Pound’s ‘The Return’

By Scott Horton

See, they return; ah, see the tentative

Movements, and the slow feet,

The trouble in the pace and the uncertain

Wavering!

See, they return, one by one,

With fear, as half-awakened;

As if the snow should hesitate

And murmur in the wind,

and half turn back;

These were the “Wing’d-with-Awe,”

Inviolable.

Gods of the Wingèd shoe!

With them the silver hounds,

sniffing the trace of air!

Haie! Haie!

These were the swift to harry;

These the keen-scented;

These were the souls of blood.

Slow on the leash,

pallid the leash-men!

–Ezra Pound, The Return (1913) first published in: The New Poetry: An Anthology (H. Monroe ed. 1917)