Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, 1915: FEBRUARY, by EZRA POUND


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

1915: FEBRUARY, by             Poem Explanation     Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: The smeared, leather-coated, leather-greaved engineer
Last Line: The unseen twigs, breaking their tips with blossom.
Subject(s): World War I; First World War


The smeared, leather-coated, leather-greaved engineer
Walks in front of his traction-engine
Like some figure out of the sagas,
Like Grettir or like Skarpheddin,
With a sort of majestical swagger.
And his machine lumbers after him
Like some mythological beast,
Like Grendel bewitched and in chains,
But his ill luck will make me no sagas,
Nor will you crack the riddle of his skull,
O you over-educated, over-refined literati!
Nor yet you, store-bred realists,
You multipliers of novels!
He goes, and I go.
He stays and I stay.
He is mankind and I am the arts.
We are outlaws.
This war is not our war,
Neither side is on our side:
A vicious mediaevalism,
A belly-fat commerce,
Neither is on our side:
Whores, apes, rhetoricians,
Flagellants! in a year
Black as the dies irae.
We have about us only the unseen country road,
The unseen twigs, breaking their tips with blossom.





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