The Needle

by


The Needle is featured in one of Pound's best-known collections, Ripostes (1912).
An illustration for the story The Needle by the author Ezra Pound
Low Tide Rocks, St. Baldred's Cradle, Tyninghame
An illustration for the story The Needle by the author Ezra Pound
Low Tide Rocks, St. Baldred's Cradle, Tyninghame
An illustration for the story The Needle by the author Ezra Pound
Come, or the stellar tide will slip away,
Eastward avoid the hour of its decline,
Now! for the needle trembles in my soul!

Here have we had our vantage, the good hour.
Here we have had our day, your day and mine.
Come now, before this power
That bears us up, shall turn against the pole.

Mock not the flood of stars, the thing's to be.
O Love, come now, this land turns evil slowly.
The waves bore in, soon will they bear away.

The treasure is ours, make we fast land with it.
Move we and take the tide, with its next favour,
Abide
Under some neutral force
Until this course turneth aside.

7

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Return to the Ezra Pound Home Page, or . . . Read the next poem; The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter

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