Hang it all, there can be but one "Sordello",
But say I want to, say I take your whole bag of tricks
Let in your quirks and t weeks, and say the thing's an art-form,
And that the modern world
Needs such a rag-bag to stuff all its thought in,
Say that I dump my catch, shiny and silvery
As fresh sardines flapping and slipping on the marginal cobbles?
I stand before the booth, the speech, but the truth
Is inside this discourse, this booth is full of the marrow of
wisdom;
Give up th' intaglio method.

Tower by tower
Red-brown the rounded bases, and the plan
follows the builder's whim. Beaucaire's slim gray
Leaps from the stubby base of Altaforte -
Mohammed's windows, for the Alcazar
has such a garden, split by a tame small stream
The moat is ten yards wide, the inner court-yard
half a-swim with mire.
Trunk hose?

There are not. The rough men swarm out
In robes that are half Roman, half like the knave of Hearts'
And I discern your story:

Peire Cardinal
Was half fore-runner of Dante. Arnaut's that trick
Of the unfinished address
And half your dates are out, you mix your eras

For that great font Sordello sat beside
'Tis an immortal passage, but the font?
Is some two centuries outside the picture
Does it matter?

Not in the least. Ghosts move about me
Patched with histories. You had your business:
To set out so much thought, so much emotion,
To paint, more real than any dead Sordello,
The half or third of your intensest life
And call that third "Sordello"
And you'll say, "No, not your life",
"He never showed himself!!"
Is't worth the evasion, what were the use
Of setting figures up and breathing life upon them,
Were't not our life, your life, my life, extended?
I walk Verona. (I am here in England)
I see Can Grande. (Can see whom you will.)

You had one whole man?
And I have many fragments, less worth? Less worth?
Ah, had you quite my age, quite such a beastly and cantankerous
You had some basis, had some set relief.
Am I let preach? Has it a place in music?

I walk the airy street,
See the small cobbles flare with the poppy spoil - -
'Tis your "great day", the Corpus Domini,

And all my chosen and peninsular village
has made one glorious blaze of all its lanes - -
Oh, before I was up - - with poppy flowers.
Mid-June; Some old god eats the smoke, this is the Saints.
And up and out to the half-ruined chapel
Not the old place at the height of the rocks
But that splay, barn-like church the renaissance
had never quite got into trim again.
As well begin here, began our Catullus,
"Home to sweet rest, and to the waves deep laughter."
The laugh they wake amid the border rushes.
This is our home, the trees are full of laughter,
And one storms laugh loud, breaking the riven waves
On "north-most rocks" and here the sunlight
Glints on the shaken waters, and the rain
Comes forth with delicate tread, walking from Isola Garda,
So soleils plovil,

As Arnaut had it in th'inextricable song
The very sun rains and a spatter of fire
Darts from the "lydian" ripples
And the place is full of spirits, not lemures
Not dark and shadowy ghosts,
But the ancient living, wood-white,
Smooth as the inner bark, and firm of aspect,
And all a-gleam with colours, no, not a-gleam

-3-

But coloured like the lake and like the olive leaves,
GLAUKOPOS, clothed like the poppies, wearing golden greaves,
Light on the air. Are they Etruscan gods?
The air is solid sunlight, apricus,
Sun-red we dwell there

(we in England now),
It's your way of talk, we can be where we will be,
Sirmic serves my will better than your Asole
Which I have never seen.

Your "palace step" ?
My stone seat was the Dogana's curb,
And there were not "those girls", there was one flare, one face.
'Twas all I ever saw, but it was real . . . .
And I can no more say what shape it was . . .
But she was young, too young.

True, it was Venice,
And at Florian's and under the North arcade
I have seen other faces, and had my rolls for breakfast
So, for what it's worth, I have the background

And you had a background,
And you watched "the soul", Sordello's soul,
And saw it lap up life, and swell and burst
"Into the Empyrean?"

So you worked out new form, the meditative,
Semi-dramatic, semi-epic story,

-4-

And we will say: What's left for me to do?
Whom shall I conjure up; who's my Sordello,
My pre-Daun Chaucer, pre-Boccacio

As you have done pre-Dante?
Whom shall I hang my shimmering garment on;
Who wear my feathery mantle, <u>hagoromo</u>;
Whom set to dazzle the serious future ages?
Not Arnaut, not De Born, not Uc St. Circ who has writ out the stories
Or shall I do your trick, the showman's booth, Bob Browning,
Turned at my will into the Agora,
Or into the old theatre at Arles,
And set the lot, my visions, to confounding
The wits that have survived your dam'd "Sordello"?
(Or sulk and leave the world to novelists?)
What a hodge-podge you have made there!
Zanze and <u>swanzig</u>, of all opprobious rhymes!!
And you turn off whenever it suits your fancy,
Now at Verona, now with the early Christians,
Or now a-gabbling of the "Thyreene whelks".
"The lyre should animate but not mislead the pen."
That's Wordsworth, Mr. Browning (What a phrase!)
That eye, that pen, that bleeding sheep, Will Wordsworth
That should have taught you avoid speech figurative
And set out your matter
As I do, in straight simple phrases,

-5-

Gods float in the azure air,
Bright gods, and Tuscan, back before dew was shed,
It is a world like Puvis'?

Never so pale, my friend,
'Tis the first light - not half light - Panisks
And oak-girls and the Maelids
Have all the wood. Our olive Sirmio
Lies in its burnished mirrour, and the Mounts Balde and Riva
Are alive with song, and all the leaves are full of voices.
"Non è ruggi".

"It is not gone". Metastasio
Is right, we have that world about us
And the clouds bowe above the lake, and there are folk upon them
Going their windy ways, moving by Riva
By the western shore, far as Lonato,
And the water is full of silvery almond-white swimmers
The silvery water glazes the up-turned nipple.
How shall we start hence, how begin the progress?
Pace naive Ficinus, say when Hotep-Hotep
Was a king in Egypt

When Atlas sat down with his astrolabe,
me, brother to Prometheus, physicist,

Say it was Moses birth year.
Exult with Shang in squatness? The sea-monster
Bulges the squarish bronzes
(Confucius later taught the world good manners

-6-

Started with himself, built out perfection.)

With Egypt!

Daub out in blue of scarabs, with that greeny turquoise
Or with China, so Virgilio mio, and gray gradual steps
Lead up beneath flat sprays of heavy cedars.
Temple of teak wood, and the gilt-brown arches
Triple in tier, banners woven by wall,
Fine screens depicted, sea waves curled high,
Small boats with gods upon them,
Bright flame above the river Kuanon,
Rooting a boat that's but one lotus petal
With some proved four-spread genius
Leading along, one hand upraised for gladness
Saying, "Tis she, his friend, the beautiful goddess: Faean
"Sing hymns ye reeds,

and all ye roots and herons and swans be glad
Ye gardens of the nymphs put forth your flowers."

What have I of this life,?

Or even of Guido,

Sweet lie! Was I there truly?

Did I knew Dr. San Michael?

Let's believe it.

Believe the tomb he leapt was Julia Laeta's.

Friend, I do not even - when he led that street charge
I do not even know which sword he'd with him.

Sweet Lie, "I lived!"  Sweet lie, "I lived beside him."
And now it's all but truth and memory,
Dimmed only by the attritions of long time.
"But we forget not."

No, take it all for lies,
I have but smelt this life, a whiff of it
The box of scented wood
Recalls cathedrals. Shall I claim?
Confuse my own phantastikon,
Or say the shell that circumscribes me
Contains the actual sun;

confuse the thing I see
With actual gods behind me?

Are they gods behind me?
How many worlds we have. If Botticelli
Brings her ashore on that great cockle-shell -
His Venus (Simonetta?),
And Spiry and Aufidus fill all the air
With their clear-outlined blossoms.

World enough. Behold, I say, she comes
"Apparelled like the Spring. Graces her subjects"
(That's from "Pericles")

O we have worlds enough, and brave decors,
And from these like we guess a soul for man
And build him full of aery populations.
Mantegna a sterner line, and the new world about us

-8-

Barred lights, great flares, new form Picasso or Lewis,
If for a year men write to paint, and not to music,
And Casella!

11.

Leave Casella.

Send out your thought upon the Mantuan palace,
Drear Waste, great halls,

Silk tatters still in the frame
Gonzaga's splendour,

Where do we come upon the ancient people?
Or that forlorn quarter

Silk tatters still in the frame, Gonzaga's splendour,
Alight with phantoms, What have we of them,
Or much or little?

Where do we come upon the ancient people
"All that I know is that a certain star" -
All that I know of one, Joios, Tolosan,
Is that in middle May, going along
A scarce discerned path, turning aside,
In level poplar lands, he found a flower, and wept,
"Y a la primera flor" he wrote,
"Qu'ieu trobel, tornei em plor."

There's the one stave, and all the rest forgotten.
I've lost the copy I had of it in Paris,
Out of the blue and gilded manuscript
Decked out with Couci's rabbits,

-9-

And the pictures, twined with the capitals,
Purporting to be Arnaut and the authors.
Joios we have, by such a margent stream,
He strayed in the field, wept for a flare of colour,
When Coeur de Lion was before Chalus?
Or there's En Arnaut's score of songs, two tunes;
The rose leaf casts her dew on the ringing glass,
Dolwetsch will build our age in witching music.
Viols da Gamba, tabors, tympanons.
"Yin-yo laps in the reeds, my guest departs,
The maple leaves blot up their shadows,
The sky is full of autumn.
We drink our parting in saki.
Out of the night comes troubling lute music,
And we cry out, asking the singer's name,
And get this answer:

"Many a one
Brought me rich presents, my hair was full of jade
And my slashed skirts drenched in expensive dyes,
Were dipped in crimson, sprinkled with rare wines.
I was well taught my arts at Ga-ma-rio,
And then one year I faded out and married."
The lute-bowl hid her face."

We heard her weeping.
Society, her sparrows, Venus' sparrows and Catullus
Hung on the phrase, played with it as Mallarme

-10-

Played for a fan, "Reveuse pour que je plonge,"
wrote out his crib from Sappho:
God's peer that man is in my sight
Yea, and the very gods are under him,
Who sits opposite thee, facing thee, near thee
Gazing his fill and hearing thee,
And thou smilest. Woe to me, with
Quenched senses, for when I look upon thee, Lesbia
There is nothing above me
And my tongue is heavy and along my veins
Runs the slow fire, and resonant
Thunders surge in behind my ears,
And the night is thrust down upon me.

That was the way of love, *flamma demanat*.
And in a year: "I love her as a father",
And scarce a year, "Your words are written in water,"
And in ten moons, *Caelius, Lesbia illa*,
That Lesbia, Caelius, our Lesbia, that Lesbia
Whom Catullus once loved more
Than his own soul and all his friends,
Is now the drab of every lousy Roman."
So much for him who puts his trust in woman.
So the murk opens.

Dordoigne! When I was there,
There came a centaur, spying the land
And there were nymphs behind him.

-11-

Or going on the road by Salisbury
Procession on procession
For that road was full of peoples,
Ancient in various days, long years between them.
Ply over ply of life still wraps the earth here.
(Catch at Dordoigne.)

Viscount St. Antoni

In the warm damp of spring,
Feeling the night air full of subtle hands,
Plucks at a viel, singing:

"As the rose
Si, com, si com." They all begin "si com"
"For as the rose in trellis

Winds in and through and over,
"So is your beauty in my heart, that is bound through and over."
"So lay Queen Venus in her house of glass,
"Thou art the pool of worth,
flood-land of pleasure.

But the Vicount Pena
Went making war into an hostile country
Where he was wounded
The news held him dead.
St. Antoni in favour and the lady
Ready to hold his hands
This last report upset the whole convention,
She rushes off to church, sets up a gross of candles

-12-

Pays masses for the soul of Vicont Pena.

Thus St. Coid has the story:

"That sire, Raimon Jordans, of land near Caortz,
Lord of St. Antoni, loved this Vicountess of Pena
"Gentle" and "highly prized"

And he was good at arms

4 bos Fno baire

And they were taken with love beyond all measure."

And them her husband was reported dead,

"And at this news she had great grief and sorrow"

And gave the church such wax for his recov'ry,
That he recovered, and

"At this news she had great grief and teen."

And fell to moping, dismissed St. Antoni,

"Thus was there more than one in deep distress."

So ends that novel. And the blue Dordoigne
Stretches between white cliffs,
Pale as the background of a Leonardo

Or else

"As rose in trellis, that is bound over and over,"

A wasted song?

No, Elis, Lady of Montfort,
Wife of William a Gordon, heard of the song,
Sent him her mild advances.

Gordon? Or Gourdon

Juts into the sky

Like a thin spire.

-13-

Blue night's pulled down around it.
Like tent flaps, or sails close hauled. When I was there,
La noche de San Juan, a score of players
Were walking about the streets in masquerade,
With pikes and paper helmets, and the booths
Were scattered align the rag ends of the fair.
False arms! True arms? You think a tale of lances . . .
A flood of people storming about Spain!

My cid rode up to Burgos,
Up to the studded gate between two towers,
Beat with his lance butt.

A girl child of nine,
Comes to a little shrine-like platform in the wall
Lips out the words, a-whisper, the King's writ:
"Let no man speak to Diaz or give him help or food
On pain of death, his eyes torn out,
His heart upon a pike, his goods sequestered."
He from Bivar, cleaned out,
From empty perches of dispersed hawks,
From empty presses,
Came riding with his company up the great hill,
"Afe Minaya!"

to Burgos in the spring.
And thence to fighting, to down-throw of Moors,
And to Valencia rode he, By the beard!

-14-

Muy velida.

Of onrush of lances,
Of splintered staves, riven and broken casques,
Dismantled castles, of painted shields split up,
Blazons hacked off, piled men and bloody rivers,

The sombre light upon reflecting armour"
And portents in the wind, when De las Nieblas
Set out to sea-fight,

Y dar neuva lumbre las armas y hierros."
Full many a fathomed sea-change in the eyes
That sought with him the salt sea victories.

Another gate?

And Kumasaka's ghost come back to tell
The honour of the youth who'd slain him.
Another gate.

The kernelled walls of Toro, las almenas;
Afield, a king come in an unjust cause.
Atween the chinks aloft flashes the armoured figure,
Muy linda, a woman, Helen, a star,
Lights the king's features . . .

"No use, my Liege,
"She is your highness' sister." breaks in Ancures.
"Mal fuego s'enciende!"
Such are the gestes of war" told over and over."
And Ignez?

Was a queen's tire-woman.

Court sinecure, the court of Portugal,
And the young prince loved her, Pedro,
Later called the cruel. And other courtiers were jealous.
Two of them stabbed her with the kings connivance,
And he, the prince, kept quiet a space of years,
Uncommon quiet,
And he came to reign, and had his will upon the dagger-players,
And held his court, a wedding ceremonial,
He and her dug-up corpse in ceremonies,
Crowned with the crown and aplendour of Portugal;
A quiet evening and a decorous procession,
Who winked at murder kisses the dead hand,
Does leal homage,
"Que depois de ser morta foy Rainha."
Dig up Camoens, hear out his resonant bombast,
That among the flowers,
As once was Prosperpine,
Gather'dst thy soul's light fruit and every blindness,
Thy Enna the flary mead-land of Mondego,
Long art thou sung by maidens in Mondego.
What have we not of her, his "linda Ignez"?
Houtmans in jail for debt in Lisbon, how long after?
Contrives a company, the Dutch eat Portugal,
Follow her ship's tracks. Roemer Vischer's daughters,
Talking ~~of~~ some Greek, dally with glass engraving;
Vondel, the Eglantine, Dutch Renaissance -

-16-

The old tale out of fashion, daggers gone
And Gaby wears Braganza on her throat,
Commuted, say, another public pearl
Tied to a public gullet, Ah, mon reve,
It happened, and now to think,
Another crown, thrown to another dancer,
brings you to modern times?

I knew a man, but where 'twas is no matter,
Born on a farm, he hankered after painting,
his father kept him at work,
No luck, he married and got four sons,
Three died, the fourth he sent to Paris,
Ten years of Julians and the ateliers,
Ten years of life, his pictures in the salons,
Name coming in the press,

And when I knew him,
Back once again, in middle Indiana,
Acting as usher in the theatre,
Painting the local drug-shop and soda bars,
The local doctor's fancy for the mantle-piece
Sheep, jabbing the wool upon their flea-bit backs -
The local doctor's avid pastoral.
Adoring Puvis, giving his family back
What they had spent for him, talking Italian cities,
Local excellence at Perugia,
dreaming his renaissance

-17-

Take my Sordello!

111.

Another a half-cracked fellow,
John Heydon, worker of miracles, dealer in levitation,
In thoughts upon puryporm, in alchemy,
Seer of pretty visions ("Servant of God and secretary of nature")
Full of a plaintive charm, like Botticelli's,
With half transparent forms, lacking the vigour of gods.
Thus Heydon, in a trance, at Bulverton,
Decked all in green, with sleeves of yellow silk,
Slit to the elbow, slashed with various purples.
Her eyes were green as glass, her foot was leaf-like.
She was adorned with choicest emeralds
And promised him the way of holy wisdom.
"Pretty green bank" began the half lost poem.
Take the old way, say I have met John Heydon,
Sought out the place
Lay on the bank, was "Plunged deep in swevyn"
And saw the company, Layamon, Chaucer,
Pass each in his appropriate robes,
Conversed with each, observed the varying fashion,
And them comes Heydon.

"I have seen John Heydon."
Let us hear John Heydon!

"Omniformis
Omnis intellectus est" thus he begins by spouting half of
Psellus.

-18-

Then comes a note, my assiduous commentator:
Not Psellus "De Daemonibus" but Porphyry's Chances,
In the 13th Chapter, that "every intellect is omniform"
Magnifico Lorenzo used the dodge,
Says that he met Ficino
In some Wordsworthian, false-pastoral manner,
And that they walked along, stopped at a well-head,
And heard deep platitudes about contentment
From some old godder 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, more earth and sounder rhetoric -
Prefacing parise 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!

-19-

Ha! Sir Hancatz,

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

Valla, the heart of Rome,

Sustaining a speech, set out before the people.

"Nec bonus Christianus ac bonus

Tullianus".

Marius, Du Bellay, wept for the buildings,

Baldassar Castiglione saw Raphael

"Lead back the soul into its dead, waste dwelling,"

Corpore laniato, and Lorenzo Valla,

"Broken in middle life? bent to submission?

Took a rat living from the Papacy,

(That's in Villari, but Bureckhardt'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

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,

-20-

Weeping we went."

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 swartly 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, unpierced 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
Afore said by Circe.

Here did they rites, Perimedes and Eurylochus,

And drawing sword from my hip

-21-

I dug the ell-square pitkin, 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 Eerbus, 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 shonting, 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, Elpenor, his friend,
Unburied, cast on the wide earth,
Limbs that we left in the house of Circe,
Unwept, unwrapped in sepulchre, since toils urged other

Fitiful spirit, and I cried in hurried speech:
"Elpenor, how art thou come to this dark coast,
"Camptaken a foot, outstripping seamen?" And he in heavy speech
"Ill fate and abundant wine! I slept in Circe's ingle,
"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,
"leap 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 car up, that I swam 'mid ≈fellows."
Came then another ghost, whom I beat off, Anticles,
And them 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" shall
Return through spiteful Neptune, over dark seas,
Lose all companions." Poretold me the ways and the signs.
Come then Anticlea to whom I answered:

"Fate drives me on through these deeps, I saught Tiresias."
I told her news of Troy and thrice her shadow
Faded in my embrace.

-23-

Then had I news of many faded women,
Tyro, Alcmena, Chloris,
Heard out their tales by that dark fosse, and sailed
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 Light, With Aldus on the Frogs
And a certain Cretan's

hymni Decorum:

(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, maritime,
Light on the foam, breathed on by Zephyrs,
And air-tending hours, Mirthful, crichalci, with golden
Girdles and breast bands, thou with dark eye-lids
Bearing the golden bough of Argicida!