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Home  »  Poetry: A Magazine of Verse  »  Ezra Pound

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

Salvationists

Ezra Pound

I
COME, my songs, let us speak of perfection—

We shall get ourselves rather disliked.

II
Ah yes, my songs, let us resurrect

The very excellent term Rusticus.

Let us apply it in all its opprobrium

To those to whom it applies.

And you may decline to make them immortal,

For we shall consider them and their state

In delicate

Opulent silence.

III
Come, my songs,

Let us take arms against this sea of stupidities—

Beginning with Mumpodorus;

And against this sea of vulgarities—

Beginning with Nimmim;

And against this sea of imbeciles—

All the Bulmenian literati.