESE 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 hell believing in old men’s lies, then unbelieving came home, home to a lie, home to many deceits, home to old lies and new infamy; and liars in public places. Daring as never before, wastage as never before. Young blood and high blood, Fair cheeks, and fine bodies; fortitude as never before frankness as never before, disillusions as never told in the old days, hysterias, trench confessions, laughter out of dead bellies. VTHERE died a myriad, And of the best, among them, For an old bitch gone in the teeth, For a botched civilization, Charm, smiling at the good mouth, Quick eyes gone under earth’s lid, For two gross of broken statues, For a few thousand battered books. |