Lustra/Homage to Quintus Septimius Florentis Christianus

by Ezra Pound

Homage to Quintus Septimius Florentis Christianus

(Ex libris Graecae)

I

Theodorus will be pleased at my death,

And someone else will be pleased at the death of Theodorus,
And yet everyone speaks evil of death.

II

This place is the Cyprian's, for she has ever the fancy

To be looking out across the bright sea,
Therefore the sailors are cheered, and the waves
Keep small with reverence, beholding her image.
⁠Anyte.

III

A sad and great evil is the expectation of death

And there are also the inane expenses of the funeral;
Let us therefore cease from pitying the dead
For after death there comes no other calamity.
⁠Palladas.

IV
Troy

Whither, city, are your profits and your gilded shrines,

And your barbecues of great oxen,
And the tall women walking your streets, in gilt clothes,
With their perfumes in little alabaster boxes?
Where is the work of your home-born sculptors

Time's tooth is into the lot, and war's and fate's too.
Envy has taken your all,
Save your douth and your story.
⁠Agathas Scholasticus.

V

Woman? Oh, woman is a consummate rage,

⁠but dead, or asleep, she pleases.
Take her. She has two excellent seasons.
⁠Palladas.

VI
Nicharcus upon Phidon his doctor

Phidon neither purged me, nor touched me,

But I remembered the name of his fever medicine
⁠and died.