Impenetrably isolate you stand, Tickling the world with a long-jointed straw. Lazy as Behemoth, your thoughts demand No cosmic plan to satisfy your maw; But as the little shining gnats buzz by You eat the brightest and spit out the rest, Then streak your front with ochre carefully And dance, a Malay with a tattooed breast. There are no sins, no virtues left for you, No strength, no weakness, no apostasy. You know the world, now old, was never new, And that its wisdom is a shameless lie. So in the dusk you sit you down to plan Some fresh confusion for the heart of man. III. Lover of Chaos and the Sacred Seven! Scorner of Midas and St. Francis, too! Wearied of earth, yet dubious of Heaven, Fain of old follies and of pastures new— Why should the great, whose spirits haunt the void Between Orion and the Northern Wain, Make you their mouthpiece? Why have they employed So brassed a trumpet for so high a strain? Perhaps, like you, they count it little worth To pipe save for the piping; so they take You weak, infirm, uncertain as the earth, And down your tubes the thrill of music wake. Well, God preserve you!—and the Devil damn!— And nettles strew the bosom of Abraham! A Letter from London EZRA POUND I should be very glad if someone in America could be made to realize the sinister bearing of the import duty on books. I have tried in vain to get some of my other correspondents to understand the effect of this iniquity ... but apparently without success. It means insularity, stupidity, backing the printer against literature, commerce and obstruction against intelligence. I have spent myself on the topic so many times that I am not minded to write an elaborate denunciation until I know I am writing to someone capable of understanding and willing to take up the battle. Incidentally the life of a critical review depends a good deal on controversy and on having some issue worth fighting. Henry IV. did away with the black mediaevalism of an octroi on books, and the position of Paris is not without its debt to that intelligent act. No country that needs artificial aid in its competition with external intelligence is fit for any creature above the status of pig. The tariff should be abolished not only for itself but because dishonest booksellers shelter themselves behind it and treble the price of foreign books, and because it keeps up the price of printing. If there is one thing that we are all agreed upon: It is that the canned goods of Curtis and Company and Harper and Company and all the business firms should be set apart from the art of letters, and the artist helped against the tradesman.