HOMAGE TO SEXTUS PROPERTIUS: 'QUIA PAUPER AMAVI'.

First edition, first printing. Original light blue paper-covered boards lettered in purple to the spine, in dustwrapper. A very near fine copy, the binding square and firm, the contents clean throughout. There are a couple of small marks to the rear board, and a touch of pushing to spine tips. Small bookseller's label affixed to the lower edge of the front pastedown, offsetting to the verso of the final page. In the clean, bright dustwrapper, faded to the spine, nicked to spine tips and corners, with a small area of loss to the upper edge of the front panel and a little loss to the upper spine tip. Two parallel closed tears (c. 2 cm) to the upper edge of the rear panel. Not price-clipped (2s. 6d. net) to the front flap. An unusually bright and sharp copy, scarce in the dustwrapper.

Published in an earlier form in 1919 as 'Quia Pauper Amavi' (the subtitle given to the present volume, which can be translated as 'Because I have loved the meager'), 'Homage to Sextus Propertius', Pound's idiosyncratic versions of the Roman poet's Latin Elegies can be seen as a transition between the poet's use of 'personae' (the jacket describes Sextus as Pound's last and most important 'persona') and the monumental impersonality of the 'Cantos'. In a letter to the Editor of 'The English Journal' (24 January 1931), Pound states that the work "presents certain emotions as vital to me in 1917, faced with the infinite and ineffable imbecility of the British Empire, as they were to Propertius some centuries earlier, when faced with the infinite and ineffable imbecility of the Roman Empire." Published 8 November 1934 in an edition of 1000 copies. ('The Selected Letters of Ezra Pound, 1907-1941' [New York, 1971]; Gallup A38a).