The Return
The Return - context Summary
Included in Personae Collection
Printed in Pound’s Personae, this short lyric stages a ghostly procession of returning figures — swift, wary, and half-awakened — evoking mythic messengers and hunted souls. The poem functions as a dramatic vignette rather than a narrative, using compressed images of flight, scent, and restraint to suggest ritual, divine agency, and uneasy revival. It fits Personae’s project of adopting voices drawn from classical and legendary sources.
Read Complete AnalysesSee, they return; ah, see the tentative Movements, and the slow feet, The trouble in the pace and the uncertain Wavering! See, they return, one by one, With fear, as half-awakened; As if the snow should hesitate And murmur in the wind, and half turn back; These were the "Wing'd-with-Awe," Inviolable. Gods of the Wingèd shoe! With them the silver hounds, sniffing the trace of air! Haie! Haie! These were the swift to harry; These the keen-scented; These were the souls of blood. Slow on the leash, pallid the leash-men!
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