A FOLLOWER OF EZRA POUND REWRITES SONNET 30. Helen Vendler also reprints this version of Sonnet 30 by Basil Bunting:
When I summon up remembrance of things past
To the sessions of silent thought,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And wail time’s waste;
I can drown an eye
For precious friends hid in dateless night,
And weep afresh love’s long since cancell’d woe,
And many a vanish’d sight:
I can tell o’er
The sad account
As if not paid before.
But if I think on thee,
All losses are restor’d.
Here, for comparison, is Shakespeare’s Sonnet 30:
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unus’d to flow,
For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night,
And weep afresh love’s long since cancell’d woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanish’d sight:
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restor’d and sorrows end.