Famam Librosque Cano
Famam Librosque Cano - meaning Summary
Contrasting Audiences Across Time
The poem contrasts two audiences: the immediate, domestic listeners—children, mothers and playful “rabbit folk” who laugh and keep songs alive in daily life—and the distant, solitary reader who will discover the poet’s book years hence. Pound imagines a scrawny, spectacled buyer at a stall, cheap copy in hand, who studies the work to judge how the poet "escaped immortality," highlighting differences between popular use and archival scrutiny.
Read Complete AnalysesYour songs? Oh! The little mothers Will sing them in the twilight, And when the night Shrinketh the kiss of the dawn That loves and kills, What time the swallow fills Here note, the little rabbit folk That some call children, Such as are up and wide, Will laugh your verses to each other, Pulling on their shoes for the day's business, Serious child business that the world Laughs at, and grows stale; Such is the tale -Part of it-of thy song-life. Mine? A book is known by them that read That same. Thy public in my screed Is listed. Well! Some score years hence Behold mine audience, As we had seen him yesterday. Scrawny, be-spectacled, out at heels, Such an one as the world feels A sort of curse against its guzzling And its age-lasting wallow for red greed And yet; full speed Though it should run for its own getting, Will turn aside to sneer at 'Cause he hath No coin, no will to snatch the aftermath Of Mammon Such an one as women draw away from For the tobacco ashes scattered on his coat And sith his throat Show's razor's unfamiliarity And three days' beard; Such an one picking a ragged Backless copy from the stall, Too cheap for cataloguing, Loquitur, 'Ah-eh! the strange rare name . . . Ah-eh! He must be rare if even 7 have not . . .’ And lost mid-page Such age As his pardons the habit, He analyses form and thought to see How I 'scaped immortality.
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