The Return
Ezra Pound
See, they return; ah, see the tentative
Movements, and the slow feet,
The trouble in the pace and the uncertain
Wavering!
See, they return, one, and by one,
With fear, as half-awakened;
As if the snow should hesitate
And murmur in the wind,
and half turn back;
These were the “Wing’d-with-Awe,”
inviolable.
Gods of the wingèd shoe!
With them the silver hounds,
sniffing the trace of air!
Haie! Haie!
These were the swift to harry;
These the keen-scented;
These were the souls of blood.
Slow on the leash,
pallid the leash-men!
Ezra Pound (1885-1972) was an American poet who is widely known as a major figure in Modernist poetry, specifically Imagism. He is responsible for influencing and discovering the work of contemporaries like James Joyce, Marianne Moore, and T.S. Eliot. In particular, his role in editing Joyce’s Ulysses and T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land have been cited as examples of his major influence in twentieth-century poetry.
