Canto Iii Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABCDDAEFDGDHHADICDA AIADDCDIJACKLMNIADOP DDIAQQRIHDDDSTDIDUIV ADLQWIICDDADATXDIDAW DDYDLDDCXLACDCDACCDD DYLACDLDDZDLLDDDDDDD AA2LDCB2DCQLQTDDLLHI TALC2ACID2ALDDLILDAD LE2I DDDDC2F2DDC2C2C2DDAD DLAnother's a half cracked fellow John Heydon | A |
Worker of miracles dealer in levitation | A |
In thoughts upon pure form in alchemy | B |
Seer of pretty visions 'servant of God and secretary of nature' | C |
Full of plaintive charm like Botticelli's | D |
With half transparent forms lacking the vigor of gods | D |
Thus Heydon in a trance at Bulverton | A |
Had such a sight | E |
Decked all in green with sleeves of yellow silk | F |
Slit to the elbow slashed with various purples | D |
Her eyes were green as glass her foot was leaf like | G |
She was adorned with choicest emeralds | D |
And promised him the way of holy wisdom | H |
'Pretty green bank ' began the half lost poem | H |
Take the old way say I met John Heydon | A |
Sought out the place | D |
Lay on the bank was 'plung d deep in swevyn ' | I |
And saw the company Layamon Chaucer | C |
Pass each in his appropriate robes | D |
Conversed with each observed the varying fashion | A |
And then comes Heydon | A |
'I have seen John Heydon ' | I |
Let us hear John Heydon | A |
'Omniformis | D |
Omnis intellectus est' thus he begins by spouting half of Psellus | D |
Then comes a note my assiduous commentator | C |
Not Psellus De Daemonibus but Porphyry's Chances | D |
In the thirteenth chapter that 'every intellect is omni form ' | I |
Magnifico Lorenzo used the dodge | J |
Says that he met Ficino | A |
In some Wordsworthian false pastoral manner | C |
And that they walked along stopped at a well head | K |
And heard deep platitudes about contentment | L |
From some old codger with an endless beard | M |
'A daemon is not a particular intellect | N |
But is a substance differed from intellect ' | I |
Breaks in Ficino | A |
'Placed in the latitude or locus of souls' | D |
That's out of Proclus take your pick of them | O |
Valla more earth and sounder rhetoric | P |
Prefacing praise to his Pope Nicholas | D |
'A man of parts skilled in the subtlest sciences | D |
A patron of the arts of poetry and of a fine discernment ' | I |
Then comes a catalogue his jewels of conversation | A |
No you've not read your Elegantiae | Q |
A dull book shook the church | Q |
The prefaces cut clear and hard | R |
'Know then the Roman speech a sacrament ' | I |
Spread for the nations eucharist of wisdom | H |
Bread of the liberal arts | D |
Ha Sir Blancatz | D |
Sordello would have your heart to give to all the princes | D |
Valla the heart of Rome | S |
Sustaining speech set out before the people | T |
'Nec bonus Christianus ac bonus | D |
Tullianus ' | I |
Marius Du Bellay wept for the buildings | D |
Baldassar Castiglione saw Raphael | U |
'Lead back the soul into its dead waste dwelling ' | I |
Corpore laniato and Lorenzo Valla | V |
'Broken in middle life bent to submission | A |
Took a fat living from the Papacy' | D |
That's in Villari but Burckhardt's statement is different | L |
'More than the Roman city the Roman speech' | Q |
Holds fast its part among the ever living | W |
'Not by the eagles only was Rome measured ' | I |
'Wherever the Roman speech was there was Rome ' | I |
Wherever the speech crept there was mastery | C |
Spoke with the law's voice while your Greek logicians | D |
More Greeks than one Doughty's 'divine Homeros' | D |
Came before sophistry Justinopolitan | A |
Uncatalogued Andreas Divus | D |
Gave him in Latin in my edition the rest uncertain | A |
Caught up his cadence word and syllable | T |
'Down to the ships we went set mast and sail | X |
Black keel and beasts for bloody sacrifice | D |
Weeping we went ' | I |
I've strained my ear for ensa ombra and ensa | D |
And cracked my wit on delicate canzoni | A |
Here's but rough meaning | W |
'And then went down to the ship set keel to breakers | D |
Forth on the godly sea | D |
We set up mast and sail on the swarthy ship | Y |
Sheep bore we aboard her and our bodies also | D |
Heavy with weeping And winds from sternward | L |
Bore us out onward with bellying canvas | D |
Circe's this craft the trim coifed goddess | D |
Then sat we amidships wind jamming the tiller | C |
Thus with stretched sail | X |
We went over sea till day's end | L |
Sun to his slumber shadows o'er all the ocean | A |
Came we then to the bounds of deepest water | C |
To the Kimmerian lands and peopled cities | D |
Covered with close webbed mist unpierc d ever | C |
With glitter of sun rays | D |
Nor with stars stretched nor looking back from heaven | A |
Swartest night stretched over wretched men there | C |
Thither we in that ship unladed sheep there | C |
The ocean flowing backward came we through to the place | D |
Aforesaid by Circe | D |
Here did they rites Perimedes and Eurylochus | D |
And drawing sword from my hip | Y |
I dug the ell square pitkin poured we libations unto each the dead | L |
First mead and then sweet wine | A |
Water mixed with white flour | C |
Then prayed I many a prayer to the sickly death's heads | D |
As set in Ithaca sterile bulls of the best | L |
For sacrifice heaping the pyre with goods | D |
Sheep to Tiresias only | D |
Black and a bell sheep | Z |
Dark blood flowed in the fosse | D |
Souls out of Erebus cadaverous dead | L |
Of brides of youths and of many passing old | L |
Virgins tender souls stained with recent tears | D |
Many men mauled with bronze lance heads | D |
Battle spoil bearing yet dreary arms | D |
These many crowded about me | D |
With shouting pallor upon me cried to my men for more beasts | D |
Slaughtered the herds sheep slain of bronze | D |
Poured ointment cried to the gods | D |
To Pluto the strong and praised Proserpine | A |
Unsheathed the narrow steel | A2 |
I sat to keep off the impetuous impotent dead | L |
Till I should hear Tiresias | D |
But first Elpenor came our friend Elpenor | C |
Unburied cast on the wide earth | B2 |
Limbs that we left in the house of Circe | D |
Unwept unwrapped in sepulchre since toils urged other | C |
Pitiful spirit and I cried in hurried speech | Q |
'Elpenor how art thou come to this dark coast | L |
Cam'st thou afoot outstripping seamen ' And he in heavy speech | Q |
'Ill fate and abundant wine I slept in Circe's ingle | T |
Going down the long ladder unguarded I fell against the buttress | D |
Shattered the nape nerve the soul sought Avernus | D |
But thou O King I bid remember me unwept unburied | L |
Heap up mine arms be tomb by the sea board and inscribed | L |
A man of no fortune and with a name to come | H |
And set my oar up that I swung 'mid fellows ' | I |
Came then another ghost whom I beat off Anticlea | T |
And then Tiresias Theban | A |
Holding his golden wand knew me and spoke first | L |
'Man of ill hour why come a second time | C2 |
Leaving the sunlight facing the sunless dead and this joyless region | A |
Stand from the fosse move back leave me my bloody bever | C |
And I will speak you true speeches ' | I |
'And I stepped back | D2 |
Sheathing the yellow sword Dark blood he drank then | A |
And spoke 'Lustrous Odysseus shalt | L |
Return through spiteful Neptune over dark seas | D |
Lose all companions ' Foretold me the ways and the signs | D |
Came then Anticlea to whom I answered | L |
'Fate drives me on through these deeps I sought Tiresias ' | I |
I told her news of Troy and thrice her shadow | L |
Faded in my embrace | D |
Then had I news of many faded women | A |
Tyro Alcmena Chloris | D |
Heard out their tales by that dark fosse and sailed | L |
By sirens and thence outward and away | E2 |
And unto Circe buried Elpenor's corpse ' | I |
- | |
- | |
Lie quiet Divus | D |
In Officina Wechli Paris | D |
M D three X's Eight with Aldus on the Frogs | D |
And a certain Cretan's | D |
Hymni Deorum | C2 |
The thin clear Tuscan stuff | F2 |
Gives way before the florid mellow phrase | D |
Take we the Goddess Venus | D |
Venerandam | C2 |
Aurean coronam habentem pulchram | C2 |
Cypri munimenta sortita est maritime | C2 |
Light on the foam breathed on by zephyrs | D |
And air tending hours Mirthful orichalci | D |
with golden | A |
Girdles and breast bands | D |
Thou with dark eye lids | D |
Bearing the golden bough of Argicida | L |
Ezra Pound
(1)
Poem topics: , Print This Poem , Rhyme Scheme
Submit Spanish Translation
Submit German Translation
Submit French Translation
Write your comment about Canto Iii poem by Ezra Pound
Best Poems of Ezra Pound