A poetickal diversion

Here’s a poem I’ve always been fond of that’s not my favorite but I was thinking about it today:

An Immorality (Ezra Pound)

Sing we for love and idleness,
Naught else is worth the having.
Though I have been in many a land,
There is naught else in living.
And I would rather have my sweet,
Though rose-leaves die of grieving,
Than do high deeds in Hungary
To pass all men’s believing.

I suppose now I’m a Catholic, I could excuse my fondness (apart from the fact it’s a really beautiful lyric) on the grounds that the poem’s a diversion not to be taken seriously, since the author plainly didn’t fritter away his life on amore and dolce far niente. Or that it can stand for a preference for the contemplative over the active life, transposed into a key that makes it clear how foreign that type of issue is to the way we lead our lives today. It’s remarkable, though, that this is a 20th c. poem by an American.