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And you, my friends who have been called away - Anna Akhmatova


And you, my friends who have been called away,
I have been spared to mourn for you and weep,
Not as a frozen willow over your memory,
But to cry to the world the names of those who sleep.
What names are those!
I slam shut the calendar,
Down on your knees, all!
Blood of my heart,
The people of Leningrad march out in even rows,
The living, the dead : fame can't tell them apart.


Anna Akhmatova

Au Salon - Ezra Pound


Her grave, sweet haughtiness
Pleaseth me, and in like wise
Her quiet ironies.
Others are beautiful, none more, some less.

I suppose, when poetry comes down to facts,
When our souls are returned to the gods
And the spheres they belong in,
Here in the every-day where our acts
Rise up and judge us;

I suppose there are a few dozen verities
That no shift of mood can shake from us:

One place where we'd rather have tea
(Thus far hath modernity brought us)
'Tea' (Damn you!)

Have tea, damn the Caesars,
Talk of the latest success, give wing to some scandal,
Garble a name we detest, and for prejudice?
Set loose the whole consummate pack
to bay like Sir Roger de Coverley's
This our reward for our works,
sic crescit gloria mundi:
Some circle of not more than three
that we prefer to play up to,
Some few whom we'd rather please
than hear the whole aegrum vulgus
Splitting its beery jowl
a-meaowling our praises.
Some certain peculiar things,
cari laresque, penates,
Some certain accustomed forms,
the absolute unimportant.


Ezra Pound

Sonet 11 - William Alexander


Ah that it was my fortune to be borne,
Now in the time of this degener'd age,
When some, in whom impietie doth rage,
Do all the rest discredit whil'st they scorne.
And this is growne to such a custome now,
That those are thought to haue the brauest spirits,
Who can faine fancies and imagine merits:
As who but for their lusts of loue allow.
And yet in this I had good hap, I find,
That chanc'd to chaine my thoughts to such an one,
Whose iudgement is so cleare, that she anone
Can by the outward gestures iudge the mind.
Yet wit and fortune rarely waite on one,
She knowes the best, yet can make choice of none.


William Alexander