Paracelsus in Excelsis (by Ezra Pound)

Paracelsus in Excelsis
by Ezra Pound
from Canzoni [published in 1913]

“Being no longer human, why should I
Pretend humanity or don the frail attire?
Men have I known and men, but never one
Was grown so free an essence, or become
So simply element as what I am.
The mist goes from the mirror and I see.
Behold! the world of forms is swept beneath–
Turmoil grown visible beneath our peace,
And we that are grown formless, rise above–
Fluids intangible that have been men,
We seem as statues round whose high-risen base
Some overflowing river is run mad,
In us alone the element of calm.”

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John Wasson (by Edgar Lee Masters)

John Wasson
by Edgar Lee Masters
from Spoon River Anthology [1915]

Oh! the dew-wet grass of the meadow in North Carolina

Through which Rebecca followed me wailing, wailing,

One child in her arms, and three that ran along wailing,

Lengthening out the farewell to me off to the war with the British,

And then the long, hard years down to the day of Yorktown.

And then my search for Rebecca,

Finding her at last in Virginia,

Two children dead in the meanwhile.

We went by oxen to Tennessee,

Thence after years to Illinois,

At last to Spoon River.

We cut the buffalo grass,

We felled the forests,

We built the school houses, built the bridges,

Leveled the roads and tilled the fields

Alone with poverty, scourges, death–

If Harry Wilmans who fought the Filipinos

Is to have a flag on his grave

Take it from mine!

[To read more Spoon River Anthology click here.]

The Moods (by William Butler Yeats)

Yeats [by George Charles Beresford, 1911]

The Moods
by William Butler Yeats
from The Wind Among the Reeds (1899)

Time drops in decay,

Like a candle burnt out,

And the mountains and the woods

Have their day, have their day;

What one in the rout

Of the fire-born moods

Has fallen away?

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To read more Yeats in the Online Library, please click here.
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