47

RUNG walked
by the dynastic temple
and into the cedar grove,
and then out by the lower river,
And with him Khieu Tchi
and Tian the low speaking
And “we are unknown,” said Kung,
“You will take up charioteering?
Then you will become known,

"Or perhaps I should take up charioteering, or archery?

"Or the practice of public speaking?"

And Tseu-lou said, "I would put the defences in order,"

And Khieu said, "If I were lord of a province

I would put it in better order than this is."

And Tchi said, "I would prefer a small mountain temple,

"With order in the observances,

with a suitable performance of the ritual,"

And Tian said, with his hand on the strings of his lute

The low sounds continuing

after his hand left the strings,

And the sound went up like smoke, under the leaves,

And he looked after the sound:

"The old swimming hole,

"And the boys flopping off the planks,

"Or sitting in the underbrush playing mandolins."

And Kung smiled upon all of them equally.

And Thseng-sie desired to know:

"Which had answered correctly?"

And Kung said, "They have all answered correctly,

"That is to say, each in his nature."

And Kung raised his cane against Yuan Jang,

Yuan Jang being his elder,

For Yuan Jang sat by the roadside pretending to
be receiving wisdom.

And Kung said

"You old fool, come out of it,

Get up and do something useful."

And Kung said

"Respect a child's faculties

"From the moment it inhales the clear air,

"But a man of fifty who knows nothing

Is worthy of no respect."

And "When the prince has gathered about him

"All the savants and artists, his riches will be fully employed."

And Kung said, and wrote on the bo leaves:

If a man have not order within him

He can not spread order about him;

And if a man have not order within him

His family will not act with due order;

And if the prince have not order within him

He can not put order in his dominions.

And Kung gave the words "order" and "brotherly deference"

And said nothing of the "life after death."

And he said

"Anyone can run to excesses,

It is easy to shoot past the mark,

It is hard to stand firm in the middle."

And they said: If a man commit murder

Should his father protect him, and hide him?

And Kung said:

He should hide him.

And Kung gave his daughter to Kong-Tchang

Although Kong-Tchang was in prison.

And he gave his niece to Nan-Young

although Nan-Young was out of office.

And Kung said "Wang ruled with moderation,

In his day the State was well kept,

And even I can remember

A day when the historians left blanks in their writings,

I mean for things they didn't know,

But that time seems to be passing.

51

57

54 howling, as of a hen-yard in a printing-house,
the clatter of presses,
the blowing of dry dust and stray paper,
fætor, sweat, the stench of stale oranges,
dung, last cess-pool of the universe,
mysterium, acid of sulphur,
the pusillanimous, raging;
plunging jewels in mud,
and howling to find them unstained;
sadic mothers driving their daughters to bed with decrepitude,
sows eating their litters,
and here the placard ΕΙΚΩΝ ΓΗΣ,
and here: THE PERSONNEL CHANGES,
melting like dirty wax,
decayed candles, the bums sinking lower,
faces submerged under hams,
And in the ooze under them,
reversed, foot-palm to foot-palm,
hand-palm to hand-palm, the agents provocateurs.

H

The murderer of P.... and Mac D....,
Captain B. the chief torturer;
The petrified terd that was Verres,
bigots, Calvin, and St. Clement of Alexandria
black-beetles, burrowing into the shit,
The soil a decrepitude, the ooze full of morsels,
lost contours, erosions.

Above the hell-rot
the great arse-hole,
broken with piles,
hanging stalactites,
greasy as sky over Westminster,
the invisible, many English,
the place lacking in interest,
last squalor, utter decrepitude,
the vice-crusaders, fahring through silk,
waving the Christian symbols,
XV frigging a tin penny whistle,
Flies carrying news, harpies dripping shit through the air,

The slough of unamiable liars,
bog of stupidities,
malevolent stupidities, and stupidities,

52

55

the soil living pus, full of vermin,
dead maggots begetting live maggots,
slum owners,
insurers squeezing crab-lice, pandars to authority,
pets-de-loup, sitting on piles of stone books,
obscuring the texts with philology,
hiding them under their persons,
the air without refuge of silence,
the drift of lice, teething,
and above it the mouthing of orators,
the arse-belching of preachers.
And Invidia,
the corruptio, fætor, fungus,
liquid animals, melted ossifications,
slow rot, faëtid combustion,
chewed cigar-butts, without dignity, without tragedy,
m Episcopus, waving a condom full of black-beetles,
monopolists, obstructors of knowledge,
obstructors of distribution.

Gij

["53", "XV", "HE saccharous, lying in glucose,\nthe pompous in cotton wool", "with a stench like the fats at Grasse,\nthe great scabrous arse-hole, shitting flies,\nrumbling with imperialism,\nultimate urinal, middan, pisswallow without a cloaca,\nr less rowdy, Episcopus", "sis,", "head down, screwed into the swill,\nhis legs waving and pustular,", "a clerical jock-strap hanging back over the navel,\nhis condom full of black beetles,", "tattoo marks round the anus,\nand a circle of lady golfers about him.", "the courageous violent", "slashing themselves with knives,\nthe cowardly inciters to violence", "n and h eaten by weevils,\nll like a swollen fœtus,", "the beast with a hundred legs, USURIA\nand the swill full of respecters,", "bowing to the lords of the place,\nexplaining its advantages,", "and the laudatores temporis acti\nclaiming that the shit used to be blacker and richer\nand the fabians crying for the petrification of putrifaction,\nand for a new dung-flow cut in lozenges,\nand the conservatives chatting,", "distinguished by gaiters of slum-flesh,", "54", "and the back-scratchers in a great circle,\ncomplaining of insufficient attention,\nthe search without end, counterclaim for the missing scratch,\nthe litigious,\na green bile-sweat, the news owners, . . . . . .\nthe anonymous", "ffe, broken", "his head shot like a cannon-ball toward the glass gate,\npeering through it an instant,", "falling back to the trunk, epileptic,\nand nulla fidentia inter eos,", "all with their twitching backs,\nwith daggers, and bottle ends, waiting an\nunguarded moment;", "a stench, stuck in the nostrils;\nbeneath one", "nothing that might not move,\nmobile earth, a dung hatching obscenities,\ninchoate error,", "boredom born out of boredom,", "british weeklies, copies of the . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

58 and again Plotinus:

To the door,
Keep your eyes on the mirror.
Prayed we to the Medusa,
petrifying the soil by the shield,
Holding it downward
he hardened the track
Inch before us, by inch,
the matter resisting,
The head rose from the shield,
hissing, held downwards,
Devouring maggots,
the face only half potent,
The serpents' tongues
grazing the swill top,
Hammering the souse into hardness,
the narrow rast,
Half the width of a sword's edge.

By this through the dern evil,
now sinking, now clinging,
Oblivion,
forget how long,
sleep, fainting nausea.

"Whether in Naishapur or Babylon"
I heard in the dream.
Plotinus gone,
And the shield tied under me, woke;
The gate swung on its hinges;
Panting like a sick dog, staggered,
Bathed in alkali, and in acid.

Ηέλιον τ' Ἠέλιον
blind with the sunlight,
Swollen-eyed, rested,
lids sinking, darkness unconscious.

THE
SIXTEENTH
CANTO

ND before hell mouth; dry plain
and two mountains;
On the one mountain, a running form,
and another
In the turn of the hill; in hard steel

The road like a slow screw's thread,
The angle almost imperceptible,
so that the circuit seemed hardly to rise;

And the running form, naked, Blake,
Shouting, whirling his arms, the swift limbs,
Howling against the evil,
his eyes rolling,
Whirling like flaming cart-wheels,
and his head held backward to gaze on the evil
As he ran from it,

to be hid by the steel mountain,
And when he showed again from the north side;
his eyes blazing toward hell mouth,
His neck forward,
and like him Peire Cardinal.
And in the West mountain, Il Fiorentino,
Seeing hell in his mirror,
and lo Sordels

Looking on it in his shield;
And Augustine, gazing toward the invisible.

And past them, the criminal
lying in blue lakes ot acid,
The road between the two hills, upward
slowly,
The flames patterned in lacquer, crimen est actio,
The limbo of chopped ice and saw-dust,
And I bathed myself with the acid to free myself
of the hell ticks,

["60 Scales, fallen louse eggs.", "Palux Laerna", "the lake of bodies, aqua morta,", "of limbs fluid, and mingled, like fish heaped in a bin,\nand here an arm upward, clutching a fragment of marble,\nAnd the embryos, in flux,", "new inflow, submerging,", "Here an arm upward, trout, submerged by the eels;", "and from the bank, the stiff herbage", "the dry nobbled path, saw many known, and unknown,\nfor an instant;", "Submerging,", "The face gone, generation.", "Then light air, under saplings,", "the blue banded lake under æther,", "an oasis, the stones, the calm field,", "the grass quiet,", "and passing the tree of the bough", "The grey stone posts,", "and the stair of gray stone", "the passage clean-squared in granite:", "descending,", "and I through this, and into the earth", "patet terra,", "entered the quiet air", "the new sky,", "the light as after a sun-set,", "and by their fountains, the heroes,", "Sigismundo, and Malatesta Novello,", "and founders, gazing at the mounts of their cities.", "The plain, distance, and in fount-pools", "the nymphs of that water", "rising, spreading their garlands,", "weaving their water reeds with the boughs,", "In the quiet,", "and now one man rose from his fountain", "and went off into the plain.", "Prone in that grass, in sleep;", "et j'entendis des voix: ...", "wall ... Strasbourg", "Gallifet led that triple charge ... Prussians", "and he said", "it was for the honour of the army.", "61", "And they called him a swashbuckler.", "I didn't know what it was", "But I thought: This is pretty bloody damn fine.", "And my old nurse, he was a man nurse, and", "He killed a Prussian and he lay in the street", "there in front of our house for three days", "And he stank ...", "Brother Percy,", "And our Brother Percy ...", "old Admiral", "He was a muddy in those days,", "And they came into Ragusa", "... place those men went for the Silk War ...", "And they saw a procession coming down through", "A cut in the hills, carrying something", "The six chaps in front carrying a long thing", "on their shoulders,", "And they thought it was a funeral,", "but the thing was wrapped up in scarlet,", "And he put off in the cutter,", "he was a muddy in those days,", "To see what the natives were doing,", "And they got up to the six fellows in livery,", "And they looked at it, and I can still hear the old admiral,", "“Was it? it was", "Lord Byron", "Dead drunk, with the face of an Ayn ...", "He pulled it out long, like that:", "the face of an ayn ... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

62 With a lot of books from the library,
London Library, and a shell buried 'em in a dug-out,
And the Library expressed its annoyance.

And a bullet hit him on the elbow
... gone through the fellow in front of him,
And he read Kant in the Hospital, in Wimbledon,
in the original,
And the hospital staff didn't like it.

And Maxy Larmann went to it,
With a heavy bit of artillery,
and the airmen came by with a mitrailleuse,

And cleaned out most of his company,
and a shell lit on his tin hut,

While he was out in the privy,

and he was all there was left of that outfit.

Barham Vanderberg went to it,
and he was out in the Ægæan,

And down in the hold of his ship
pumping gas into a sausage,

And the boatswain looked over the rail,
down into amidships, and he said:
Gees! look a' the Kept'n,

The Kept'n's a-gettin' 'er up.

And Ole Captain Corcoran went to it,
with his legs full of rheumatics,
So much so he couldn't run,
so he was six months in hospital,

Observing the mentality of the patients.

And Bimmy was 19 when he went to it,
And his major went mad in the control pit,
about midnight, and started throwing the 'phone about,

And he had to keep him quiet
till about six in the morning,

And direct that bunch of artillery.

And Cyril Hammerton went to it,
too much in a hurry,
And they buried him for four days.

Et ma foi, vous savez,
tous les nerveux. Non,

Y a une limite; les bêtes, les bêtes ne sont
Pas faites pour ça, c'est peu de chose un cheval.

Les hommes de 34 ans à quatre pattes
qui criaient "maman." Mais les costauds,
La fin, là à Verdun, n'y avait que ces gros bonshommes

Et y voyaient extrêmement clair.

Qu'est-ce que ça vaut, les généraux, le lieutenant,
on les pèse à un centigramme,

n'y a rien que du bois,

Notr' capitaine, tout, tout ce qu'il y a de plus renfermé
de vieux polytechnicien, mais solide,

La tête solide. Là, vous savez,

Tout, tout fonctionne, et les voleurs, tous les vices,

Mais les rapaces,

y avait trois dans notre compagnie, tous tués.

Y sortaient fouiller un cadavre, pour rien,
y n' seraient sortis pour rien que ça.

Et les boches, tout ce que vous voulez,
militarisme, et cætera, et cætera.

Tout ça, mais, MAIS,
l'français, i s'bat quand y a mangé.

Mais ces pauvres types

A la fin y's attaquaient pour manger,
Sans ordres, les bêtes sauvages, on y fait

Prisonniers; ceux qui parlaient français disait:
" Poo quah? Ma foi on attaquit pour manger."

C'est le corr-ggras, le corps gras,
leurs trains marchaient trois kilomètres à l'heure,
Et ça criait, ça grinçait, on l'entendait à cinq kilomètres.

Ça qui finit la guerre.
Liste officielle des morts 5,000,000.

I vous dit, bè, voui, tout sentait le pétrole.

Mais, Non! je l'ai engueulé.

Je lui ai dit: T'es un con! T'a raté la guerre.

O vouil tous les hommes de goût, y conviens,
Tout ça en arrière.

Mais un mec comme toil

C't homme, un type comme ça!

Ce qu'il aurait pu encaisser!

Il était dans une fabrique.

Hij

63

64 What, burying squad, terrassiers, avec leur tête
en arrière, qui regardaient comme ça,
On risquait la vie pour un coup de pelle,
Faut que ça soit bien carré, exact . . . . .

Dey vus a bolcheviki dere, und dey dease him:
Looka vat youah Trotzsk is done, e iss
madeh deh zhamefull beace!!

" He iss madeh deh zhamefull beace, iss he?
" He is madeh de zhamevul beace?

" A Brest-Litovsk, yess? Aint yuh herd?
" He vinneh de vore.

" De droobs iss released vrom de eastern vront, yess?

" Un venn dey getts to deh vestern vront, iss it
" How many getts dere?

" And dose doat getts dere iss so full off revolutions

" Venn deh vrench is come dhru, yess,

" Dey say, 'Vot?' Un de posch say:

" Aint yeh heard? Say, ve got a rheffolution."

That's the trick with a crowd,
Get 'em into the street and get 'em moving.
And all the time, there were people going
Down there, over the river.

There was a man there talking,
To a thousand, just a short speech, and
Then move 'em on. And he said:

Yes, these people, they are all right, they
Can do everything, everything except act;
And go an' hear 'em, but when they are through,
Come to the bolsheviki . . . .

And when it broke, there was the crowd there,
And the cossacks, just as always before,
But one thing, the cossacks said:

"Pojalouista."
And that got round in the crowd,
And then a lieutenant of infantry

Ordered 'em to fire into the crowd,

in the square at the end of the Nevsky,
In front of the Moscow station,
And they wouldn't,

And he pulled his sword on a student for laughing,
And killed him,

And a cossack rode out of his squad

On the other side of the square,

And cut down the lieutenant of infantry
And that was the revolution . . . .

as soon as they named it.

And you can't make 'em,
Nobody knew it was coming. They were all ready, the old gang,
Guns on the top of the post-office and the palace,
But none of the leaders knew it was coming.

And there were some killed at the barracks,
But that was between the troops.

So we used to hear it at the opera,
That they wouldn't be under Haig;
and that the advance was beginning;
That it was going to begin in a week.

65