La « Commercial Cable Company » est reliée, en Amérique, aux réseaux des Compagnies "the Postal Telegraph Co" et "the Canadian Pacific Telegraph", les deux compétiteurs les plus puissants que le Monopole ait jamais eus devant lui.

Ces deux puissants auxiliaires qui font corps commun avec son système sont, sans contredit, les mieux équipés du nouveau monde; ils possèdent 350,000 milles de fils partant des bureaux mêmes de la « Commercial Cable Company » et atteignant les centres commerciaux les plus importants compris entre les deux Océans.

Le bureau de Canso (Nouvelle-Ecosse), point d'atterrissement de trois grands câbles, est relié aux principales villes du Canada par des fils directs et spéciaux.

La « Commercial Cable Company » a inauguré le système de communication directe avec New-York, en 1884, en posant un câble qui aboutit au cœur même de la ville, et depuis lors, elle a plusieurs fois été la seule à assurer le service télégraphique entre l'Europe et l'Amérique.

Elle a établi, avec succès, sur ses câbles, un système automatique au moyen duquel le pouvoir de transmission est considérablement augmenté et les chances d'erreur sont diminuées.

Ses câbles sont pourvus du duplex, système Muirhead, et chacun d'eux équivaut à deux câbles ordinaires.

Par son câble du Havre, la « Commercial Cable Company » a établi une communication entièrement sous-marine entre le Continent d'Europe et les villes de New-York, Boston et La Havane.

Les longues lignes terrestres si souvent sujettes à interruptions sont ainsi évitées.

La voie « Commercial » est la meilleure, la plus courte et la plus digne de confiance qui existe entre l'Europe et l'Amérique, et toutes les assertions contraires sont dénuées de fondement.

Cette Compagnie possède, pour la transmission en Amérique des dépêches du Continent, des facilités qu'aucune autre Compagnie ne peut mettre en parallèle, et qui viennent d'être encore augmentées par la pose d'un cinquième câble transatlantique, d'un câble direct de New-York à La Havane et de deux câbles directs de New-York à Saint-Jean-de-Terre-Neuve, où se trouve reporté l'atterrissage de deux de ses câbles transatlantiques.

506

EIGHTH CANTO

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,
bend out their wing-joints,
Spread wet wings to the sun-film,

And by Scios,
to left of the Naxos passage,
Naviform rock overgrown,
algae cling to its edge,
There is a wine-red glow in the shallows,
a tin flash in the sun-dazzle.

The ship landed in Scios,
men wanting spring-water,
And by the rock-pool a young boy loggy with vine-must,
“To Naxos? yes, we’ll take yuh to Naxos,
Cum’ along lad.”
“Not that way!”
“Aye, that way is Naxos.”

And I said: “It’s a straight ship.”
And an ex-convict out of Italy
knocked me into the fore-stays,
(He was wanted for manslaughter in Tuscany)
And the whole twenty against me,
Mad for a little slave money.
And they took her out of Scios
And off her course . . .
And the boy came to, again, with the racket,
And looked out over the bows,
and to eastward, and to the Naxos passage.

God-sleight then,
Ship stet
Ivy upon the

Ivy in scupper-
Aye, I, Acoetes,

Water cutting u
Sea-break from

And where was
And tenthril w

Heavy vine on
And, out of n

Beasts like sha

Lynx-purr, and

Sniff and pad-

The sky overs
Sniff and pad

Rustle of air

And the ship

Ribs stuck f

Lifeless air l

Leopards snif

Crouched pan

And the sea

EZRA POUND

507

God-sleight then, god-sleight:

Ship stock fast in sea-swirl,
Ivy upon the oars, King Pentheus,

Pentheus

grapes with no seed but sea-foam,

Ivy in scupper-hole

Aye, I, Acoetes, stood there,

and the god stood by me,

Water cutting under the keel,

Sea-break from stern forrards,

wake running off from the bow,

And where was gunwale, there now was vine-trunk,

And tenthril where cordage had been,

grape-leaves on the rowlocks

Heavy vine on the oarshafts,

And, out of nothing, a breathing,

hot breath on my ankles,

Beasts like shadows in glass,

a furred tail upon nothingness.

Lynx-purr, and heathery smell of beasts,

where tar smell had been,

Sniff and pad-foot of beasts,

eye-glitter out of black air,

The sky overshot, dry, with no tempest,

Sniff and pad-foot of beasts,

fur brushing my knee-skin,

Rustle of airy sheaths,

dry forms in the *aether*,

And the ship like a keel in ship-yard,

slung like an ox in smith's sling,

Ribs stuck fast in the ways,

grape-cluster over pin-rack,

Void air taking pelt,

Lifeless air become sinewed,

feline leisure of panthers,

Leopards sniffing the grape shoots by scupper-hole,

Crouched panthers by fore-hatch,

And the sea blue-deep about us,

green-ruddy in shadows,

hold,
ts them,

y feathers;

assage,

azzle.

with vine-must,
to Naxos,

o."

-stays,
uiscany)

e,

the racket,
os passage.

steps

as one face,

"Stretti",

Morosini,

have been.

Palazzo dei Leoni

shed,
new was fallen.

of vorus,
ake

ed mippie.

over

508

EIGHTH CANTO

And Lyaeus:

"From now, Acoetes, my altars,
Fearing no bondage,
fearing no cat of the wood,
Safe with my lynxes,
feeding grapes to my leopards,
Olibanum is my incense,
the vines grow in my homage."

The back-swell now smooth in the rudder-chains,
Black snout of a porpoise
where Lycabs had been,
Fish-scales on the oarsmen.

And I worship.
I have seen what I have seen.
When they brought the boy I said:
"He has a god in him,
though I do not know which god,"
And they kicked me into the fore-stays.
And I was frightened,
but I am not afraid any longer,
I have seen what I have seen:
Medon's face like the face of a dory,
Arms shrunk into fins.

And you, Pentheus,
Had as well listen to Tiresias, and to Cadmus,
or your luck will go out of you.
Fish-scales over groin muscles,
lynx-purr amid sea . . .

And of a later year,
pale in the wine-red algae,
If you will lean over the rock,
the coral face under wave-tinge,
Rose-paleness under water-shift,
Ileuthyeria, fair Dafne of sea-bords,
The swimmer's arms turned to branches,
Who will say in what year,
fleeing what band of tritons,

EZRA POUND

The smooth brows, seen, and half seen,
now ivory stillness.

And So-shu churned in the sea, So-shu also,
using the long moon for a churn-stick...
Lithe turning of water,
sinews of Poseidon,
Black-azure and hyaline,
glass wave over Tyro,
Close cover,
unstillness,
bright welter of wave-cords,
Then quiet water,
quiet in the buff sands,
Sea-fowl stretching wing-joints,
splashing in rock-hollows and sand-hollows
In the wave-runs by the half-dune;
Glass-glint of wave in the tide-rips against sunlight,
pallor of Hesperus,
Grey peak of the wave,
wave, colour of grape's pulp,

Olive grey in the near,
far, smoke-grey of the rock-slide.
Salmon-pink wings of the fish-hawk
cast grey shadows in water,
The tower like a one-eyed great goose
cranes up out of the olive-grove,

And we have heard the fauns chiding Proteus
in the smell of hay under the olive-trees.
And the frogs singing against the fauns
in the half-light.

509

LONDON LETTER

April, 1922

LONDON, after three months, appeared to me quite unchanged: the same things one liked, the same things one detested, and the same things to which one was indifferent. I set about to hear any important news, of books, of people, of productions or events, and found nothing worthy of mention. This, of course, might happen anywhere. Nevertheless, after a separation, one is disposed to generalize about impressions; so I have been led to contemplate, for many moments, the nature of the particular torpor or deadness which strikes a denizen of London on his return.

There is certainly, in the atmosphere of literary London, something which may provisionally be called a moral cowardice. It is not simply cowardice, but a caution, a sort of worldly prudence which believes implicitly that English literature is so good as it is that adventure and experiment involve only unjustified risk; lack of ambition, laziness, and refusal to recognize foreign competition; a tolerance which is no better than torpid indifference; not cowardice merely, but still a composition of inertias which is usually to be found in general cowardice. It is facilitated by conditions which are universal as well, by democracy (in the vague habitual sense of the word) by the newspapers, the reviewing of books, the journalistic life; by the actual and by every proposed economic system, which give so high a place to Security—whether in the form of gilt-edged bonds or old-age pensions—and so low a place to adventure and contemplation. But in London these poisons are either more pernicious, or their effects more manifest, than elsewhere. Other cities decay, and extend a rich odour of putrefaction; London merely shrivels, like a little bookkeeper grown old.

This is the principal impression one derives from the consideration of any and every anthology of contemporary verse that appears. As the two last that I have seen are Methuen and Company's Anthology of Modern Verse, and Mr Untermeyer's Modern American Poetry, I fall upon these as text-books for a comparison. With the merits of the anthologies I have nothing to do; only with a general

C-FILE, A BINDER, PAT. SEPT. 28, 1922

For the
And their
And the
And the
And peace
Float.
Go
Bright
Light,
Panisks,
And from
Through
A-whisper
And their
And in the
Water gl
And S
Scarabs
On steps

THREE CANTOS

BY EZRA POUND

THE FIFTH CANTO

Great bulk, huge mass, thesaurus;
Ecbatan, 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,
Iamblichus' light, the souls ascending,
Sparks like a partridge covey,
Like the "ciocco," brand struck in the game.

"Et omniformis": 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!
"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 . . .

WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

unified by an image, or bundle of related images, symbolical or evocative of the state of mind, which is of all states of mind not impossible, the most difficult to that man, race, or nation; because only the greatest obstacle that can be contemplated without despair, rouses the will to full intensity.

A powerful class by terror, rhetoric, and organized sentimental-
ity, may drive their people to war but the day draws near when
they cannot keep them there; and how shall they face the pure
nations of the East when the day comes to do it with but equal
arms? I had seen Ireland in my own time turn from the bragging
rhetoric and gregarious humour of O'Connell's generation and
school, and offer herself to the solitary and proud Parnell as to
her anti-self, buskin following hard on sock, and I had begun to
hope, or to half hope, that we might be the first in Europe to seek
unity as deliberately as it had been sought by theologian, poet,
sculptor, architect, from the eleventh to the thirteenth century.
Doubtless we must seek it differently, no longer considering it con-
venient to epitomize all human knowledge, but find it we well
might could we first find philosophy and a little passion.

XXIV

It was the death of Parnell that convinced me that the moment
had come for work in Ireland, for I knew that for a time the imagi-
nation of young men would turn from politics. There was a little
Irish patriotic society of young people, clerks, shop boys, shop
girls, and the like, called the Southwick Irish Literary Society. It
had ceased to meet because each member of the committee had
lectured so many times that the girls got the giggles whenever a
committee man stood up to speak. I invited the committee to my
father's house at Bedford Park and there proposed a new organiza-
tion. After a few months spent in founding, with the help of T. W.
Rolleston who came to that first meeting and had a knowledge of
committee work I lacked, the Irish Literary Society, which soon
included every London Irish author and journalist, I went to Dub-
lin and founded there a similar society.

The End

"Are set abroad
And the vine
North wind
Toss up chill

And many a th
Of thee, Att
And from M
In maze of a
The air was

Gave him hi
Came lust of
And out of E

Lei fassar für
And left her

Poicebot, no
(Sea-change,

Found a wor
Hard night,

And Pieire w
Song or land
And had De

While Mene
He kept Tyr

John Borgia

Tiber, dark
Click of the
Clutching th
Slander is up

EZRA POUND

199

"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, unfruitful.

The talks ran long in the night.
And from Mauleon, fresh with a new earned grade,
In maze of approaching rain-steps, Poicebot—
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;
And out of England a knight with slow-lifting eyelids
Lei fassar furar a del, 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,
Song or land on the throw, and was dreitz hom
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 Borgia 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 Varchi of Florence,

THREE CANTOS

"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 il reis Louis lo entendit

mout er fasché

And yet Gisors, 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 Vexis 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 mon 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 Alix 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 Kamel

EZRA POUND

203

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.
The serpent coils in the crowd.)

The letters run: Tancred 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

204

THREE CANTOS

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 Alix 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, Malemort
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, and then Bernart saying:

“My Lady of Ventadorn
“Is shut by Eblis in, 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.”

EZR A POUND

THE SEVENTH CANTO

Eleanor (she spoiled in a British climate)
Έλανδρος and Έλέπτολις, 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"
The chatter above the circus, "Nullum tamen excute."
Then file and candles, e li mestiers ecoutes;
Scene for the battle only, but still scene,
Pennons and standards y cavals armatz,
Not mere succession of strokes, sightless narration,
And Dante's "ciocco," 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 baromètre ... »

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 tardi
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.

206

THREE CANTOS

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.

Ione, dead the long year,
My lintel, and Liu Ch'e's lintel.
Time blacked out with the rubber.

The Elysée carries a name on
And the bus behind me gives me a date for peg;
Low ceiling and the Erard 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 Gama wore striped pants in Africa
And "Mountains of the sea gave birth to troops";

Le vieux commode en acajou:

beer-bottles of various strata,
But is she as dead as Tyro? In seven years?

Έλέναυς, ξλανδρος, έλεπτολις
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,

And all that day
Nicea 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 . . .

EZRA POUND

207

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,
"Toc" 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,
Dido choked up with sobs for her Sicheus
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,

208

THREE CANTOS

Lift up their spoons to mouths, put forks in cutlets,
And make sound like the sound of voices.

Lorenzaccio

Being more live than they, more full of flames and voices.
Ma si morisse!

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 and thrice warned, watcher,

Eternal watcher of things,
Of things, of men, of passions.

Eyes floating in dry, dark air,
E biondo, with glass-grey iris, with an even side-fall of hair
The stiff, still features.