University of Virginia Library

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.

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 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."

E Eleanor (she spoiled in a British climate)
Ἑλανδρος 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?
Ἑλέναυς, ἑλανδρος, ἑλέπτολις,
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 . . .
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 petrification 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-blurr;
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,
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-gray iris, with an even side-fall of hair
The stiff, still features.