[from Pound: Poems Translations, ed. Richard Sieburth, Library
of America, 2003]
The thought of what America would be like
If the Classics had a wide circulation
Troubles my sleep,
The thought of what America,
The thought of what America,
The thought of what America would
be like
If the Classics had a wide circulation
Troubles my sleep.
Nunc dimittis, now lettest thou thy servant,
Now lettest thou thy servant
Depart in peace.
The thought of what America,
The thought of what America,
The thought of what America would be like
If the Classics had a wide circulation...
Oh well!
It troubles my sleep.
In Personae (New Directions, 1971, p. 183),
Donald Gallup, in a note appended to the poem, writes that “this
poem formed the conclusion of Pound’s essay ‘The
Classics ‘Escape,”’ printed
originally in the Little Review for March 1918 and collected
in Instigations (1920). Gallup notes that in the essay
"Pound had … quoted a recent decision by ‘a
learned judge’ that works deemed classics, which USUALLY
APPEAL TO A COMPARATIVELY LIMITED NUMBER OF READERS (Pound’s
caps), are exempt from obscenity laws. Earlier, in The Spirit
of Romance, Pound had published, under the title "Cantico
del Sole," his version of St. Francis of Assisi's 13th century
Italian, which begins: "Most
high Lord, / Yours are the praises, / The glory and the humors
..."