No man hath dared to write this thing as yet,
And yet I know, how that the souls of all men great
At times pass athrough us,
And we are melted into them, and are not
Save reflexions of their souls.
Thus am I Dante for a space and am
One Francois Villon, ballad-lord and thief,
Or am such holy ones I may not write
Lest blasphemy be writ against my name;
This for an instant and the flame is gone.
‘Tis as in midmost us there glows a sphere
Translucent, molten gold, that is the “I”
And into this some form projects itself:
Christus, or John, or eke the Florentine;
And as the clear space is not if a form’s
Imposed thereon,
So cease we from all being for the time,
And these, the Masters of the Soul, live on.
***
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) is one of the most influential but also difficult poets of the 20th century. He was the man of exceptional intellectual brilliance, erudition and courage. An American patriot, unhappy about the takeover of the United States by Jewish political and financial interests, the takeover that he anticipated, and which is by now all but complete, a true friend of Europe, an enlightened lover of shared cultural heritage, artistic revolutionary, participant of many important literary movements.