Dear Poundians:

Here, as promised, is my transcription of the aforementioned handwritten
sonnet from Pound dated 1900.  I've also included the Shakespeare sonnet
on which it's based.  Enjoy!

Jonathan Gill
Columbia University

                Let not my love be called Tom Foolery
                If when my praises fall I do depart.
                If unlike my songs of praise would be
                Count me not fickle for my changeful heart,
                If in my art you wish diversity
                How shall my love be one alway the same
                Count not my way wordless perversity
                If all my rimes call not upon one name
                Say I am steadfast in the difference
                Say I am true, tho truth should seem untruth
                Say tis the mind that loves and not the sense
                Say what you will of me but know forsooth
                My love is changeless through all-changing time.
                I love that one who needs me most to rime.


Shakespeare's "Sonnet 105":

                Let not my love be called idolatry,
                Nor my belovèd as an idol show,
                Since all alike my songs and praises be
                To one, of one, still such, and ever so.
                Kind is my love today, tomorrow kind
                Still constant in a wondrous excellence;
                Therefore my verse, to constancy confined,
                One thing expressing, leaves out difference.
                Fair, kind, and true is all my argument,
                Fair, kind, and true, varying to other words;
                And in this change is my invention spent,
                Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords.
                        Fair, kind, and true have often lived alone,
                        Which three till now never kept seat in one.