Ezra Pound – Homage to Quintus Septimus Florentis Christianus

Homage to Quintus Septimus Florentis Christianus

(Ex libris Graecae)

I

Theodorus will be pleased at my death,
And someone else will be pleased at the death of Theodorus,
And yet everyone speaks evil of death.

II

This place is the Cyprian’s for she has ever the fancy
To be looking out across the bright sea,
Therefore the sailors are cheered, and the waves
Keep small with reverence, beholding her image.
Anyte

III

A sad and great evil is the expectation of death
And there are also the inane expenses of the funeral;
Let us therefore cease from pitying the dead
For after death there comes no other calamity.
Palladas

IV

Troy
Whither, O city, are your profits and your gilded shrines,
And your barbecues of great oxen,
And the tall women walking your streets, in gilt clothes,
With their perfumes in little alabaster boxes?
Where is the work of your home-born sculptors?
Time’s tooth is into the lot, and war’s and fate’s too.
Envy has taken your all,
Save your douth and your story.
Agathias Scholasticus

V

Woman? Oh, woman is a consummate rage,
but dead, or asleep, she pleases.
Take her. She has two excellent seasons.
Palladas

VI

Nicarchus upon Phidon his doctor
Phidon neither purged me, nor touched me,
But I remembered the name of his fever medicine and died.

Pound, E. (1926). Personae. New Directions.