Tree with a Bird in it — Rainuv by Ezra Pound

RAINUV: A ROMANTIC BALLAD FROM THE EARLY BASQUE

...

so then naturally This Count Rainuv I speak of (Certainly I did not expect you would ever have heard of him;

You are American poets, aren't you?

That's rather awful ...

I am the only American poet I could ever tolerate ...

well, sniff and pass....

) Therefore ...

well, I knew Rainuv.

(My P. G.

course at Penn, you'll remember;

A little Anglo-Saxon and Basuto, But Provencal, mostly.

Most don't go in for that....

You haven't, of course ...

What, no Provencal?

Well, of course, I know Rather more than you do.

That's my specialty.

But then--_Omnis Gallia est divisa_--but no matter.

Not fit, perhaps you'd say, that, to be quoted Before ladies....

That's your rather amusing prudishness....

) Well, this Rainuv, then, A person with a squint like a flash Of square fishes ...

being rather worse than most Of the usual _literati_ Said, being carried off by desire of boasting That he knew all the mid-Victorians _Et ab lor bos amics:_ (He thought it was something to boast of.

) We'll say he said he smoked with Tennyson, And--deeper pit--_pax vobiscum_--went to vespers With Adelaide Anne Procter; helped Bob Browning elope With Elizabeth and her lapdog (said it bit him) Said he was the first man Blake told All about the angels in a pear-tree at Peckham Rye Blake drew them for him, he said; they were grackles, not angels-- (Blake's not a mid-Victorian, but you don't know better) So ...

we come, being slightly irritated, to facing him down.

"...

And George Eliot?"

we ask lightly.

"_Roomed with him_," nodded Rainuv confidently, "_At college!

_"...

Ah, _bos amic!

bos amic!

_ Rainuv is a king to you....

Three centuries from now (you dead and messy) men whispering insolently (Eeni meeni mini mo...

) will boast that their great-grand-uncles Were kicked by me in passing....

_Margaret Widdemer_ (Clutching a non-existent portiere with one hand.

)