And The Days Are Not
Full Enough
And the days are not full enough
And the nights are not full enough
And life slips by like a field mouse
Not shaking the grass.
-Ezra Pound
Sometimes a person’s life can be as quiet as a mouse, sometimes, so
quiet that no one may hear it. Ezra Pound knew that this was true of most
people's lives. Pound was trying to call people to do more, to leave a
legacy behind, to be someone others look up to. He wrote this because he
worried that he would not be remembered after his death and he didn’t
want people to suffer the same fate as he feared for himself. Pound writes
“...and the days are not full enough, and the nights are not full enough” he
is referring to his life not being “full enough” of happiness and pride. Pound
also writes that a person’s life “slips by like a field mouse.” Unfortunately
this is a true statement. Many people do not do enough good for the world,
and when they are about to die they have nothing to look back on and be
proud of. He wrote of our world as the grass in his poem, by “Not shaking
the grass” we are not changing the world in any way. All Pound really
wanted at least one person in his audience to be the “field mouse” that
would shake the grass. A