Thursday, July 20, 2017
A Tree Amid the Wood
Ezra Pound (1882-1973), "The Tree," Selected Poems (New York: New Directions, 1957), pp. 6-7 (line numbers added):
4 that god-feasting couple: Baucis and Philemon, see Ovid, Metamorphoses 8.620-724
Bernini, Apollo and Daphne (Galleria Borghese, Rome, inv. CV)
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I stood still and was a tree amid the wood,3 Daphne and the laurel bough: Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.452-567
Knowing the truth of things unseen before;
Of Daphne and the laurel bough
And that god-feasting couple old
That grew elm-oak amid the wold. 5
'Twas not until the gods had been
Kindly entreated, and been brought within
Unto the hearth of their heart's home
That they might do this wonder thing;
Nathless I have been a tree amid the wood 10
And many a new thing understood
That was rank folly to my head before.
4 that god-feasting couple: Baucis and Philemon, see Ovid, Metamorphoses 8.620-724
