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I ha’ seen him cow a thousand men
On the hills o’ Galilee,
They whined as he walked out calm between
Wi’ his eyes like the grey o’ the sea.

Like the sea that brooks no voyaging
With the winds unleashed and free,
Like the sea that he cowed at Genseret
Wi’ twey words spoke suddently.

A master of men was the Goodly Fere
A mate of the wind and sea,
If they think they ha’ slain our Goodly Fere
They are fools eternally.

I ha’ seen him eat o’ the honey-comb
Sin’ they nailed him to the tree.

And from this we turn to a very different form in the “Altaforte,” which is perhaps the best sestina that has been written in English:

Damn it all! all this our South stinks peace.
You whoreson dog, Papiols, come! let’s to music!
I have no life save when the swords clash.
But ah! when I see the standards gold, vair, purple, opposing,
And the broad fields beneath them turn crimson,
Then howl I my heart nigh mad with rejoicing.

In hot summer have I great rejoicing
When the tempests kill the earth’s foul peace,
And the lightnings from black heaven flash crimson,
And the fierce thunders roar me their music
And the winds shriek through the clouds mad, opposing,
And through all the riven skies God’s swords clash.

I have quoted two verses to show the intricacy of the pattern.

The Provencal canzon, like the Elizabethan lyric, was written for music. Mr. Pound has more recently insisted, in a series of articles on the work of Arnold Dolmetsch, in the “Egoist,” on the importance of a study of music for the poet.

* * * * *

Such a relation between poetry and music is very different from what is called the “music” of Shelley or Swinburne, a music often nearer to rhetoric (or the art of the orator) than to the instrument. For poetry to approach the condition of music (Pound quotes approvingly the dictum of Pater) it is not necessary that poetry should be destitute of meaning. Instead of slightly veiled and resonant abstractions, like

Time with a gift of tears,
Grief with a glass that ran–

of Swinburne, or the mossiness of Mallarme, Pound’s verse is always definite and concrete, because he has always a definite emotion behind it.

Though I’ve roamed through many places,
None there is that my heart troweth
Fair as that wherein fair groweth
One whose laud here interlaces
Tuneful words, that I’ve essayed.
Let this tune be gently played
Which my voice herward upraises.

At the end of this poem the author appends the note:

The form and measure are those of Piere Vidal’s “Ab
l’alen tir vas me l’aire.” The song is fit only to be
sung, and is not to be spoken.

There are, here and there, deliberate archaisms or oddities (e.g., “herward”); there are deliberately arbitrary images, having their place in the total effect of the poem:

Red leaf that art blown upward and out and over
The green sheaf of the world …

The lotos that pours
Her fragrance into the purple cup …

Black lightning … (in a more recent poem)

but no word is ever chosen merely for the tinkle; each has always its part in producing an impression which is produced always through language. Words are perhaps the hardest of all material of art: for they must be used to express both visual beauty and beauty of sound, as well as communicating a grammatical statement. It would be interesting to compare Pound’s use of images with Mallarme’s; I think it will be found that the former’s, by the contrast, will appear always sharp in outline, even if arbitrary and not photographic. Such images as those quoted above are as precise in their way as