Prayer for His Lady's Life
FROM PROPERTIUS, ELEGIAE, LIB. III, 26
Here let thy clemency, Persephone, hold firm,
Do thou, Pluto, bring here no greater harshness.
Ezra Pound wrote this poem as a proposed 26th poem in Sextus Propertius’s third book of elegies, which contained 25 elegies.  He published this poem in his 1909 collection “Personæ.”  In this collection, Pound assumes the persona of other famous poets from history. Furthermore, 1909 was also the year when Ezra Pound met the woman who would become his wife (1914) and who would mother his children: Dorothy Shakespear.  Coincidentally, this collection of poems (Personæ) is considered to be one of Pound’s most passionate collections. 
 
