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Provença

Chapter 14: AT THE HEART O’ ME
By Ezra Pound
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Poetry

About This Book

A compact sequence of lyrics and narrative poems reimagines medieval troubadour and classical voices through a modernist lens. The collection mixes stylized adaptations and persona pieces, ranging from jaunty ballads to mournful elegies, and tests forms such as sestina, sonnet, and canzone. Themes of love, loss, memory, exile, and the craft of song recur amid dense, allusive imagery. Shifts in diction and perspective create a chorus of historical and mythic echoes, prioritizing formal experimentation and vocal variety over linear narrative while inviting attentive, cross-temporal reading.

AT THE HEART O’ ME

A. D. 751

WITH ever one fear at the heart o’ me
Long by still sea-coasts
coursed my Grey-Falcon,
And the twin delights
of shore and sea were mine,
Sapphire and emerald with
fine pearls between.
Through the pale courses of
the land-caressing in-streams
Glided my barge and
the kindly strange peoples
Gave to me laugh for laugh,
and wine for my tales of wandering.
And the cities gave me welcome
and the fields free passage,
With ever one fear
at the heart o’ me.
An thou should’st grow weary
ere my returning,
An “they” should call to thee
from out the borderland,
What should avail me
booty of whale-ways?
What should avail me
gold rings or the chain-mail?
What should avail me
the many-twined bracelets?
What should avail me,
O my beloved,
Here in this “Middan-gard”[7]
what should avail me
Out of the booty and
gain of my goings?