Homage to Sextus Propertius II

I had been seen in the shade, recumbent on cushioned Helicon,

The water dripping from Bellerophon’s horse.

Alba, your kings, and the realm your folk have constructed

with such industry

Shall be yawned out on my lyre—with such industry.

My little mouth shall gobble in such great fountains,

“Whereof father Ennius, sitting before I came, hath drunk.”

I had rehearsed the Curian brothers, and made remarks on

the Horatian javelin

(Near Q. H. Flaccus' book-stall).

“Of” royal Aemilia, drawn on the memorial raft,

“Of” the victorious delay of Fabius, and the left-handed

battle at Cannae,

Of lares fleeing the “Roman seat” . . .

I had sung of all these

And of Hannibal,

and of Jove protected by geese.

And Phoebus, looking upon me from the Castalian tree,

Said then, “You idiot! What are you doing with that water—

Who has ordered a book about heroes?

You need, Propertius, not think

About acquiring that sort of a reputation!

Soft fields must be worn by small wheels,

Your pamphlets will be thrown, thrown often into a chair

Where a girl waits alone for her man.

Why wrench your page out of its course?

No keel will sink with your genius—

Let another oar churn the water,

Another wheel, the arena: mid-crowd is as bad as mid-sea.

He had spoken, and pointed me a place with his plectrum:

Orgies of vintages, an earthern image of Silenus

Strengthened with rushes, Tegean Pan,

The small birds of the Cytharean mother,

their Punic faces dyed in the Gorgon's lake;

Nine girls, from as many countrysides,

bearing her offerings in their unhardened hands:

Such my cohort and setting. And she bound ivy to his thyrsos,

Fitted song to the strings,

Roses twined in her hands.

And one among them looked at me with face offended—

Calliope:

“Content ever to move with white swans!

Nor will the noise of high horses lead you ever to battle;

Nor will the public criers ever have your name;

in their classic horns;

Nor Mars shout you in the wood at Aeonium,

nor where Rome ruins German riches,

Nor where the Rhine flows with barbarous blood,

and flood carries wounded Suevi.

Obviously, crowned lovers at unknown doors,

Night dogs, the marks of a drunken scurry—

These are your images, and from you the sorcerizing

of shut-in young ladies,

The wounding of austere men by chicane.”

Thus Mistress Calliope,

Dabbling her hands in the fount, thus she

Stiffened our face with the backwash of Philetas the Coan.

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—
Ezra Pound

Poetry, 1919