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page 42
‘But we forget not’. No, take it all for lies. I have but smelt this life, a whiff of it – The box of scented wood Recalls cathedrals. And shall I claim; Confuse my own phantastikon, Or say the filmy shell that circumscribes me Contains the actual sun;                       confuse the thing I see With actual gods behind me?                           Are they gods behind me? How many worlds we have! If Botticelli Brings her ashore on that great cockle-shell – His Venus (Simonetta?), And Spring and Aufidus fill all the air With their clear-outlined blossoms? World enough. Behold, I say, she comes ‘Apparelled like the spring, Graces her subjects’, (That’s from Pericles). Oh, we have worlds enough, and brave décors, And from these like we guess a soul for man And build him full of aery populations. Mantegna a sterner line, and the new world about us: Barred lights, great flares, new form, Picasso or Lewis. If for a year man write to paint, and not to music – O Casella! 8 Posthumous Cantos
page 43
II Leave Casella. Send out your thought upon the Mantuan palace – Drear waste, great halls, Silk tatters still in the frame, Gonzaga’s splendour Alight with phantoms! What have we of them, Or much or little? Where do we come upon the ancient people? ‘All that I know is that a certain star’ – All that I know of one, Joios, Tolosan, Is that in middle May, going along A scarce discerned path, turning aside, In level poplar lands, he found a flower, and wept. ‘ Y a la primera flor’, he wrote, ‘Qu’ieu trobei, tornei em plor’. There’s the one stave, and all the rest forgotten.  I’ve lost the copy I had of it in Paris, Out of the blue and gilded manuscript Decked out with Couci’s rabbits, And the pictures, twined with the capitals, Purporting to be Arnaut and the authors. Joios we have. By such a margent stream, He strayed in the field, wept for a flare of colour, When Coeur de Lion was before Chalus. Or there’s En Arnaut’s score of songs, two tunes; The rose-leaf casts her dew on the ringing glass,  Dolmetsch will build our age in witching music. Viols da Gamba, tabors, tympanons: I  Three Cantos 9

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‘But we forget not’.

No, take it all for lies. I have but smelt this life, a whiff of it – The box of scented wood Recalls cathedrals. And shall I claim; Confuse my own phantastikon, Or say the filmy shell that circumscribes me Contains the actual sun;                       confuse the thing I see With actual gods behind me?                           Are they gods behind me? How many worlds we have! If Botticelli Brings her ashore on that great cockle-shell – His Venus (Simonetta?), And Spring and Aufidus fill all the air With their clear-outlined blossoms? World enough. Behold, I say, she comes ‘Apparelled like the spring, Graces her subjects’, (That’s from Pericles). Oh, we have worlds enough, and brave décors, And from these like we guess a soul for man And build him full of aery populations. Mantegna a sterner line, and the new world about us: Barred lights, great flares, new form, Picasso or Lewis. If for a year man write to paint, and not to music – O Casella!

8 Posthumous Cantos

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