Part 3

Beside this thoroughfare The sale of half-hose has Long since superseded the cultivation Of Pierian roses.

ENVOI (1919)

_Go, dumb-born book, Tell her that sang me once that song of Lawes; Hadst thou but song As thou hast subjects known, Then were there cause in thee that should condone Even my faults that heavy upon me lie And build her glories their longevity._

_Tell her that sheds Such treasure in the air, Reeking naught else but that her graces give Life to the moment, I would bid them live As roses might, in magic amber laid, Red overwrought with orange and all made One substance and one colour Braving time._

_Tell her that goes With song upon her lips But sings not out the song, nor knows The maker of it, some other mouth, May be as fair as hers, Might, in new ages, gain her worshippers, When our two dusts with Waller’s shall be laid, Siftings on siftings in oblivion, Till change hath broken down All things save Beauty alone._

1920 (MAUBERLEY)

I

Turned from the “eau-forte Par Jaquemart” To the strait head Of Messalina:

“His true Penelope Was Flaubert,” And his tool The engraver’s.

Firmness, Not the full smile, His art, but an art In profile;

Colourless Pier Francesca, Pisanello lacking the skill To forge Achaia.

II

“_Qu’est ce qu’ils savent de l’amour, et qu’est ce qu’ils peuvent comprendre_?

_S’ils ne comprennent pas la poèsie, s’ils ne sentent pas la musique, qu’est ce qu’ils peuvent comprendre de cette passion en comparaison avec laquelle la rose est grossière et le parfum des violettes un tonnerre_?” CAID ALI

For three years, diabolus in the scale, He drank ambrosia, All passes, ANANGKE prevails, Came end, at last, to that Arcadia.

He had moved amid her phantasmagoria, Amid her galaxies, NUKTIS AGALMA

* * * * *

Drifted ... drifted precipitate, Asking time to be rid of.... Of his bewilderment; to designate His new found orchid....

To be certain ... certain ... (Amid ærial flowers) ... time for arrangements-- Drifted on To the final estrangement; Unable in the supervening blankness To sift TO AGATHON from the chaff Until he found his seive.... Ultimately, his seismograph:

--Given that is his “fundamental passion” This urge to convey the relation Of eye-lid and cheek-bone By verbal manifestations;

To present the series Of curious heads in medallion--

He had passed, inconscient, full gaze, The wide-banded irises And botticellian sprays implied In their diastasis;

Which anæsthesis, noted a year late, And weighed, revealed his great affect, (Orchid), mandate Of Eros, a retrospect.

* * * * *

Mouths biting empty air, The still stone dogs, Caught in metamorphosis, were Left him as epilogues.

“THE AGE DEMANDED”

VIDE POEM II. PAGE 54

For this agility chance found Him of all men, unfit As the red-beaked steeds of The Cytheræan for a chain bit.

The glow of porcelain Brought no reforming sense To his perception Of the social inconsequence.

Thus, if her colour Came against his gaze, Tempered as if It were through a perfect glaze

He made no immediate application Of this to relation of the state To the individual, the month was more temperate Because this beauty had been.

* * * * *

The coral isle, the lion-coloured sand Burst in upon the porcelain revery: Impetuous troubling Of his imagery.

* * * * *

Mildness, amid the neo-Neitzschean clatter, His sense of graduations, Quite out of place amid Resistance to current exacerbations, Invitation, mere invitation to perceptivity Gradually led him to the isolation Which these presents place Under a more tolerant, perhaps, examination.

By constant elimination The manifest universe Yielded an armour Against utter consternation,

A Minoan undulation, Seen, we admit, amid ambrosial circumstances Strengthened him against The discouraging doctrine of chances,

And his desire for survival, Faint in the most strenuous moods, Became an Olympian _apathein_ In the presence of selected perceptions.

A pale gold, in the aforesaid pattern, The unexpected palms Destroying, certainly, the artist’s urge, Left him delighted with the imaginary Audition of the phantasmal sea-surge,

Incapable of the least utterance or composition, Emendation, conservation of the “better tradition” Refinement of medium, elimination of superfluities, August attraction or concentration.

Nothing, in brief, but maudlin confession Irresponse to human aggression, Amid the precipitation, down-float Of insubstantial manna, Lifting the faint susurrus Of his subjective hosannah.

Ultimate affronts to human redundancies;

Non-esteem of self-styled “his betters” Leading, as he well knew, To his final Exclusion from the world of letters.

IV

Scattered Moluccas Not knowing, day to day, The first day’s end, in the next noon; The placid water Unbroken by the Simoon;

Thick foliage Placid beneath warm suns, Tawn fore-shores Washed in the cobalt of oblivions;

Or through dawn-mist The grey and rose Of the juridical Flamingoes;

A consciousness disjunct, Being but this overblotted Series Of intermittences; Coracle of Pacific voyages, The unforecasted beach: Then on an oar Read this:

“I was And I no more exist; Here drifted An hedonist.”

MEDALLION

Luini in porcelain! The grand piano Utters a profane Protest with her clear soprano.

The sleek head emerges From the gold-yellow frock As Anadyomene in the opening Pages of Reinach.

Honey-red, closing the face-oval, A basket-work of braids which seem as if they were Spun in King Minos’ hall From metal, or intractable amber;

The face-oval beneath the glaze, Bright in its suave bounding-line, as, Beneath half-watt rays, The eyes turn topaz.

CANTOS

THE FOURTH CANTO

Palace in smoky light, Troy but a heap of smouldering boundary-stones, ANAXIFORMINGES! Aurunculeia! Hear me. Cadmus of Golden Prows! The silver mirrors catch the bright stones and flare, Dawn, to our waking, drifts in the green cool light; Dew-haze blurrs, in the grass, pale ankles moving. Beat, beat, whirr, thud, in the soft turf under the apple trees, Choros nympharum, goat-foot with the pale foot alternate; Crescent of blue-shot waters, green-gold in the shallows, A black cock crows in the sea-foam;

And by the curved carved foot of the couch, claw-foot and lion head, an old man seated Speaking in the low drone: ... “Ityn! “Et ter flebiliter. Ityn, Ityn! “And she went toward the window and cast her down, “All the while, the while, swallows crying: “Ityn!”

““_It is Cabestan’s heart in the dish._” ““_It is Cabestan’s heart in the dish?_” ““_No other taste shall change this._”

And she went toward the window, the slim white stone bar Making a double arch; Firm even fingers held to the firm pale stone; Swung for a moment, and the wind out of Rhodez Caught in the full of her sleeve. ... the swallows crying: “Ityn! Ityn!”

Actaeon.... And a valley, The valley is thick with leaves, with leaves, the trees, The sunlight glitters, glitters a-top, Like a fish-scale roof, Like the church-roof in Poictiers If it were gold. Beneath it, beneath it Not a ray, not a slivver, not a spare disk of sunlight Flaking the black, soft water; Bathing the body of nymphs, of nymphs, and Diana, Nymphs, white-gathered about her, and the air, air, Shaking, air alight with the goddess fanning their hair in the dark, Lifting, lifting and waffing: Ivory dipping in silver, Shadow’d, o’ershadow’d

Ivory dipping in silver, Not a splotch, not a lost shatter of sunlight. Then Actaeon: Vidal, Vidal. It is old Vidal speaking, stumbling along in the wood, Not a patch, not a lost shimmer of sunlight, the pale hair of the goddess.

The dogs leap on Actaeon, “Hither, hither, Actaeon,” Spotted stag of the wood; Gold, gold, a sheaf of hair, Thick like a wheat swath, Blaze, blaze in the sun, The dogs leap on Actaeon.

Stumbling, stumbling along in the wood, Muttering, muttering Ovid: “Pergusa ... pool ... pool ... Gargaphia, “Pool, pool of Salmacis.” The empty armour shakes as the cygnet moves. Thus the light rains, thus pours, _e lo soleils plovil_, The liquid, and rushing crystal whirls up the bright brown sand. Ply over ply, thin glitter of water; Brook film bearing white petals (“The pines of Takasago grow with pines of Isé”) “Behold the Tree of the Visages.” The forked tips flaming as if with lotus, Ply over ply The shallow eddying fluid beneath the knees of the gods.

Torches melt in the glare Set flame of the corner cook-stall, Blue agate casing the sky, a sputter of resin; The saffron sandal petals the narrow foot, Hymenaeus! Io Hymen, Io Hymenaee! Aurunculeia! The scarlet flower is cast on the blanch-white stone, Armaracus, Hill of Urania’s Son. Meanwhile So-Gioku: “This wind, sire, is the king’s wind, this wind is wind of the palace Shaking imperial water-jets.” And Ran-Ti, opening his collar: “This wind roars in the earth’s bag, it lays the water with rushes; “No wind is the king’s wind. Let every cow keep her calf.” “This wind is held in gauze curtains....” “No wind is the king’s....”

The camel drivers sit in the turn of the stairs, look down to Ecbatan of plotted streets, “Danae! Danae! What wind is the king’s?” Smoke hangs on the stream, The peach-trees shed bright leaves in the water, Sound drifts in the evening haze, The barge scrapes at the ford. Gilt rafters above black water; three steps in an open field Gray stone-posts leading nowhither.

The Spanish poppies swim in an air of glass. Père Henri Jacques still seeks the sennin on Rokku. Polhonac, As Gyges on Thracian platter, set the feast; Cabestan, Terreus. It is Cabestan’s heart in the dish. Vidal, tracked out with dogs ... for glamour of Loba; Upon the gilded tower in Ecbatan Lay the god’s bride, lay ever Waiting the golden rain. Et saave! But to-day, Garonne is thick like paint, beyond Dorada, The worm of the Procession bores in the soup of the crowd The blue thin voices against the crash of the crowd Et “Salve regina.”

In trellises Wound over with small flowers, beyond Adige In the but half-used room, thin film of images, (by Stefano) Age of unbodied gods, the vitreous fragile images Thin as the locust’s wing Haunting the mind ... as of Guido ... Thin as the locust’s wing. The Centaur’s heel Plants in the earth-loam.

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--I looked, and thought: 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, From 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 ... “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 fassa 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, Song or land on the throw, Pieire de Maensac, 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, Steeped in a different year, and pondering Brutus, Then SIGA MAL AUTHIS DEUTERON! “Dog-eye!!” (to Alessandro) “Whether for Love of Florence,” Varchi leaves it, Saying, “I saw the man, came up with him at Venice, “I, one wanting the facts, “And no mean labour. Or for a privy spite?” Good Varchi leaves it, But: “I saw the man. _Se pia?_ “_O empia?_ For Lorenzaccio had thought of stroke in the open “But uncertain (for the Duke went never unguarded) ... “And would have thrown him from wall “Yet feared this might not end him, or lest Alessandro “Know not by whom death came, O si credesse “If when the foot slipped, when death came upon him, “Lest cousin Duke Alessandro think he had fallen alone “No friend to aid him in falling.” _Caina attende._ As beneath my feet a lake, was ice in seeming.

And all of this, runs Varchi, dreamed out before hand In Perugia, caught in the star-maze by Del Carmine, Cast on a natal paper, set with an exegesis, told, All told to Alessandro, told thrice over, Who held his death for a doom. In abuleia. But Don Lorenzino “Whether for love of Florence ... but: “O si morisse, credesse caduto da se.” SIGA, SIGA! The wet cloak floats on the surface, Schiavoni, caught on the wood-barge, Gives out the afterbirth, Giovanni Borgia Trails out no more at night, where Barabello Prods the Pope’s elephant, and gets no crown, where Mozarello Takes the Calabrian roadway, and for ending Is smothered beneath a mule, a poet’s ending, Down a stale well-hole, oh a poet’s ending. “Sanazarro “Alone out of all the court was faithful to him” For the gossip of Naples’ trouble drifts to North, Fracastor (lightning was midwife) Cotta, and Ser D’Alviano, Al poco giorno ed al gran cerchio d’ombra, Talk the talks out with Navighero, Burner of yearly Martials, (The slavelet is mourned in vain) And the next comer says “were nine wounds, “Four men, white horse with a double rider,” The hooves clink and slick on the cobbles ... Schiavoni ... the cloak floats on the water, “Sink the thing,” splash wakes Schiavoni; Tiber catching the nap, the moonlit velvet, Wet cat, gleaming in patches. “Se pia,” Varchi, “O empia, ma risoluto “E terribile deliberazione” Both sayings run in the wind, Ma si morisse!

THE SIXTH CANTO

“The tale of thy deeds Odysseus!” and Tolosan Ground rents, sold by Guillaume, ninth duke of Aquitaine; Till Louis is wed with Eleanor; the wheel ... (“Conrad, the wheel turns and in the end turns ill”) And Acre and boy’s love ... for her uncle was Commandant at Acre, she was pleased with him; And Louis, French King, was jealous of days unshared This pair had had together in years gone; And he drives on for Zion, as “God wills” To find, in six weeks time, the Queen’s scarf is Twisted a-top the casque of Saladin. “For Sandbrueil’s ransom.” But the pouch-mouths add, “She went out hunting, and the palm-tufts “Give shade above mottled columns, and she rode back late, “Late, latish, yet perhaps it was not too late.” Then France again, and to be rid of her To brush his antlers: Poictiers, Aquitaine! And Adelaide Castilla wears the crown. Eleanor down water-butt, dethroned, debased, unqueen’d. Unqueen’d five rare long months, And face sand-red, pitch gait, Harry Plantagenet, The sputter in place of speech, But King, about to be, King Louis! takes a queen. “E quand lo 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. “_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, a song, 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 of, and patched with Malek Kamel 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 To all men presents that our noble brother Richard of England engaged by 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 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, pacing, He was come from Ventadorn; and Eleanor turning on thirty years, Domna jauzionda, and he says to her “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.”

THE SEVENTH CANTO

Eleanor (she spoiled in a British climate) ‘Ελανδρος and Ελέπτολις, 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....” In chatter above the circus, “Nullum excute tamen.” 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, To Dante’s “ciocco,” the 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 panelled 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 a 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. Sceptic 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 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, έλανδρος, έλέπτολις, 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.