Near Perigord Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCDE CFGH CDHID JDKCLHMNOCKDLPHHQLCC LLLL CHHDHH RDHHCS LLLLHTTCLLHCIKLK ILLLTL HLU HH VHLHHDCCK DHL ALHHIHKLLHD HLIHLDIWKCTLH KCKLHDCHHH ILHKHLKKI LHLKIDDIC KCH WWL LILLWKLWWL AKISLLWWCWL WL P C LLICL| I | A |
| You'd have men's hearts up from the dust | B |
| And tell their secrets Messire Cino | C |
| Rigkt enough Then read between the lines of Uc St Circ | D |
| Solve me the riddle for you know the tale | E |
| - | |
| Bertrans En Bertrans left a fine canzone | C |
| Maent I love you you have turned me out | F |
| The voice at Montfort Lady Agnes' hair | G |
| Bel Miral's stature the viscountess' throat | H |
| Set all together are not worthy of you ' | - |
| And all the while you sing out that canzone | C |
| Think you that Maent lived at Montaignac | D |
| One at Chalais another at Malemort | H |
| Hard over Brive for every lady a castle | I |
| Each place strong | D |
| - | |
| Oh is it easy enough | J |
| Tairiran held hall in Montaignac | D |
| His brother in law was all there was of power | K |
| In Perigord and this good union | C |
| Gobbled all the land and held it later for some hundred years | L |
| And our En Bertrans was in Altafort | H |
| Hub of the wheel the stirrer up of strife | M |
| As caught by Dante in the last wallow of hell | N |
| The headless trunk 'that made its head a lamp' | O |
| For separation wrought out separation | C |
| And he who set the strife between brother and brother | K |
| And had his way with the old English king | D |
| Viced in such torture for the 'counterpass' | L |
| How would you live with neighbours set about you | P |
| Poictiers and Brive untaken Rochecouart | H |
| Spread like the finger tips of one frail hand | H |
| And you on that great mountain of a palm | Q |
| Not a neat ledge not Foix between its streams | L |
| But one huge back half covered up with pine | C |
| Worked for and snatched from the string purse of Born | C |
| The four round towers four brothers mostly fools | L |
| What could he do but play the desperate chess | L |
| And stir old grudges | L |
| Pawn your castles lords | L |
| Let the Jews pay ' | - |
| And the great scene | C |
| That maybe never happened | H |
| Beaten at last | H |
| Before the hard old king | D |
| 'Your son ah since he died | H |
| ''My wit and worth are cobwebs brushed aside | H |
| 'In the full flare of grief Do what you will ' | - |
| - | |
| Take the whole man and ravel out the story | R |
| He loved this lady in castle Montaignac | D |
| The castle flanked him he had need of it | H |
| You read to day how long the overlords of Perigord | H |
| The Talleyrands have held the place it was no transient fiction | C |
| And Maent failed him Or saw through the scheme | S |
| - | |
| And all his net like thought of new alliance | L |
| Chalais is high a level with the poplars | L |
| Its lowest stones just meet the valley tips | L |
| Where the low Dronne is filled with water lilies | L |
| And Rochecouart can match it stronger yet | H |
| The very spur's end built on sheerest cliff | T |
| And Malemort keeps its close hold on Brive | T |
| While Born his own close purse his rabbit warren | C |
| His subterranean chamber with a dozen doors | L |
| A bristle with antennae to feel roads | L |
| To sniff the traffic into Perigord | H |
| And that hard phalanx that unbroken line | C |
| The ten good miles from there to Maent's castle | I |
| All of his flank how could he do without her | K |
| And all the road to Cahors to Toulouse | L |
| would he do without her | K |
| - | |
| Papiol | I |
| Go forthright singing Anhes Cembelins | L |
| There is a throat ah there are two white hands | L |
| There is a trellis full of early roses | L |
| And all my heart is bound about with love | T |
| Where am I come with compound flatteries | L |
| What doors are open to fine compliment ' | - |
| And every one half jealous of Maent | H |
| He wrote the catch to pit their jealousies | L |
| Against her give her pride in them | U |
| - | |
| Take his own speech make what you will of it | H |
| And still the knot the first knot of Maent | H |
| - | |
| Is it a love poem Did he sing of war | V |
| Is it an intrigue to run subtly out | H |
| Born of a jongleur's tongue freely to pass | L |
| Up and about and in and out the land | H |
| Mark him a craftsman and a strategist | H |
| St Leider had done as much as Polhonac | D |
| Singing a different stave as closely hidden | C |
| Oh there is precedent legal tradition | C |
| To sing one thing when your song means another | K |
| 'Et albirar ab lor bordon ' | - |
| Foix' count knew that What is Sir Bertrans' singing | D |
| Maent Maent and yet again Maent | H |
| Or war and broken heaumes and politics | L |
| - | |
| II | A |
| End fact Try fiction Let us say we see | L |
| En Bertrans a tower room at Hautefort | H |
| Sunset the ribbon like road lies in red cross light | H |
| Southward toward Montaignac and he bends at a table | I |
| Scribbling swearing between his teeth by his left hand | H |
| Lie little strips of parchment covered over | K |
| Scratched and erased with al and ochaisos | L |
| Testing his list of rhymes a lean man Bilious | L |
| With a red straggling beard | H |
| And the green cat's eye lifts toward Montaignac | D |
| - | |
| Or take his 'magnet' singer setting out | H |
| Dodging his way past Aubeterre singing at Chalais | L |
| In the vaulted hall | I |
| Or by a lichened tree at Rochecouart | H |
| Aimlessly watching a hawk above the valleys | L |
| Waiting his turn in the mid summer evening | D |
| Thinking of Aelis whom he loved heart and soul | I |
| To find her half alone Montfort away | W |
| And a brown placid hated woman visiting her | K |
| Spoiling his visit with a year before the next one | C |
| Little enough | T |
| Or carry him forward 'Go through all the courts | L |
| My Magnet ' Bertrans had said | H |
| - | |
| We came to Ventadour | K |
| In the mid love court he sings out the canzon | C |
| No one hears save Arrimon Luc D'Esparo | K |
| No one hears aught save the gracious sound of compliments | L |
| Sir Arrimon counts on his fingers Montfort | H |
| Rochecouart Chalais the rest the tactic | D |
| Malemort guesses beneath sends wrord to Cceur de Lion | C |
| The compact de Born smoked out trees felled | H |
| About his castle cattle driven out | H |
| Or no one sees it and En Bertrans prospered | H |
| - | |
| And ten years after or twenty as you will | I |
| Arnaut and Richard lodge beneath Chalus | L |
| The dull round towers encroaching on the field | H |
| The tents tight drawn horses at tether | K |
| Further and out of reach the purple night | H |
| The crackling of small fires the bannerets | L |
| The lazy leopards on the largest banner | K |
| Stray gleams on hanging mail an armourer's torch flare | K |
| Melting on steel | I |
| - | |
| And in the quietest space | L |
| They probe old scandals say de Born is dead | H |
| And we've the gossip skipped six hundred years | L |
| Richard shall die to morrow leave him there | K |
| Talking oftrobar clus with Daniel | I |
| And the 'best craftsman' sings out his friend's song | D |
| Envies its vigour and deplores the technique | D |
| Dispraises his own skill That's as you will | I |
| And they discuss the dead man | C |
| Plantagenet puts the riddle 'Did he love her ' | - |
| And Arnaut parries 'Did he love your sister | K |
| True he has praised her but in some opinion | C |
| He wrote that praise only to show he had | H |
| The favour of your party had been well received ' | - |
| - | |
| 'You knew the man ' | - |
| You knew the man ' | - |
| 'I am an artist you have tried both metiers ' | - |
| 'You were born near him ' | - |
| 'Do we know our friends ' | - |
| 'Say that he saw the castles say that he loved Maent ' | - |
| 'Say that he loved her does it solve the riddle ' | - |
| End the discussion Richard goes out next day | W |
| And gets a quarrel bolt shot through his vizard | W |
| Pardons the bowman dies | L |
| - | |
| Ends our discussion Arnaut ends | L |
| In sacred odour' that's apocryphal | I |
| And we can leave the talk till Dante writes | L |
| Surely I saw and still before my eyes | L |
| Goes on that headless trunk that bears for light | W |
| Its own head swinging gripped by the dead hair | K |
| And like a swinging lamp that says 'Ah me | L |
| I severed men my head and heart | W |
| Ye see here severed my life's counterpart | W |
| Or take En Bertrans | L |
| - | |
| III | A |
| Bewildering spring and by the Auvezere | K |
| Poppies and day's eyes in the green mail | I |
| Rose over us and we knew all that stream | S |
| And our two horses had traced out the valleys | L |
| Knew the low flooded lands squared out with poplars | L |
| In the young days when the deep sky befriended | W |
| And great wings beat above us in the twilight | W |
| And the great wheels in heaven | C |
| Bore us together surging and apart | W |
| Believing we should meet with lips and hands | L |
| - | |
| High high and sure and then the counter thrust | W |
| Why do you love me Will you always love me | L |
| But I am like the grass I can not love you ' | - |
| Or Love and I love and love you | P |
| And hate your mind not you your soul your hands ' | - |
| - | |
| So to this last estrangement Tairiran | C |
| - | |
| There shut up in his castle Tairiran's | L |
| She who had nor ears nor tongue save in her hands | L |
| Gone ah gone untouched unreachable | I |
| She who could never live save through one person | C |
| She who c | L |
Ezra Pound
(1)
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About Near Perigord
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