[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 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 ..."