Analysis of Canto III

Ezra Pound 1885 (Hailey) – 1972 (Venice)



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
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 met John Heydon,
Sought out the place,
Lay on the bank, was 'plungèd deep in swevyn;'
And saw the company—Layamon, Chaucer—
Pass each in his appropriate robes;
Conversed with each, observed the varying fashion.
And then comes Heydon.
'I have seen John Heydon.'
Let us hear John Heydon!
'Omniformis
Omnis intellectus est'—thus he begins, by spouting half of Psellus.
(Then comes a note, my assiduous commentator:
Not Psellus De Daemonibus, but Porphyry's Chances,
In the thirteenth chapter, that 'every intellect is omni-form.')
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 codger 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 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.'
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! Sir Blancatz,
Sordello would have your heart to give to all the princes;
Valla, the heart of Rome,
Sustaining 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 fat living from the Papacy'
(That's in Villari, but Burckhardt'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,
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 swarthy 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, unpiercèd 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
Aforesaid by Circe.
Here did they rites, Perimedes and Eurylochus,
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 pra


Scheme AABCDDAEFDGDHHADACDAAAADDCDIJACKLMNNADOPDDLAQQRLHDDDSTDDDUVWABLQVXSBDDADATYDZDAVDB1 DEDDCY2 ACDCDA3 3 DDD1 K4 CC
Poetic Form
Metre 01001110110 101100100010 0101110100 1110101110100110 1110111 1101011001011 11000111 1101 1101111101 11011110010 01011101111 110111010 01010111010 10110101110 1011111110 1101 1101111101 010100110 110101001 011101010010 01110 111110 111110 1 1111101110111 11011010100 11111110 0011101100101101 1010101 11111 011110010 01110111011 0111001010 111111101 010110010010 1101010110 101 1001011011 111111111 1011010100 11111100 01111001100 01010111000101010 110101101010 111111 011101 011101 1101010100 11010100110 1101001 111 111111111010 100111 01011101010 11011110 1 1001111010 100010101 11010111110 11001010 10010111010 1011010100 1001011101100 11010100101 11110101010 11010101110 01001011111 01001111100 110111111 11111011 10111 10101 110100101001010 1111010100 1101111101 110111010 1011 111111101 011111001 11110 011110111110 110101 11110110101 1110100101010 101100111 111101110 11101110 111010110010 1111 11101111 111101101010 11110111010 101101010 1011111110 110111 11111101110 111101011 11011111 0101010111101 0111 1111101 0101111 110111011110101 110111 1011110 11
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 4,396
Words 735
Sentences 37
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 106
Lines Amount 106
Letters per line (avg) 32
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 3,417
Words per stanza (avg) 721
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 26, 2023

3:42 min read
145

Ezra Pound

Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic of the early modernist movement. more…

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