Note to printer:

This poem comes last of all in my book. It has a separate
sub-title page:

sic:

(A DRAFT OF THREE CANTOS FOR A POEM OF SOME LENGTH.)

On the reverse of this sub-title page is the following
note:

sic:

(An earlier version of these Cantos appeared in "Poetry" during June, July and August, 1917. Most of the poems in the section headed "Lustra" had appeared there at earlier dates. To the editors of this magazine, and of the others where his poems have appeared, the author wishes to make due acknowledgment.)

THREE CANTOS begin on the page following.

Certain things rather odd, I have specially marked _stet_ or _O.K._ in the margin, lest they be queried, or supposed to be slips of the typewriter.

Proofs of this poem to be sent to my father

H. L. Pound,
Wyncote,
Pa.

for correction.

I should like a set sent to me also, but you need not wait
for a reply from me about them, before printing. My father will
be able to do the proof reading from this typescript.

23/5/1917

THREE CANTOS
I.

Hang it all, there can be but the one "Sordello",
But say I want to, say I take your whole bag of tricks,
Let in your quirks and twEEKS, and say the thing's an art-form,
Your "Sordello", 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 the intaglio method?

Tower by tower,
Red-brown the rounded bases, and the plan
Follows the builder's whim; Blaucaire'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

2

Was half fore-runner of Dante. Arnaut's the 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 --
And no matter.

Ghosts move about me patched with histories,
You had your business: to set out so much thought,
So much emotion, and call the lot "Sordello".
Worth the evasion, the setting figures up
And breathing life upon them.
Has it a place in music? And your: "appear Verona!"?

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 spread this scarlet blaze upon its lane,
Oh, before I was up, -- with poppy-flowers.
Mid-June, 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, here began 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,

4

Drifted at night and seen the lit, gilt cross-beams
Glare from the Morosini.

And for what it's worth
I have my background; and you had your background,
Watched "the soul", Sordello's soul, flare up
And lap up life, and leap "to th' Empyrean";
Worked out the form, meditative, semi-dramatic,
Semi-epic story; and what's left?
Pre-Daun-Chaucer, Pre-Boccaccio? Not Arnaut,
Not Uc St Circ.

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 mirror, and the Mounts Balde and Riva
Are alive with song, and all the leaves are full of voices.
"Non è fuggi."

"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 upturned nipple.

5

"When Atlas sat down with his astrolabe,
He, brother to Prometheus, physicist."

We let Ficino

Start us our progress, say it was Moses' birth year?

Exult with Shang in squatness? The sea-monster

Bulges the squarish bronzes.

Daub out, with blue of scarabs, Egypt,

Green veins in the turquoise?

Or 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,

Footing a boat that's but one lotus petal,

With some proud four-square genius

Leading along, one hand upraised for gladness,

Saying, "'Tis she, his friend, the mighty Goddess.

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?

A pleasant lie that I knew Or San Michaele,

Believe the tomb he leapt was Julia Laeta's,

Do not even know which sword he'd with him in the street-charge.

I have but smelt this life, a whiff of it,

7

Drear waste, great halls; pigment flakes from the stone;

Forlorn quarter:

Silk tatters still in the frame, Gonzaga's splendour,
Where do we come upon the ancient people,
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 trobei, tornei em plor."

One stave of it, I've lost the copy I had of it in Paris,
Out of a blue and gilded manuscript:

Couci's rabbits, a slim fellow throwing dice,
Purported portraits serving in capitals.

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;

Arnaut 's a score of songs, a wry sestina;

The rose-leaf casts her dew on the ringing glass,
Dolmetsch 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 were drenched in the secret dyes,
Well dipped in crimson, and 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.

Catulus hung on the phrase (played with it as Mallarme
Playsed for a fan: "Rêveuse pour que je plonge.");

Wrote out his crib from Sappho:

God's peer, yea and the very gods are under him
Facing thee, near thee; and my tongue is heavy,
And along my veins the fire; and the night is
Thrust down upon me.

That was one way of love, <u>flamma demanat</u>,
And in a year: "I love her as a father",

And scarce a year, "Your words are written in water"

And in ten moons: "O "Caelius, Lesbia illa,
Caelius, Lesbia, 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.

Dordoigne! When I was there
There came a centaur, spying the land
And there were nymphs behind him;
On procession on procession by Salisbury,
Ancient in various days, long years between them;
Ply over ply of life still wraps the earth here.
Catch at Dordoigne!

Vicount St. Antoni ---

"D'amor tug miei cossir" --- hight Raimon Jordans
Of land near Caortz. The Lady of Pena
"Gentle and highly prized."

And he was good at arms and bos trobaire,
"Thou art the pool of worth, flood-land of pleasure,
"And all my heart is bound about with love,
"As rose in trellis that is bound over and over";
Thus were they taken in love beyond all measure.
But the Vicount Pena
Went making war into an hostile country,
And was sore wounded. The news held him dead,
"And at this news she had great grief and teen",
And gave the church such wax for his recovery
That he recovered,
"And at this news she had great grief and teen"

10

And fell a-moping, dismissed St. Antoni,
"Thus was there more than one in deep distress",
So ends that novel. Here the blue Dordoigne
Placid between white cliffs, pale
As the background of a Leonardo. Elis of Montfort
Then sent him her invitations (wife of de Gordon).
It juts into the sky, Gordon that is,
Like a thin spire. Blue night pulled down about 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,
Pike-staves and paper helmets, and the booths
Were scattered align, the rag ends of the fair.
False arms, true arms:
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 years
Comes to the shrine-like platform in the wall,
Lisps out the words a-whisper, the King's writ:
Let no man speak to Diaz (Ruy Diaz, Myo Cid)
Or give him help or food, on pain of death:
His heart upon a pike, his eyes torn out, his goods sequestered.
Cid from Bivar, from empty perches of dispersed hawks,
From empty presses,
Came riding with his company up the great hill

11

(Afe Minaya!) to Burgos in the Spring,
And thence to fighting, to down-throw of Moors
And to Valencia rode he, by the beard! 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. Or
"Of sombre light upon reflected armour"
When De las Nieblas sails —
"Y dar nueva lumbre las armas y hierros" —†
And portents in the wind, a pressing air;
Many a fathomed sea-change in the eyes
That sought with him the salt sea victories,
Rumble of balladist.

Another gate:

And Kumasaka's ghost comes back to explain
How well the young man fenced who ended 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!", "Helen!", "a star",

Lights the king's features ....

"No use, my liege. She is your highness sister",
Breaks in Ancures.

"Mal fuego s'enciende!"

12

Such are the gestes of war.

A tire-woman,
Court sinecure, the court of Portugal,
And the young prince loved her, Pedro,
Called later, Cruel. Jealousy, two stabbed her,
Courtiers, with king's connivance.
And he, the prince, kept quiet a space of years.
And came to reign, after uncommon quiet,
And had his will upon the dagger-players:
A wedding ceremonial: he and the dug-up corpse in ceremonies.
Who winked at murder kisses the dead hand,
Does loyal homage

"Que despois de ser morte foy Rainha".

Dig up Camoens:

"That once as Proserpine
Gatheredst 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 now of her, his "linda Ignez"?
Houtmans in jail for debt in Lisbon, how long after,
Contrives a company, the Dutch eat Portugal,
Follow her ships tracks. Roemer Vischer's daughters
Talking some greek, dally with glass engraving:
Vondel, the Eglantine, Dutch Renaissance.
The old tale out of fashion, daggers gone,
And Gaby wears Braganza on her throat,

13

Another pearl, tied to a public gullet.

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,
Married and got four sons,
Three died, the fourth he sent to Paris. And this son:
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 a mantle-piece:
Sheep! jabbing the wool upon their flea-bit backs.
"Them sheep! Them goddamd sheep!!!". Adoring Puvis,
Giving his family back what they had spent on him,
Talking Italian cities,
Local excellence at Perugia;

dreaming his renaissance,
Take my Sordello!

### III.

Another one, half-cracked: John Heydon,
Worker of miracles, dealer in levitation,
"Servant of God and secretary of nature",

The half transparent forms, in trance at Bulverton:
"Decked all in green", with sleeves of yellow silk
Slit to the elbow, slashed with various purples,
(Thus in his vision) Her eyes were green as glass,
was
Her foot/leaf-like, and she promised him,
Dangling a chain of emeralds, promised him
The way of holiest wisdom.

"Omniformis
Omnis intellectus est"; thus he begins
By spouting half of Pselius, no, not "Daemonibus",
But Porphyry's "Chances", the 13th chapter,
That every intellect is omniform.
"A daemon is a substance in the locus of souls".
Munching Ficino's mumbling Platonists.

Valla, more earth and sounder rhetoric,
Prefacing praise 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.
A catalogue, his jewels of conversation.
"Know then the Roman speech: a sacrament"
Spread for the nations, eucharist of wisdom,
Bread of the liberal arts.

Ha! Sir Blancatz,
Sordello would have your heart up, give it to all the princes;
Valla, the heart of Rome,

sustaining speech,

15

Set out before the people. "Nec bonus Christianus" (in the Elegantiae) "ac bonus Tullianus".
Shook the church. Marius, Du Bellay, wept for the buildings;
Baldassar Castiglione saw Raphael

"Lead back the soul into its dead, waste dwelling",
Laniato corpore, Lorenzo Valla

"Broken in middle life? Bent to submission?  
Took a fat living from the Papacy"

(That's in Villari, but Burekhardt's statement's 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 great logicians...

More greeks than one! Doughty's "Divine Homeros"
Came before sophistry. Justinopolitan, uncatalogued,
One Andreas Divus gave him in latin,

In Officina Wecheli, M.D. three "X s." eight,
Caught up his cadence, word and syllable:

"Down to the ships we went, set mast and sail,
Black keel and beasts for bloody sacrifice,
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:

16

"And then went down to the ship, set keel to breakers,
Forth on the godly sea,

We set up mast and sail on the swart ship,
Sheep bore we aboard her, and our bodies also,
Heavy with weeping; and winds from sternward
Bore us out onward with bellying canvass,
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,
The ocean flowing backward, came we then to the place
Aforesaid by Circe.

Here did they rites, Perimedes and Murylochus,
And drawing sword from my hip
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

17

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 Erebus, cadaverous dead,
Of brides, of youths, and of much-bearing 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 shouting, 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 sword,
I sat to keep off the impetuous, impotent dead
Till I should hear Tiresias.
But first Elpenor came, our friend Elpenor,
Unburied, cast on the wide earth,
Limbs that we left in the house of Circe,
Unwept, unwrapped in sepulchre, since toils urged other.
Pitiful spirit, and I cried in hurried speech:
"Elpenor, how art thou come to this dark coast?
"Cam'st thou 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.

18

"But thou, O King, I bid remember me, unwept, unburied,
"Heap up mine arms, be tomb by sea-board, and inscribed:

"A man of no fortune and with a name to come."

"And set my ear up, that I swung mid fellows."

Came then another ghost, whom I beat off, Anticlea,
And then 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
"Shalt return through spiteful Neptune, over dark seas,
"Lose all companions". Foretold me the ways and the signs.

Came then Anticlea, to whom I answered:

"Fate drives me on through these deeps. I sought Tiresias",
Told her the news of Troy. And thrice her shadow

Faded in my embrace.

Lie quiet Divus. Then had he news of many faded women,
Tyro, Almena, 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.