SOURCE: "The Divine Mystery," in Selected Prose: 1909-1965, edited by William Cookson, Faber and Faber, 1973, pp. 373-76.

In the following essays, two pieces published respectively in The New Freewoman in 1913 and The New Age in 1914, Pound extols the clarity and breadth of vision in The Divine Mystery and The New Word.

The Divine Mystery

'I was sitting like Abraham in my tent door in the heat of the day, outside a Pagan city of Africa, when the lord of the thunder appeared before me, going on his way into the town to call down thunder from heaven upon it.

'He had on his wizard's robe, hung round with magical shells that rattled as he moved; and there walked behind him a young man carrying a lute. I gave the musician a piece of silver, and he danced before me the dance that draws down the thunder. After which...