Early Writings Read online

  Sought out the place,

  Lay on the bank, was “plungèd deep in swevyn;”

  And saw the company—Layamon, Chaucer—

  Pass each in his appropriate robes;

  Conversed with each, observed the varying fashion.

  And then comes Heydon.

  “I have seen John Heydon.”

  Let us hear John Heydon!

  “Omniformis

  Omnis intellectus est”2—thus he begins, by spouting half of

  Psellus.3

  (Then comes a note, my assiduous commentator:

  Not Psellus De Daemonibus, but Porphyry’s Chances,

  In the thirteenth chapter, that “every intellect is omniform.”)

  Magnifico Lorenzo used the dodge,

  Says that he met Ficino4

  In some Wordsworthian, false-pastoral manner,

  And that they walked along, stopped at a wellhead,

  And heard deep platitudes about contentment

  From some old codger with an endless beard.

  “A daemon is not a particular intellect,

  But is a substance differed from intellect,”

  Breaks in Ficino,

  “Placed in the latitude or locus of souls”—

  That’s out of Proclus, take your pick of them.

  Valla,5 more earth and sounder rhetoric—

  Prefacing praise to his Pope Nicholas:

  “A man of parts, skilled in the subtlest sciences;

  A patron of the arts, of poetry; and of a fine discernment.”

  Then comes a catalogue, his jewels of conversation.

  No, you’ve not read your Elegantiae—

  A dull book?—shook the church.

  The prefaces, cut clear and hard:

  “Know then the Roman speech, a sacrament,”

  Spread for the nations, eucharist of wisdom,

  Bread of the liberal arts.

  Ha! Sir Blancatz,6

  Sordello would have your heart to give to all the princes;

  Valla, the heart of Rome,

  Sustaining speech, set out before the people.

  “Nec bonus Christianus ac bonus7

  Tullianus. ”

  Marius, Du Bellay, wept for the buildings,

  Baldassar Castiglione saw Raphael

  “Lead back the soul into its dead, waste dwelling,”

  Corpore laniato,8 and Lorenzo Valla,

  “Broken in middle life? bent to submission?—

  Took a fat living from the Papacy”

  (That’s in Villari,9 but Burckhardt’s statement is different)-

  “More than the Roman city, the Roman speech”

  (Holds fast its part among the ever-living).

  “Not by the eagles only was Rome measured.”

  “Wherever the Roman speech was, there was Rome,”

  Wherever the speech crept, there was mastery

  Spoke with the law’s voice while your Greek logicians ...

  More Greeks than one! Doughty’s “divine Homeros”

  Came before sophistry. Justinopolitan

  Uncatalogued Andreas Divus,10

  Gave him in Latin, 1538 in my edition, the rest uncertain,

  Caught up his cadence, word and syllable:

  “Down to the ships we went, set mast and sail,

  Black keel and beasts for bloody sacrifice,

  Weeping we went.”11

  I’ve strained my ear for -ensa, -ombra, and -ensa

  And cracked my wit on delicate canzoni—

  Here’s but rough meaning:

  “And then went down to the ship, set keel to breakers,

  Forth on the godly sea;

  We set up mast and sail on the swarthy ship,

  Sheep bore we aboard her, and our bodies also

  Heavy with weeping. And winds from sternward

  Bore us out onward with bellying canvas—

  Circe’s this craft, the trim-coifed goddess.

  Then sat we amidships, wind jamming the tiller.

  Thus with stretched sail

  We went over sea till day’s end:

  Sun to his slumber, shadows o’er all the ocean.

  Came we then to the bounds of deepest water,

  To the Kimmerian lands and peopled cities

  Covered with close-webbed mist, unpiercèd ever

  With glitter of sun-rays,

  Nor with stars stretched, nor looking back from heaven,

  Swartest night stretched over wretched men there.

  Thither we in that ship, unladed sheep there,

  The ocean flowing backward, came we through to the place

  Aforesaid by Circe.

  Here did they rites, Perimedes and Eurylochus,

  And drawing sword from my hip

  I dug the ell-square pitkin,12 poured we libations unto each the

  dead,

  First mead and then sweet wine,

  Water mixed with white flour.

  Then prayed I many a prayer to the sickly death’s-heads

  As set in Ithaca, sterile bulls of the best,

  For sacrifice, heaping the pyre with goods.

  Sheep, to Tiresias only,

  Black, and a bell sheep;

  Dark blood flowed in the fosse.

  Souls out of Erebus, cadaverous dead

  Of brides, of youths, and of many passing old,

  Virgins tender, souls stained with recent tears,

  Many men mauled with bronze lance-heads,

  Battle spoil, bearing yet dreary arms:

  These many crowded about me,

  With shouting, pallor upon me, cried to my men for more

  beasts;

  Slaughtered the herds—sheep slain of bronze,

  Poured ointment, cried to the gods,

  To Pluto the strong, and praised Proserpine.

  Unsheathed the narrow steel,

  I sat to keep off the impetuous, impotent dead

  Till I should hear Tiresias.

  But first Elpenor came, our friend Elpenor,

  Unburied, cast on the wide earth—

  Limbs that we left in the house of Circe,

  Unwept, unwrapped in sepulchre, since toils urged other,

  Pitiful spirit—and I cried in hurried speech:

  ‘Elpenor, how art thou come to this dark coast?

  Cam’st thou afoot, outstripping seamen?’ And he in heavy

  speech:

  ‘Ill fate and abundant wine! I slept in Circe’s ingle,13

  Going down the long ladder unguarded, I fell against the

  buttress,

  Shattered the nape-nerve, the soul sought Avernus.

  But thou, O King, I bid remember me, unwept, unburied!

  Heap up mine arms, be tomb by the sea-board, and inscribed,

  A man of no fortune and with a name to come;

  And set my oar up, that I swung ‘mid fellows.’

  Came then another ghost, whom I beat off, Antictea,

  And then Tiresias, Theban,

  Holding his golden wand, knew me and spoke first:

  ‘Man of ill hour, why come a second time,

  Leaving the sunlight, facing the sunless dead and this joyless

  region?

  Stand from the fosse, move back, leave me my bloody bever,

  And I will speak you true speeches.’

  And I stepped back,

  Sheathing the yellow sword. Dark blood he drank then

  And spoke: ‘Lustrous Odysseus, shalt

  Return through spiteful Neptune, over dark seas,

  Lose all companions.’ Foretold me the ways and the signs.

  Came then Anticlea, to whom I answered:

  ‘Fate drives me on through these deeps; I sought Tiresias.’

  I told her news of Troy, and thrice her shadow

  Faded in my embrace.

  Then had I news of many faded women—

  Tyro, Alemena, Chloris—

  Heard out their tales by that dark fosse, and sailed

&nbs
p; By sirens and thence outward and away,

  And unto Circe buried Elpenor’s corpse.”

  Lie quiet, Divus.

  In Officina Wechli, Paris,

  M. D. three X’s, Eight, with Aldus on the Frogs,

  And a certain Cretan’s

  Hymni Deorum:

  (The thin clear Tuscan stuff

  Gives way before the florid mellow phrase.)

  Take we the Goddess, Venus:

  Venerandam,

  Aurean coronam habentem, pulchram,

  Cypri munimenta sortita est,14 maritime,

  Light on the foam, breathed on by zephyrs,

  And air-tending hours. Mirthful, orichalci,15 with golden

  Girdles and breast bands.

  Thou with dark eye-lids,

  Bearing the golden bough of Argicida.16

  [Poetry, 1917]

  THE FOURTH CANTO

  Palace in smoky light,

  Troy but a heap of smouldering boundary-stones,

  ANAXIFORMINGES! Aurunculeia!1

  Hear me. Cadmus of Golden Prows;2

  The silver mirrors catch the bright stones and flare,

  Dawn, to our waking, drifts in the green cool light;

  Dew-haze blurrs, in the grass, pale ankles moving.

  Beat, beat, whirr, thud, in the soft turf under the apple trees,

  Choros nympharum, goat-foot with the pale foot alternate;

  Crescent of blue-shot waters, green-gold in the shallows

  A black cock crows in the sea-foam;

  And by the curved carved foot of the couch,

  claw-foot and lion head, an old man seated

  Speaking in the low drone: ...

  “Ityn!

  “Et ter flebiliter. Ityn, Ityn!3

  “And she went toward the window and cast her down,

  “All the while, the while, swallows crying:

  “Ityn!

  “ ”It is Cabestan’s4 heart in the dish.”

  “ ”It is Cabestan’s heart in the dish? “ ”No other taste shall change this. “

  And she went toward the window,

  the slim white stone bar

  Making a double arch;

  Firm even fingers held to the firm pale stone;

  Swung for a moment,

  and the wind out of Rhodez5

  Caught in the full of her sleeve.

  ... the swallows crying:

  Ityn! Ityn!”

  Actaeon. ...6

  And a valley,

  The valley is thick with leaves, with leaves, the trees,

  The sunlight glitters, glitters a-top,

  Like a fish-scale roof,

  Like the church-roof in Poictiers

  If it were gold.

  Beneath it, beneath it

  Not a ray, not a slivver, not a spare disk of sunlight

  Flaking the black, soft water;

  Bathing the body of nymphs, of nymphs, and Diana,

  Nymphs, white-gathered about her, and the air, air,

  Shaking, air alight with the goddess

  fanning their hair in the dark,

  Lifting, lifting and waffing:

  Ivory dipping in silver,

  Shadow’d, o’ershadow’d

  Ivory dipping in silver,

  Not a splotch, not a lost shatter of sunlight.

  Then Actaeon: Vidal,

  Vidal.7 It is old Vidal speaking,

  stumbling along in the wood

  Not a patch, not a lost shimmer of sunlight,

  the pale hair of the goddess,

  The dogs leap on Actaeon,

  “Hither, hither, Actaeon,”

  Spotted stag of the wood;

  Gold, gold, a sheaf of hair,

  Thick like a wheat swath,

  Blaze, blaze in the sun,

  The dogs leap on Actaeon.

  Stumbling, stumbling along in the wood,

  Muttering, muttering Ovid:

  “Pergusa ... pool.. pool ... Gargaphia

  ‘Pool, pool of Salmacis.8

  The empty armour shakes as the cygnet moves,

  Thus the light rains, thus pours, e lo soleils plovil,9

  The liquid, and rushing crystal

  whirls up the bright brown sand.

  Ply over ply,10 thin glitter of water;

  Brook film bearing white petals

  (“The pines of Takasago11 grow with pines of Ise“12)

  “Behold the Tree of the Visages.”

  The forked tips flaming as if with lotus,

  Ply over ply

  The shallow eddying fluid

  beneath the knees of the gods.

  Torches melt in the glare

  Set flame of the corner cook-stall,

  Blue agate casing the sky, a sputter of resin;

  The saffron sandal petals the tender foot, Hymenaeus!

  Io Hymen, Io Hymenaee!13 Aurunculeia14

  The scarlet flower is cast on the blanch-white stone,

  Amaracus, Hill of Urania’s Son.

  Meanwhile So-Gioku:15

  “This wind, sire, is the king’s wind,

  this wind is wind of the palace

  Shaking imperial water-jets.”

  And Ran-Ti, opening his collar:

  “This wind roars in the earth’s bag,

  it lays the water with rushes;

  “No wind is the king’s wind.

  Let every cow keep her calf.”

  “This wind is held in gauze curtains.....”

  No wind is the king’s ...”

  ‘The camel drivers sit in the turn of the stairs

  look down to Ecbatan16 of plotted streets,

  “Danae! Danae!17

  What wind is the king’s?

  Smoke hangs on the stream,

  The peach-trees shed bright leaves in the water,

  Sound drifts in the evening haze,

  The barge scrapes at the ford.

  Gilt rafters above black water;

  three steps in an open field

  Gray stone-posts leading nowhither.

  The Spanish poppies swim in an air of glass.

  Père Henri Jacques18 still seeks the sennin on Rokku.19

  Polhonac,20

  As Gyges21 on Thracian platter, set the feast;

  Cabestan, Terreus.

  It is Cabestan’s heart in the dish.

  Vidal, tracked out with dogs .. for glamour of Loba;

  Upon the gilded tower in Ecbatan

  Lay the god’s bride, lay ever

  Waiting the golden rain.

  Et saave!

  But to-day, Garonne22 is thick like paint, beyond Dorada,

  The worm of the Procession bores in the soup of the crowd,

  The blue thin voices against the crash of the crowd

  Et “Salve regina.”23

  In trellises

  Wound over with small flowers, beyond Adige24

  In the but half-used room, thin film of images,

  (by Stefano)25

  Age of unbodied gods, the vitreous fragile images

  Thin as the locust’s wing

  Haunting the mind .. as of Guido ...

  Thin as the locust’s wing. The Centaur’s heel

  Plants in the earth-loam.

  THE FIFTH CANTO

  Great bulk, huge mass, thesaurus;

  Ecbatan,1 the clock ticks and fades out;

  The bride awaiting the god’s touch; Ecbatan,

  City of patterned streets; again the vision:

  Down in the viae stradae, toga’d the crowd, and arm’d,

  Rushing on populous business, and from parapets

  Looked down—at North

  Was Egypt, and the celestial Nile, blue-deep

  cutting low barren land,

  Old men and camels working the water-wheels;

  Measureless seas and stars,

  lamblichus,2 light, the souls ascending,

  Sparks like a partridge covey,

  Like the “ciocca,”3 brand struck in the game.

  “
Et omniformis”:4

  Air, fire, the pale soft light.

  Topaz, I manage, and three sorts of blue;

  but on the barb of time.

  The fire? always, and the vision always,

  Ear dull, perhaps, with the vision, flitting

  And fading at will. Weaving with points of gold,

  Gold-yellow, saffron ...

  The roman shoe, Aurunculeia’s,

  And come shuffling feet, and cries “Da nuces!5

  “Nuces!” praise and Hymenaeus “brings the girl to her man.”

  Titter of sound about me, always,

  and from “Hesperus ...”

  Hush of the older song: “Fades light from seacrest,

  “And in Lydia walks with pair’d women

  “Peerless among the pairs, and that once in Sardis

  “In satieties ...

  “Fades the light from the sea, and many things

  “Are set abroad and brought to mind of thee,”

  And the vinestocks lie untended, new leaves come to the

  shoots,

  North wind nips on the bough, and seas in heart

  Toss up chill crests,

  And the vine stocks lie untended

  And many things are set abroad and brought to mind

  Of thee, Atthis,6 unfruitful.

  The talks ran long in the night.

  And from Mauleon,7 fresh with a new earned grade,

  In maze of approaching rain-steps, Poicebot 8

  The air was full of women.

  And Savairic Mauleon

  Gave him his land and knight’s fee, and he wed the woman.

  Came lust of travel on him, of romerya;9

  And out of England a knight with slow-lifting eyelids

  Lei fassar furar a del,10 put glamour upon her ...

  And left her an eight months gone.

  “Came lust of woman upon him,”

  Poicebot, now on North road from Spain

  (Sea-change, a grey in the water)

  And in small house by town’s edge

  Found a woman, changed and familiar face;

  Hard night, and parting at morning.

  And Pieire won the singing, Pieire de Maensac,11

  Song or land on the throw, and was dreitz hom12

  And had De Tierci’s wife and with the war they made:

  Troy in Auvergnat

  While Menelaus piled up the church at port

  He kept Tyndarida. Dauphin stood with de Maensac.

  John Borgia13 is bathed at last.

  (Clock-tick pierces the vision)

  Tiber, dark with the cloak, wet cat gleaming in patches.

  Click of the hooves, through garbage,

  Clutching the greasy stone. “And the cloak floated”

  Slander is up betimes.

  But Varchi14 of Florence,