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[21] <div></div> <h2> Ezra Pound </h2> (Mailed disdainfully by him from anywhere but America, and read prayerfully by a committee from Chicago.) <h3> RAINUV: A ROMANTIC BALLAD FROM THE EARLY BASQUE </h3> <div class="poem"> <div class="stanza"> ... so then naturally This Count Rainuv I speak of (Certainly I did not expect you would ever have heard of him; You are American poets, aren't you? That's rather awful ... I am the only American poet I could ever tolerate ... well, sniff and pass....) Therefore ... well, I knew Rainuv. (My P. G. course at Penn, you'll remember; A little Anglo-Saxon and Basuto, But Provencal, mostly. Most don't go in for that.... You haven't, of course ... What, no Provencal? Well, of course, I know Rather more than you do. That's my specialty. But then—Omnis Gallia est divisa—but no matter. [22] Not fit, perhaps you'd say, that, to be quoted Before ladies.... That's your rather amusing prudishness....) Well, this Rainuv, then, A person with a squint like a flash Of square fishes ... being rather worse than most Of the usual literati Said, being carried off by desire of boasting That he knew all the mid-Victorians Et ab lor bos amics: (He thought it was something to boast of.) </div> <div class="stanza"> We'll say he said he smoked with Tennyson, And—deeper pit—pax vobiscum—went to vespers With Adelaide Anne Procter; helped Bob Browning elope With Elizabeth and her lapdog (said it bit him) Said he was the first man Blake told All about the angels in a pear-tree at Peckham Rye Blake drew them for him, he said; they were grackles, not angels— (Blake's not a mid-Victorian, but you don't know better) So ... we come, being slightly irritated, to facing him down. [23] "... And George Eliot?" we ask lightly. "Roomed with him," nodded Rainuv confidently, "At college!"... Ah, bos amic! bos amic! Rainuv is a king to you.... Three centuries from now (you dead and messy) men whispering insolently (Eeni meeni mini mo...) will boast that their great-grand-uncles Were kicked by me in passing.... </div> </div> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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