Zeus lies in Ceres' bosom

Taishan is attended of loves

                    under Cythera, before sunrise

and he said: "Hay aquí mucho catolicismo--(sounded
catolithismo)

                    y muy poco reliHión"

and he said: "Yo creo que los reyes desaparecen"

(Kings will, I think, disappear)

That was Padre José Elizondo

                         in 1906 and 1917

or about 1917

          and Dolores said "Come pan, niño," eat bread, me lad

Sargent had painted her

                         before he descended

(i.e., if he descended)

          but in those days he did thumb sketches,

impressions of the Velásquez in the Museo del Prado

and books cost a peseta,

               brass candlesticks in proportion,

hot wind came from the marshes

     and death-chill from the mountains.

And later Bowers wrote: "but such hatred,

     I had never conceived such"

and the London reds wouldn't show up his friends

               (i.e., friends of Franco

working in London) and in Alcázar

forty years gone, they said: "Go back to the station to eat,

you can sleep here for a 
          goat bells tinkled all night

          and the hostess grinned: "Eso es luto, haw!

mi marido es muerto"

          (it is morning, my husband is dead)

when she gave me paper of the locanda to write on

with a black border half an inch or more deep, say 5/8ths,

"We call all foreigners frenchies"

and the egg in Cabranez' pocket,

          thus making history.  Basil says

they beat drums for three days

till all the drumheads were busted

          (simple village fiesta)

and as for his life in the Possum observed that the local portagoose folk
dance

was danced by the same dancers in divers localities

          in political welcome . . .

the technique of demonstration

          André Spire,

"that every man on that board (Credit Agricole)

has a brother-in-law."

               "You the one, I the few"

               said (to break the pentameter, that was the first heave)

or as Jo Bard says: "They never speak to each other,

if it is baker and concierge visibly

          it is La Rochefoucald and de Maintenon audibly."

"Te caveró le budella"

               "La corata a te"

In less than a geological epoch

                    said Henry Mencken

"Some cook, some do not cook,

     some things cannot be altered"

Benin for this table ex packing box

     "doan yu tell no one I made it"

               from a mask as fine as any in Frankfurt

"It'll get you offn th' groun"

               Light as the branch of Kuanon

And at first disappointment with shoddy

the bare ramshackle quais, but then saw the

high buggy wheels

               and was reconciled,

George Santayana arriving in the port of Boston

and kept to the end of his life that faint thethear

of the Spaniard

               as a grace quasi imperceptible,

as did Muss the v for u of Romagna,

and said the grief was a full act

          repeated for each new condoleress

working up to a climax.

And George Horace said he wd/ "get Beveridge"
(Senator)

Beveridge wouldn't talk and he wouldn't write for the papers

but George got him by campin' in his hotel

and assailin' him at lunch breakfast an' dinner

               three articles

and my ole man went on hoein' corn

     while George was a-tellin' him,

come across a vacant lot

          where you'd occasionally see a wild rabbit

or mebbe only a loose one

     AOI!

     a leaf in the current

                         at my grates no Althea


Lawes and Jenkins guard thy
rest

               Dolmetsch ever be thy guest,

Has he tempered the viol's wood

To enforce both  the grave  and the acute?

Has he curved us the bowl of the lute?

               Lawes and Jenkins guard thy rest

               Dolmetsch ever be thy guest,

Hast 'ou fashioned so airy a mood

     To draw up leaf from the root?

Hast 'ou found  a cloud  so light

     As seemed neither mist nor shade?


               Then resolve me, tell me aright

               If Dowland
played.


          Your eyen two wol sleye me sodenly

          I may the beauté of hem nat susteyene


And for 180 years almost nothing.


Ed ascoltando il leggier mormorio

     there came new subtlety of eyes into my tent,

whether of spirit or hypostasis,

     but what the blindfold hides

or at carneval

                    nor any pair showed anger

     Saw but the eyes and stance between the eyes,

colour, diastasis,

     careless or unaware it had not the

   whole tent's room

nor was place for the full 

interpass, penetrate

     casting but shade beyond the other lights

          sky's clear

          night's sea

          green of the mountain pool

          shone from the unmasked eyes in half-mask's space.

What thou lovest well remains,

                              the rest is dross

What thou lov'st well shall not be reft from thee

What thou lov'st well is thy true heritage

Whose world, or mine or theirs

                         or is it of none?

First came the seen, then thus the palatable

     Elysium, though it were in the halls of hell,

What thou lovest well is thy true heritage

What thou lov'st well shall not be reft from thee


The ant's a centaur in his dragon world.

     Pull down thy vanity, it is not man

Made courage, or made order, or made grace,

Pull down thy vanity, I say pull down.

Learn of the green world what can be thy place

In scaled invention or true artistry,

Pull down thy vanity,

                  Paquin pull down!

The green casque has out done your elegance.


"Master thyself, then others shall thee beare"

     Pull down thy vanity

Thou art a beaten dog beneath the hail,

A swollen magpie in a fitful sun,

Half black half white

Nor knowst'ou wing from tail

Pull down thy vanity

               How mean thy hates

Fostered in falsity,

               Pull down thy vanity,

Rathe to destroy, niggard in charity

Pull down thy vanity,

               I say pull down.


But to have done instead of not doing

               This is not vanity

To have, with decency, knocked

That a Blunt should open

          To have gathered from the air a live tradition

or from a fine old eye the unconquered flame

This is not vanity.

     Here error is all in the not done,

all in the diffidence that faltered . . .

Kybernekia

kyber: Greek prefix from kybernan: to steer/govern and kybernetes a pilot/governor, root of the English word "cybernetics": control systems and theory in nervous and computational networks, shortened in postmodern lingo to "cyber" and continuously misapplied by pop culture.

nekyia: Greek, ceremony of giving a spirit of the dead a draught of blood to "liven" it and provoke it to speak.

Zeus lies in Ceres' bosom

Zues was the lord of the gods in Greek mythology and is thus identified with maculine and political power. He was married to the goddess Hera, who was his sister, but had numerous affairs with other gods and mortals. He had a child by another sister, Demeter (called by the Romans,Ceres), the goddess of agriculture. That child was Persephone, who became identified with the changing of the seasons.

Source: -- Grimal, Pierre, The Dictionary of Classical Mythology. Translated by A.R. Maxwell-Hyslop Oxford: Basil Blackwell Publisher Limited, 1986.

Taishan

Tai Shan Chinese: Great Mountain. Tai Shan is perhaps the most renowned of the sacred mountains in China, its sides and peaks are the sites of many sacred and legendary places. At one point the mountain itself was decreed a god.

Source: Geil, William Edgar, The Sacred Five of China. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1926.

"A half-mile square of barbed wire enclosed the place; birds settled on the strands, the prisoner was to observe, like notes of silent music. North and east stretched mountains, one cone shaped above delicate trees (he named it Taishan, for China's sacred peak), two to the left of it low and hemispherical (he named them the Breasts of Helen)."

--Kenner, Hugh, The Pound Era, University of California Press, 1971, pg.471.

Cytheria

After Aphrodite, Greek goddess of love, was born out of the sea, the Zephyrs, or wind spirits, carried her to the coast of Cyprus where she was prepared to be introduced to the other gods. On the way they stopped briefly on Cytheria, and that island became sacred to the goddess. The planet Venus, which bears the goddess' Roman name, is also identified with Aphrodite, and therefore, with love.

Source: Grimal, Pierre, The Dictionary of Classical Mythology. Translated by A.R. Maxwell-Hyslop Oxford: Basil Blackwell Publisher Limited, 1986.

"Hay aquí mucho catolicismo.../y muy poco reliHión"/..."Yo creo que los reyes desaparecen"

Spanish: "Here is much Catholicism.../and very little religion/..."Kings, I think, will disappear"

Padre José Elizondo

"Padre José's name was enough to get me a photo of the Cavalcanti ms. in the Escorial (that was before Spain started killing off Spaniards with forgien assistance). Similar degree of civilization does NOT inhere in Cornell University."

-- EP, Guide to Kulchur, New Directions, 1952, pg. 158.

Dolores

Who exactly Dolores was has never been determined. Pound mentions her in Canto XXXVII: "If Dolores/Had not put on a hat shaped like a wig/She might have remained an exotic."

There is a theory that Sargent

John Singer Sargent (1856-1925), American painter Pictured: "Carmencia" (Is this Velásquez in the Museo del Prado

Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velásquez (1599-1660), Spanish painter

Museo del Prado: The Spanish National Museum, located in Madrid

Pictured: "Maids of Honor"

peseta

The basic Spanish monetary unit, comprable with the dollar.

Bowers

Claude Gernade Bowers (1878-1958), American journalist, historian and diplomat, embassator to Spain 1933-39, the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) took place during his time in office. He was the author of Beveridge and the Progressive Party.

"As author of Jefferson and Hamilton Bowers was one of the few modern historians in good odour with Pound, who often recommened the book as a true account of the struggle between Jefferson and Hamilton. ...[Pound] was surprised to learn that he [Bowers] was United States ambassador to Spain. Bower's letter was dated 10 May 1938, from San Jean de Luz in France; in it her refered to 'the astmosphere of incredible hate' in Spain, a phrase which Pound later working into his cantos."

Stock, Noel, The Life of Ezra Pound, London, Routledge & Keagan Paul, 1970, pg. 352.

London reds

"During the time of the Spanish Civil War, Moscow considered the collective security of the Allied nations to be more important than any other issue. They wanted Britain, France, the US and the Soviets to stand firm agains the Nazi-Facist threat. To that end, it was official policy not to upset the Western democracies by sponsoring worldwide revolution. Thus, at the time of the people's revolution against Franco and the Falangists in Spain, there were several Red or Communist groups. Some joined the fight against Franco, but because of the Moscow line, some were actually fighting on the side of Franco. The two groups were represented among the Marxists in London and the US. Some English units left for Spain to join the battle, as did the Abraham Lincoln Battalion from the United States. But some, following the Moscow line meticulously, would not expose those agents of Franco working in London."

--George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia, Boston, Beacon Press, 1962.

Franco

Francisco F. Franco (1892-1675), Spanish general and dictator who, with the help of Germany and Italy, was victorious in the Spanish Civil War.

Alcázar

Alcázar de San Juan, town in central Spain which Pound visited in 1906.

"Alcazar...a thousand mosques that Keats couldn't have over described, a sense of man and of human dignity yet unoblitherated."

-- EP, Guide to Kulchur, New Directions, 1952, pg. 53.

locanda

Italian: Inn or boarding house

Cabranez'

The exact identity of Cabranez and the meaning of the egg breaking in his pocket are unknown. One possiblity is that it refers to Dr. Augustin Caban&eaccute;s (1862-1928), who was famous for his researches into sexual behavior.

Basil

Basil Bunting (?), British poet and friend of Pound. Bunting was born in the Tyne Valley area of England. During the three days between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, when Christ was supposed to be harrowing Hell, the people of his village -- man, woman and child -- were supposed to beat drums day and night nourished by little except wine. They did this until the hands of many become a bloody mess and hundreds were groaning with pain. They called th annual event a "simple village fiesta".

Source: Bunting, Basil, Pai, 10:3, 619-621.

Canaries

Basil Bunting lived in the Canary Islands, which are located off the northwest coast of Africa and are owned by Spain. between1933 and 1936.

"As for life in the Canaries I suppose Ezra is thinking of my description of the sexual mores of the islands in those days, so very unlike those of New York and Philadelphia in his time, perhaps even a bit alarming to his fundamentally puritan soul..."

--Bunting, Basil Pai, 10:3, 619-621.

Canaries

The Canary Islands, which are located off the northwest coast of Africa and are possesed by Spain.

Possum

Pound's nickname for T. S. Eliot, author of Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats.

Portagoose

Portuguese

Cole ... (not G.D.H., Horace)

Horace Cole (1874-?) writer for magazines and contributor to 20th Century Business Practice.

G.D.H. Cole (1880-1959) George Douglas Howard Cole, English economist and novelist.

"You will find" said old André Spire,/"that every man on that board (Credit Agricole)/has a brother-in-law."

André Spire (1868-1966) French writer and advocate of Zionism. Spire once served on a French Agricultural Board, a device to extend credit to farmers to buy faming supplies, he felt that such boards were often influenced by favortism.

"Old Spire who had sat on a Credit Agricole board said: 'Yes, very nice, communal credit, but when you get your board, every man on the board has a brother-in-law'"

--EP, Jefferson and/or Mussolini, (?)

"You the one, I the few"/said John Adams/speaking of fears in the abstract/to his volatile friend Mr. Jefferson

John Adams, John Quincy Adams (1767-1848) sixth president of the US (1825-29).

Mr. Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) third president of the US (1801-09).

"We agree...that the many should have full, fair, and perfect representation. You are apprehensive of monarchy, I, of aristocracy" (?)

(to break the pentameter, that was the first heave)

Pound beleived that part of the process of bringing poetry back to the common man was the removal artificial rhythms.

Jo Bard

Joseph Bard (1882-1975), Hungarian-born British writer and friend of Pound's.

La Rochefoucald and de Maintenon

The Duc de le Rochefoucald (1747-1827) was a sophisticated French stylist.

Madame de Maintenon (1635-1719) was the mistress and later the second wife of Louis XIV. She was regarded as a woman of wit and wisdom.

"Te caveró le budella"/"La corata a te"

Italian: "I'll cut you guts out" / "(And I) yours"

In less than a geological epoch/said Henry Mencken

Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1959), American editor, author and critic.

"Mecken writes me (his letter dated March 1st). 'Certainly the fact that a professional politician makes a mess of something is no proof that it is intrisically unsound. Nevertheless, I believe that all schemes of monetary reform collide inevitably with the nature of man in the mass. He can't be convinced in anything less than a geological epoch.'
"Above statment does not invalidate geological process."

-- EP, Guide to Kulchur, New Directions, 1952, pg. 182.

"Some cook, some do not cook,/some things cannot be altered"

"Dorothy [Pound] made no attempt to learn to cook -- 'Remember, I can't do a thing myself,' she warned him soon before the marriang -- and Ezra accepted this philosphically. 'Some cook, some do not cook,/some things can not be changed,' he writes in Canto 54. Wyndham Lewis has recorded that Ezra was 'an excellent cook.'"

--Carpenter, Humphrey, A Serious Character, The Life of Ezra Pound, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1988, pg. 237.

Greek: "Little wheel, man to my house." Used as a repeating motif by Theocritus in his Idyll II, The Soceress, where a woman casts a spell to lure her unfaithful lover back home. The poem begins:

Where are my bay-leaves?  Bring them, Thestylis,

And all that is

Of magic power, and with fine crimson wool

Wreathe thou the bowl,

That I with witch's spell may bind my love,

So hard to move!


My love?  Ah, cruel wretch, eleven days

And still he stays!

No knock at the door!  Whether I live or die

His perfidy

Recks not; Love and the Cyprian have inclined

His fickle mind

To seek some rival maiden, while I wait

Scorned, desolate!


Tomorrow to the wrestling-school I'll hie,

Face him and cry,

'Why treat my suit with this ungallant scorn,

Leave me forlorn?'

Today I'll draw him, bound to my desire,

With potent fire!


Shine bright, O Moon!  I'll sing my quiet song

And plead my wrong

To thee and that grim soceress of Hell,

Whose presence fell

Sets the dogs howling as they watch her tread

Over the dead,

Over the graves and the blood's dark red sea!

O Hecate!

Hail, goddess!  Now do thou my spells attend

Unto the end,

And on my magic drugs in this dread hour

Bestow such power

As wielded once those old enchantresses

Circe, Medea and Perimede of the golden tresses!


     Draw to my house, O Wheel, the man I love!

                    . . . .

-- The Idylls of Theocritus in English Verse, trans. W. Douglas P. Hill, Eton, Windsor, Shakespear Head Press, 1959.

Benin

Benin is the name city and river in South Nigeria, famous for its bronze masks.

Frankfurtis German city which houses the Institute of Cultural Morphology. The collection of the Institute features many cultural objects from Africa, including masks from Benin.

Kuanon

Japanese name for Kuan-yin, Chinese Goddess of mercy.

"

Santayana

George Santayana (1863-1952), Spanish-born American philospher.

"Here by chance my eye, at the first moment of my setting foot in the new world, was caught by symbols of Yankee ingenuity and Yankee haste which I couln't in the least understand but which instinctively pleased and displeased me. I was facinatied by the play of the skeleton wheels, crossing one another like whirling fans in the air, and I was disgusted by such a dirty ramshackle peir for a great steamship line. I think now that the two things expressed the same mentality. The pier served its immediate purpose, for there we were landing safely at it; it hadn't required any great outlay of capital; and what did it matter if it was ugly and couldn't last long? It might last long enough to pay, and enable the company to build a better one. As for the buggy, its extreme lightness economised force and made speed possible over sandy and ill-kept roads."

"Primitive human nature in my aunt Mar&iaccute;a Josefa yielded absolutely to every passion in turn, put up with every trial, but survived and clung no less passionately to whatever was left. Her grief on this occasion [her daughter's death] was violent, but only violent in fits, as when each new visitor came to condole with her, and she had to repeat the whole story, with appropriate floods of tears, sobs, and lamentations"

--Santayana, George, Persons and Places, Fragments of an Autobiography, Cambridge, MIT Press, 1956, pgs 130 and 124.

thethear

Spanish: Lisp, the actual word is "cecear," but it is spelled here as it would be pronounced by a Castillian, with a soft lisp on the "c".

Muss

Benito Mussolini (1883-1945), Italian Dictator (1922-45).

"Don't knock Mussolini, at least not until you have weighed up the obstacles and necessities of the time. He will end with Sigismundo and the men of order, not with the pus-sacks and destroyers. I believe that anything human will and understanding of comtemporary Itlay cd. accomplish, he has done and will continue to do. Details later. Don't be blinded by theorists and a lying press."

--EP, in a letter to John Drummond dated 18 February 1932. FromThe Letters of Ezra Pound 1907- 1941, ed. D.D. Paige, New York, Haskell House Publishers, 1974, pg. 320.

"The heritage of Jefferson, Quincy Adams, old John Adams, Jackson, Van Buren is HERE, NOW in the Italian Peninsula at the beginning of the facist second dennio, not in Massachusetts or Deleware."

EPJefferson and/or Mussolini (compare with Bowers' book,) (?)

(Pound meets Muss)

Romagna

Region of Itlay which now forms the provinces of Bologna, Ferrara, Ravenna, and Forli.

George Horace

George Horace Lorimer (1868-1937), American Journalist and editor-in-chief of the Saturday Evening Post (1899-1936). He was a neighbor of the Pounds at Wyncote, PA.

Beveridge

Albert Jeremiah Beveridge (1862-1927) US senator (1899-1911). In 1899 he made an inspection trip to the Philippines.

"'How about the Philippines, Senator?' shouted one of the crowd. 'Let's not talk about the Philippines,' he replied; 'let's talk about home.' Again, steadfastly, though courteously, he refused to be intervied on his journey. He was saving his observations for the speech he planned to make as his intial bow to the Senate."
"The spring and summer of 1900 found Beveridge feverishly at work. He had agreed with George H. Lorimer, editor of the 'Saturday Evening Post,' to write six articles, in the imperialistic vein, on his experiences in the Philippines. This was the begining of an intimacy with Lorimer that was to continue through his life, for never was he to find anyone else who ministered so completely to his need for relaxation."

Bowers, Claude G., Beveridge and The Progressive Era, New York: The Literary Guild, 1932, pgs. 112 and 131.

AOI!

AOI is an expression of unknown meaning found in the Oxford manuscript of the Chanson de Roland (French: "Song of Roland") where it occurs 172 times, usually following the last lines of a laisse (stanza). It is presumed by most scholars to be an exclamation of some sort. Pound may be supporing this view though his addition of an exclamation point.

Althea

To Althea,

From Prison.

Song.

.
I.

When Love with unconfined wings

     Hovers within my Gates;

And my divine Althea brings

     To whisper at the Grates:

When I lye tangeld in her haire,

     And fetterd to her eye;

The Gods that wanton in the Aire,

     Know no such Liberty


II.

When flowing Cups runs swiftly round

     With no allaying Thames,

Our carelesse heads with Roses bound,

     Our hearts with Loyall Flames;

When thrifty griefe in Wine we steepe,

     When Healths and draughts go free,

Fishes that tipple in the Deepe,

     Know no such Libertie.


III.

When (like committed Linnets) I

     With shriller throat shall sing

The sweetnes, Mercy Majesty,

     And glories of my KING;

When I shall voice aloud, how Good

     He is, how Great should be;

          Inlarged Winds that curle the Flood,

          Know no such Liberty.


IV.

Stone Walls doe not a Prison make,

     Nor I'ron bars a Cage;

Mindes innocent and quiet take

     That for a Hermitage;

If I have freedome in my Love,

     And in my soule an free;

Angles alone tha sore above,

     Injoy such Liberty.

Richard Lovelace, British poet, (1618-67).

The Poems of Richard Lovelace, ed. C.H. Wilkinson, Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1953, pg. 78- 79.

libretto

Poetry set to music, song.

Lawes

Henry L. Lawes (1596-1662) English musician and composer known for his masques and airs for voice. He also set Waller's poem "Go Lovely Rose" to music.

"Lawes...will not gather 10,000 groundlings. Not in our time."

-- EP, Guide to Kulchur, New Directions, 1952, pg. 155.

Jenkins

John Jenkins (1592-1678) English composer and musician to Charles I and II. He composed many fancies for viol and organ.

Dolmetsch

Arnold Dolmetsch (1858-1940) musicologist and builder of modern reconstructions of old instruments, advocated a revival of interest in pre-Baroque music.

Hast 'ou fashioned so airy a mood/To draw up leaf from the root?/Hast 'ou found a cloud so light/As seemed neither mist nor shade?

4.

Her Triumph

See the Chariot at hand here of Love

     Wherein my Lady rideth!

Each that drawes, is a Swan, or Dove,

     And well the Carre Love guideth;

And she goes, all hearts doe duty

          Unto her beauty;

And enamour'd, do wish, so they might

          But enjoy such a sight,

That they still were, to run by her side,

Through Swords, through Seas, whether she would ride.


Doe but looke on her eyes, they doe light

     All that Loves would compriseth!

Doe but looke on her Haire, it is bright

     As Loves starre when it riseth!

Doe but marke her forhead's smoother

          Then words that sooth her!

And from her arched browes, such a grace

          Sheds it selfe though the face,

As alone there triumphs to the life

All the Gaine, all the Good, of the Elements strife.


Have you seene but a bright Lillie grow,

     Before rude hands have touch'd it?

Ha'you mark'd but the fall o'the Snow

     Before the soyle hath smutch'd it?

Ha'you felt th wooll of Bever?

          Or Swan's downe ever?

Or have smelt o'the bud o'the Brier?

          Or the Nard in the fire?

Or have tasted the bag of the Bee?

O so white! O so soft! O so sweet is she!

Waller

Edmund W. Waller (1606-1687) English poet, author of "Go, Lovely Rose," the poem set to music by Lawes, (and which was the template for Pound's poem "Envoy".)

Song.

Go lovely Rose,

Tell her that wastes her time and me,

     That now she knows

When I resemble her to thee

     How sweet and fair she seems to be.


     Tell her that's young,

And shuns to have her grace spy'd

     That hadst thou sprung

In desarts where no men abide,

     Thou must have uncommended dy'd.


     Small is the worth

Of beauty from the light retir'd;

     Bid her come forth,

Suffer her self to be desir'd

     And not blush so to be admir'd.


     Then die that she,

The common fate of all things rare

     May read in thee

How small a part of time they share,

     That are so wondrous and sweet and fair.

Dowland

John D. Dowland (1563-1626) Irish composer and lutanist.

Your eyen two wol sleye me sodenly/I may the beauté of hem nat susteyene

Merciles Beaute

A Triple Roundel


Your yen two wol slee me sodenly;

I may the beautee of hem not sustene,

So woundeth hit thourghout my herte kene.


And but you word wol helen hastily

My hertes wounde, while that hit is grene.

     Your yen two wol slee me sodenly;

     I may the beautee of hem not sustene.


Upon my trouthe I say you feithfully

That ye ben of my lyf and deeth the quene;

For with my deeth the trouthe shal be

          sene.

     Your yen two wol slee me sodenly;

     I may the beautee of hem not sustene,

     So woundelth it thourghtout my herte 

          kene.


II
So hath your beautee fro your herte chaced

Pitee, that me ne availeth not to pleyne;

For Daughter halt your mercy in his cheyne.



Giltless my deeth thus han ye me purchaced;

I sey you sooth, me nedeth not to feyne;

     So hath your beautee fro your herte

          chanced

     Pitee, that me ne avileth not you

          pleyne.


Alas! that Nature hath in you compassed

So greet beautee, that no man mey atteyne

To mercy, though he sterve for the peyne.

     So hath your beautee fro your herte

          chaced

     Pitee, that me ne availeth no to

          pleyne;

     For Daughter halt your mercy in his

          cheyne.


III
Sin I fro Love escaped am so fat,

I never thenk to ben in his prison lene;

Sin I am free, I counte him not a bene.


He may answere, and seye this and that;

I do no fors, I speke right as I mene.

     Sin I fro Love escaped am so fat,

     I never thenk to ben in his prison lene.


Love hath my name ystrike out of his scalt,

And he is strike out of my bokes clene

For evermo; [ther] is non other mene.

     Sin I fro Love escaped am so fat,

     I never thenk to ben in his prison lene;

     Sin I am free, I counte him not a bene.

--Geoffrey Chaucer

The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. F.N. Robinson, Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1933, pg. 638

Ed ascoltando il leggier mormorio

Italian: And listening to the light murmur

"Not a quotation, merely an author using handy language." EP to Hugh Kenner.

(Eidos) Greek: Knowing

Centaur

"Poetry is a centaur. The thinking word-arranging, clarifying faculty must move and leap with the energizing, sentient, musical faculties."

EP, Literary Essays of Ezra Pound, New Directions, New York, pg 52.

Paquin

Monsieur and Mamoiselle Paquin were French dress designers, their Salon was considered one of the fashion centers of the early 1900's.

"Master thyself, then others shall thee beare"

"Subdue thyself and others thee shall hear" "Ballad of Good Counsel" Chaucer

Rathe

Middle English: Quick

Blunt

Winlfred Scawen Blunt (1840-1922), English poet and political writer.

"When you published you first work, it was at the very height of the Victorian period. The abstract poet was in a state of glory. One no longer wrote as a human being, with an address, living in a London street, having a definite income, and a definite tradition, but one wrote as an abstract personality. One was expected to be very much wiser than other people. . . The only objection to such a conception of the poet was that it was impossible to believe he existed. . . Now instead of abstract poetry, you wrote verses which were pretty good poetry because they were, first of all, fine things to have thought or to have said in some real situation in life. . . We are now at the end of Victorian romance, completely at an end. One may admire Tennyson, but one cannot read him. . . If I take up today some of the things that interested me in the past I can no longer use them They bore me. Every year some part of my poetical machinery suddenly becomes of no use. . ."

--from a speech made by W.B. Yeats, reported by EP in "Homage to Wilfrid Blunt", Poetry, Volume III, October- March 1913-4, ed. Harriet Monroe, pg. 223.