Early Writings Read online

  Steeped in a different year, and pondering Brutus,

  Then

  “SIGA MAL AUTHIS DEUTERON!15

  “Dog-eye!!” (to Alessandro)

  “Whether for Love of Florence,” Varchi leaves it,

  Saying, “I saw the man, came up with him at Venice,

  “I, one wanting the facts,

  “And no mean labour.

  “Or for a privy spite?”

  Good Varchi leaves it,

  But: “I saw the man. Se pia?

  “O impia?16 For Lorenzaccio17 had thought of stroke in the

  open

  “But uncertain (for the Duke went never unguarded) ...

  “And would have thrown him from wall

  “Yet feared this might not end him,” or lest Alessandro

  Know not by whom death came,

  O si credesse18

  “If when the foot slipped, when death came upon him,

  “Lest cousin Duke Alessandro think he’d fallen alone

  “No friend to aid him in falling.”

  Caina attende.19

  As beneath my feet a lake, was ice in seeming.

  And all of this, runs Varchi, dreamed out beforehand

  In Perugia, caught in the star-maze by Del Carmine,

  Cast on a natal paper, set with an exegesis, told,

  All told to Alessandro, told thrice over,

  Who held his death for a doom.

  In abuleia.

  But Don Lorenzino

  “Whether for love of Florence ... but

  “O si morisse, credesse caduto da se.”

  SIGA, SIGA!20

  The wet cloak floats on the surface,

  Schiavoni, caught on the wood-barge,

  Gives out the afterbirth, Giovanni Borgia,21

  Trails out no more at nights, where Barabello22

  Prods the Pope’s elephant, and gets no crown, where

  Mozarello

  Takes the Calabrian roadway, and for ending

  Is smothered beneath a mule,

  a poet’s ending,23

  Down a stale well-hole, oh a poet’s ending. “Sanazarro24

  “Alone out of all the court was faithful to him”

  For the gossip of Naples’ trouble drifts to North,

  Fracastor (lightning was midwife) Cotta, and Ser D’Alviano,

  Al poco giorno ed al gran cerchio d’ombra,25

  Talk the talks out with Navighero,26

  Burner of yearly Martials,

  (The slavelet is mourned in vain)

  And the next comer

  says “were nine wounds,

  “Four men, white horse with a double rider,”

  The hooves clink and slick on the cobbles ...

  Schiavoni ... the cloak floats on the water,

  “Sink the thing,” splash wakes Schiavoni;

  Tiber catching the nap, the moonlit velvet,

  A wet cat gleaming in patches.

  “Se pia,” Varchi,

  “O empia, ma risoluto

  “E terribile deliberazione”27

  Both sayings run in the wind,

  Ma si morisse!28

  THE SIXTH CANTO

  “The tale of thy deeds, Odysseus!” and Tolosan

  Ground rents, sold by Guillaume,1 ninth duke of Aquitaine;

  Till Louis is wed with Eleanor; the wheel ...

  (“Conrad, the wheel turns and in the end turns ill”)

  And Acre and boy’s love ... for her uncle was

  Commandant at Acre, she was pleased with him;

  And Louis, French King,2 was jealous of days unshared

  This pair had had together in years gone;

  And he drives on for Zion, as “God wills”

  To find, in six weeks time, the Queen’s scarf is

  Twisted atop the casque of Saladin.

  “For Sandbrueil’s ransom.” But the pouch-mouths add,

  “She went out hunting, there, the tuft-top palms

  “Give spot of shade, she rode back rather late,

  “Late, latish, yet perhaps it was not too late.”

  Then France again, and to be rid of her

  And brush his antlers; Aquitaine, Poictiers!

  Buckle off the lot! And Adelaide Castilla wears the crown.

  Eleanor down water-butt, dethroned, debased, unqueen’d.

  Unqueen’d for five rare months,

  And frazzle-top, the sand-red face, the pitching gait,

  Harry Plantagent, the sputter in place of speech,

  But King about to be, King Louis, takes a queen.

  “E quand lo reis Louis lo entendit

  mout er faschée3

  And yet Gisors,4 in six years thence,

  Was Marguerite’s. And Harry joven

  In pledge for all his life and life of all his heirs

  Shall have Gisors and Vexis5 and Neauphal, Neufchastel;

  But if no issue, Gisors shall revert

  And Vexis and Neufchastel and Neauphal to the French

  crown.

  A song: Si tuit li dol el plor el marrimen

  Del mon6 were set together they would seem but light

  Against the death of the young English King,

  Harry the Young is dead and all men mourn,

  Mourn all good courtiers, fighters, cantadors.

  And still Old Harry keeps grip on Gisors

  And Neufchastel and Neauphal and Vexis;

  And two years war, and never two years go by

  but come new forays, and “The wheel

  “Turns, Conrad, turns, and in the end toward ill.”

  And Richard and Alix7 span the gap, Gisors,

  And Eleanor and Richard face the King,

  For the fourth family time Plantagenet

  Faces his dam and whelps, ... and holds Gisors,

  Now Alix’ dowry, against Philippe-Auguste

  (Louis’ by Adelaide, wood-lost, then crowned at

  Etampe)

  And never two years sans war.

  And Zion still

  Bleating away to Eastward, the lost lamb,

  Damned city (was only Frederic knew

  The true worth, and patched with Malek Kamel8

  The sane and sensible peace to bait the world

  And set all camps disgruntled with all leaders.

  “Damn’d atheists!” alike Mahomet growls,

  And Christ grutches more sullen for Sicilian sense

  Than does Mahound on Malek.)

  The bright coat

  Is more to the era, and in Messina’s beach-way

  Des Barres and Richard split the reed-lances

  And the coat is torn.

  (Moving in heavy air: Henry and Saladin.9

  The serpent coils in the crowd.)

  The letters run: Tancred10 to Richard:

  That the French King is

  More against thee, than is his will to me

  Good and in faith; and moves against your safety.

  Richard to Tancred:

  That our pact stands firm,

  And, for these slanders, that I think you lie.

  Proofs, and in writing:

  And if Bourgogne say they were not

  Deliver’d by hand and his,

  Let him move sword against me and my word.

  Richard to Philip: silence, with a tone.

  Richard to Flanders: the subjoined and precedent.

  Philip a silence; and then, “Lies and turned lies

  “For that he will fail Alix

  “Affianced, and Sister to Ourself.”

  Richard: “My Father’s bed-piece! A Plantagenet

  “Mewls on the covers, with a nose like his already.”

  Then:

  In the Name

  Of Father and of Son Triune and Indivisible

  Philip of France by Goddes Grace

  To all men presents that our noble brother

  Richard of England engaged by our mutual oath

  (a sacred covenant applicable to both)

/>   Need not wed Alix11 but whomso he choose

  We cede him Gisors, Neauphal and Vexis

  And to the heirs male of his house

  Cahors and Querci Richard’s The abbeys ours

  Of Figeac and Souillac And St Gilles left still in peace

  Alix returns to France.

  Made in Messina in

  The year 1190 of the Incarnation of the Word.

  Reed lances broken, a cloak torn by Des Barres

  Do turn King Richard from the holy wars.

  And “God aid Conrad

  “For man’s aid comes slow,” Aye tarries upon the road,

  En Bertrans cantat.

  And before all this

  By Correze, Malemort12

  A young man walks, at church with galleried porch

  By river-marsh, a sad man, pacing

  Come from Ventadorn; and Eleanor turning on thirty years,

  Domna jauzionda,13 and then Bernart saying:

  “My Lady of Ventadorn

  “Is shut by Eblis in,14 and will not hawk nor hunt

  “Nor get her free in the air,

  nor watch fish rise to bait

  “Nor the glare-wing’d flies alight in the creek’s edge

  “Save in my absence, Madame.

  ’Que la lauzeta mover,’

  “Send word, I ask you, to Eblis,

  you have seen that maker

  “And finder of songs, so far afield as this

  “That he may free her,

  who sheds such light in the air.”

  THE SEVENTH CANTO

  Eleanor (she spoiled in a British climate)

  ‘Eλανδρoζ and ‘Eλέπτoλιζ,1 and poor old Homer blind,

  blind as a bat,

  Ear, ear for the sea-surge; rattle of old men’s voices.

  And then the phantom Rome, marble narrow for seats

  “Si pulvis nullus erit”2

  The chatter above the circus, “Nullum tamen excute.”

  Then file and candles, e li mestiers ecoutes;3

  Scene for the battle only, but still scene,

  Pennons and standards y cavals armatz,4

  Not mere succession of strokes, sightless narration,

  And Dante’s “ciocco,”5 brand struck in the game.

  Un peu moisi, plancher plus bas que le jardin.

  “Contre le lambris, fauteuil de paille,

  “Un vieux piano, et sous le barometre ...6

  The old men’s voices, beneath the columns of false marble,

  And the walls tinted discreet, the modish, darkish green-blue,

  Discreeter gilding, and the pannelled wood

  Not present, but suggested, for the leasehold is

  Touched with an imprecision ... about three squares;

  The house a shade too solid, and the art

  A shade off action, paintings a shade too thick.

  And the great domed head, con gli occhi onesti e tardi7

  Moves before me, phantom with weighted motion,

  Grave incessu, drinking the tone of things,

  And the old voice lifts itself

  weaving an endless sentence.

  We also made ghostly visits, and the stair

  That knew us, found us again on the turn of it,

  Knocking at empty rooms, seeking for buried beauty;

  And the sun-tanned, gracious and well-formed fingers

  Lift no latch of bent bronze, no Empire handle

  Twists for the knocker’s fall; no voice to answer.

  A strange concierge, in place of the gouty-footed.

  Skeptic against all this one seeks the living,

  Stubborn against the fact. The wilted flowers

  Brushed out a seven year since, of no effect.

  Damn the partition! Paper, dark brown and stretched,

  Flimsy and damned partition.

  lone, dead the long year,8

  My lintel, and Liu Ch’e’s lintel.9

  Time blacked out with the rubber.

  The Elysée10 carries a name on

  And the bus behind me gives me a date for peg;

  Low ceiling and the Erard11 and the silver,

  These are in “time.” Four chairs, the bow-front dresser,

  The pannier of the desk, cloth top sunk in.

  “Beer-bottle on the statue’s pediment!

  “That, Fritz, is the era, to-day against the past,

  “Contemporary.” And the passion endures.

  Against their action, aromas. Rooms, against chronicles.

  Smaragdos, chrysolitos; De Gama12 wore striped pants in

  Africa

  And “Mountains of the sea gave birth to troops”;

  Le vieux commode en acajou:13

  beer-bottles of various strata,

  But is she as dead as Tyro? In seven years?

  ‘Eλἐναυς,λανδρoς, ἐλἑπτoλiς14

  The sea runs in the beach-groove, shaking the floated pebbles,

  Eleanor!

  The scarlet curtain throws a less scarlet shadow;

  Lamplight at Buovilla, e quel remir,15

  And all that day

  Nicea16 moved before me

  And the cold gray air troubled her not

  For all her naked beauty, bit not the tropic skin,

  And the long slender feet lit on the curb’s marge

  And her moving height went before me,

  We alone having being.

  And all that day, another day:

  Thin husks I had known as men,

  Dry casques of departed locusts

  speaking a shell of speech ...

  Propped between chairs and table ...

  Words like the locust-shells, moved by no inner being;

  A dryness calling for death;

  Another day, between walls of a sham Mycenian,

  “Toe”17 sphinxes, sham-Memphis columns,

  And beneath the jazz a cortex, a stiffness or stillness,

  The older shell, varnished to lemon colour,

  Brown-yellow wood, and the no colour plaster,

  Dry professorial talk ...

  now stilling the ill beat music,

  House expulsed by this house, but not extinguished.

  Square even shoulders and the satin skin,

  Gone cheeks of the dancing woman,

  Still the old dead dry talk, gassed out—

  It is ten years gone, makes stiff about her a glass,

  A petrifaction of air.

  The old room of the tawdry class asserts itself;

  The young men, never!

  Only the husk of talk.

  O voi che siete in piccioletta barca,18

  Dido choked up with sobs for her Sicheus19

  Lies heavy in my arms, dead weight

  Drowning, with tears, new Eros,

  And the life goes on, mooning upon bare hills;

  Flame leaps from the hand, the rain is listless,

  Yet drinks the thirst from our lips,

  solid as echo,

  Passion to breed a form in shimmer of rain-blur;

  But Eros drowned, drowned, heavy—half dead with tears

  For dead Sicheus.

  Life to make mock of motion:

  For the husks, before me, move,

  The words rattle: shells given out by shells.

  The live man, out of lands and prisons,

  shakes the dry pods.

  Probes for old wills and friendships, and the big locust-casques

  Bend to the tawdry table,

  Lift up their spoons to mouths, put forks in cutlets,

  And make sound like the sound of voices.

  Lorenzaccio20

  Being more live than they, more full of flames and voices.

  Ma si morisse!21

  Credesse caduto da se, ma si morisse.

  And the tall indifference moves,

  a more living shell,

  Drift in the air of fate, dry phantom, but intact.

  O Alessandro, chief an
d thrice warned, watcher,

  Eternal watcher of things,

  Of things, of men, of passions.

  Eyes floating in dry, dark air,

  E biondo,22 with glass-grey iris, with an even side-fall of hair

  The stiff, still features.

  EIGHTH CANTO

  Dido choked up with tears for dead Sichaeus;1

  And the weeping Muse, weeping, widowed, and willing,

  The weeping Muse

  Mourns Homer,

  Mourns the days of long song,

  Mourns for the breath of the singers,

  Winds stretching out, seas pulling to eastward,

  Heaving breath of the oarsmen,

  triremes2 under Cyprus,

  The long course of the seas,

  The words woven in wind-wrack,

  salt spray over voices.

  Tyro3 to shoreward lies lithe with Neptunus

  And the glass-clear wave arches over them;

  Seal sports in the spray-whited circles of cliff-wash,

  Sleek head, daughter of Lir,4

  eyes of Picasso

  Under black fur-hood, lithe daughter of Ocean;

  And the wave runs in the beach-groove:

  Eleanor, ἐλἑναυς and ἐλἑπτoλiς,5

  and poor old Homer blind, blind, as a bat,

  Ear, ear for the sea-surge, murmur of old men’s voices:

  “Let her go back to the ships,

  Back among Grecian faces,

  lest evil come on our own,

  Evil and further evil, and a curse cursed on our children.

  Moves, yes she moves like a goddess

  And has the face of a god

  and the voice of Schoeney’s daughters,6

  And doom goes with her in walking,

  Let her go back to the ships,

  back among Grecian voices.”

  And by the beach-run, Tyro,

  Twisted arms of the sea-god,

  Lithe sinews of water, gripping her, cross-hold,

  And the blue-gray glass of the wave tents them,

  Glare azure of water,

  cord-welter, close cover.

  Quiet sun-tawny sand-stretch,

  The gulls broad out their wings,

  nipping between the splay feathers;

  Snipe come for their bath,