His true Penelope was Flaubert,
He fished by obstinate isles.

Pound’s couplet casts a writer’s artistic fidelity in Homeric terms. “Penelope” evokes Odysseus’s steadfast wife—an emblem of constancy and long waiting—so calling Flaubert someone’s “true Penelope” suggests that the person’s deepest loyalty was not to a lover or social life but to Flaubert’s example: rigorous craft, exacting style, and devotion to the sentence. The second line extends the Odyssean metaphor: to “fish” by “obstinate isles” implies patient, repetitive labor around hard, unyielding terrain—an image for the stubborn difficulties of composition and revision. The tone is admiring but edged with Pound’s characteristic compression and irony: artistic faithfulness is both noble and isolating.