Pound spent some months of 1908 living in Venice and put together his first collection of poems, some of which had been written before he left the USA. He financed the publication himself. Originally, as Pound explains in his dedication, the collection was to be called

after one of the main poems in the book. However, he received news of the death of W. B. Smith, a young artist with whom he had had an intense friendship as a student in Philadelphia (referred to in

as his “first friend”). Pound retitled the collection

, with tapers quenched, in reference to a mourning ceremony mentioned by Dante. He also dedicated the volume to Smith, “Painter, Dreamer of Dreams”.

There are some forty or so poems in the collection and they reflect both the student

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Citation: Wilson, Peter. "A Lume Spento". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 21 March 2003 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=7091, accessed 27 November 2024.]