Five years have past; five summers, with the length Of five long winters! and again I hear These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs With a soft inland murmur.—Once again Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs, That on a wild secluded scene impress Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
I have led her home, my love, my only friend, There is none like her, none. And never yet so warmly ran my blood And sweetly, on and on Calming itself to the long-wished-for end, Full to the banks, close on the promised good.
None like her, none. Just now the dry-tongued laurels’ pattering talk Seem’d her light foot along the garden walk, And shook my heart to think she comes once more; But even then I heard her close the door, The gates of Heaven are closed, and she is gone.
In a year the nightingales were said to be so loud they drowned out slumber, and peafowl strolled screaming beside the ruined nunnery, through the long evening of a dazzled pub crawl, the halcyon color, portholed by those eye-spots’ stunning tapestry, unsettled the pastoral nightfall with amazements opening.
Months later, intermission in a pub on Fifty-fifth Street found one of them still breathless, the other quizzical,
And is this—Yarrow?—This the stream Of which my fancy cherished, So faithfully, a waking dream? An image that hath perished! O that some Minstrel's harp were near, To utter notes of gladness, And chase this silence from the air, That fills my heart with sadness!
Go, for they call you, shepherd, from the hill; Go, shepherd, and untie the wattled cotes! No longer leave thy wistful flock unfed, Nor let thy bawling fellows rack their throats, Nor the cropp'd herbage shoot another head. But when the fields are still, And the tired men and dogs all gone to rest, And only the white sheep are sometimes seen
ONE From Sappho to myself, consider the fate of women. How unwomanly to discuss it! Like a noose or an albatross necktie The clinical sobriquet hangs us: codpiece coveters. Never mind these epithets; I myself have collected some honeys. Juvenal set us apart in denouncing our vices Which had grown, in part, from having been set apart: Women abused their spouses, cuckolded them, even plotted
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk: 'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, But being too happy in thine happiness,— That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees In some melodious plot Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, Singest of summer in full-throated ease.
O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth, Tasting of Flora and the country green, Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness, Thou foster-child of silence and slow time, Sylvan historian, who canst thus express A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme: What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape Of deities or mortals, or of both, In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
I Beyond the hollow sunset, ere a star Take heart in heaven from eastward, while the west, Fulfilled of watery resonance and rest, Is as a port with clouds for harbour bar To fold the fleet in of the winds from far That stir no plume now of the bland sea's breast:
II Above the soft sweep of the breathless bay Southwestward, far past flight of night and day, Lower than the sunken sunset sinks, and higher Than dawn can freak the front of heaven with fire, My thought with eyes and wings made wide makes way To find the place of souls that I desire.
Emily, A ship is floating in the harbour now, A wind is hovering o'er the mountain's brow; There is a path on the sea's azure floor, No keel has ever plough'd that path before; The halcyons brood around the foamless isles; The treacherous Ocean has forsworn its wiles; The merry mariners are bold and free: Say, my heart's sister, wilt thou sail with me? Our bark is as an albatross, whose nest Is a far Eden of the purple East; And we between her wings will sit, while Night, And Day, and Storm, and Calm, pursue their flight, Our ministers, along the boundless Sea, Treading each other's heels, unheededly.
Canto III appeared in the July, 1917 issue of Poetry. Originally part of what scholars call the "Ur-Cantos," this version of Canto III was later edited by Pound to become Canto I of his collected Cantos. The section that eventually became Canto I is highlighted in blue in the poem below. —THE EDITORS
III
Another's a half-cracked fellow—John Heydon, Worker of miracles, dealer in levitation, In thoughts upon pure form, in alchemy, Seer of pretty visions ("servant of God and secretary of nature"); Full of plaintive charm, like Botticelli's, With half-transparent forms, lacking the vigor of gods. Thus Heydon, in a trance, at Bulverton, Had such a sight: Decked all in green, with sleeves of yellow silk
Just by the wooden brig a bird flew up, Frit by the cowboy as he scrambled down To reach the misty dewberry—let us stoop And seek its nest—the brook we need not dread, 'Tis scarcely deep enough a bee to drown, So it sings harmless o'er its pebbly bed —Ay here it is, stuck close beside the bank Beneath the bunch of grass that spindles rank
There were still shards of an ancient pastoral in those shires of the island where the cattle drank their pools of shadow from an older sky, surviving from when the landscape copied such subjects as “Herefords at Sunset in the Valley of the Wye.” The mountain water that fell white from the mill wheel sprinkling like petals from the star-apple trees, and all of the windmills and sugar mills moved by mules
In the groves of Africa from their natural wonder the wildebeest, zebra, the okapi, the elephant, have enterd the marvelous. No greater marvelous know I than the mind’s natural jungle. The wives of the Congo distil there their red and the husbands hunt lion with spear and paint Death-spore on their shields, wear his teeth, claws and hair
Thus they in lowliest plight repentant stood Praying, for from the Mercie-seat above Prevenient Grace descending had remov'd The stonie from thir hearts, & made new flesh Regenerate grow instead, that sighs now breath'd Unutterable, which the Spirit of prayer Inspir'd, and wing'd for Heav'n with speedier flight Then loudest Oratorie: yet thir port
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