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EZRA POUND 59
hours at a time listening to the revolutionist as he told stories of his
career. He had spent many years in prison, and twice he had heard
a death sentence pronounced upon him.
Although Maud Gonne was willing to smoke hashish with Yeats,
she was not willing to marry him. Each time that he was rebuffed,
he went back to his verses with renewed determination. Perhaps
poets should not consummate their love affairs.
When Ezra Pound came onto the scene, Yeats was nearly fifty
years old. His Collected Works (1908), in eight volumes, had already
been published by the Shakespeare Head Press, at Stratfordon-Avon.
Not only was his reputation secure, but it seemed that
his important work was now behind him.
Yeats had a brief influence upon the poetry of Ezra Pound, as
indicated by Louis MacNeice, in The Poetry of W. B. Yeats. Mac­
Neice cites the following lines from Personae as an example of
Pound under the influence of Yeats:
There are many rooms and all of gold,
Of woven walls deep patterned, of email,
Of beaten work; and through the claret stone,
Set to some weaving, comes the aureate light. 3
Pound soon abandoned this subdued glow in favor of hotter
blazes, notably the sun of Provence. He was to have a much more
profound and lasting influence upon Yeats than Yeats had had
upon him.
The first mention of Pound in Yeats' writings appears in a letter
to Lady Gregory of December 10, 1909:
". . . this queer creature Ezra Pound, who has become really
a great authority on the troubadours, has I think got closer to the
right sort of music for poetry than Mrs. Emery [the actress Florence
Farr]—it is more definitely music with strongly marked time and
yet it is effective speech. However, he cannot sing, as he has no
voice. It is like something on a very bad phonograph." 4
William Carlos Williams, in several of his letters, has recorded
the impact of Pound upon Yeats. In the first of these, written to
Babette Deutsch, and dated January 18, 1943, he says that Pound