Z-siteA Companion to the Works of Louis Zukofsky

13 April 1973 – 21/22 Sept. 1974 / excerpts of 2-3 pages each in Agenda 13.2 (Summer 1975); Transatlantic Review 52 (Autumn 1975); Singe 5 (Winter 1977)

 

Written as a companion to “A”-22, this movement also has 1000 lines, uses a 5-word line and begins and ends with 100 line sections, although the latter is not divided into 5-line stanzas. The materials of “A”-23 are predominately literary, especially poetic, and after the opening 100 line section are presented in chronological order: beginning with primitive songs and Gilgamesh, moving through the Old Testament prophets, classical Greek and Roman writers and the medieval period, with Renaissance through 19th century sources appearing in the first 74 lines of the final 100 line segment—the last 26 lines form an alphabetical conclusion. For an outline list of the sources used in the main body of “A”-23 see here.

 

536.1    An unforeseen delight a round / beginning ardent; to end blest…: beyond echoing the first lines of “A”-1, LZ is evoking the B-A-C-H theme of “A”-12: blest-ardent-happy (see 12.127.16f), with Celia “submerged” as an acronym two pages later at 538.10: “submerged name in coldénia” (Ahearn 191-192). The opening phrase is from Stendhal (1783-1842), On Love (see 536.23): “What conclusion should we draw from all this? That a wise woman should never give herself for the first time by appointment—it should be an unforeseen delight” (trans. C.K. Scott-Moncrieff). “Blest” is how LZ typically referred to Spinoza, whose name, Baruch or Benedict, literally means blessed (see e.g. 12.231.9), and Ethics famously concludes with the proposition: “Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself […].”

536.4    a world worn in whose / happiest…: through 536.6 from Henry James, The Golden Bowl (1904), Chap. 1:
“And he had turned his eyes about again, taking in the pretty room that she had just described as her final refuge, the place of peace of a world-worn couple […].”
“He also remembered what he had been moved to reply: ‘The happiest reigns, we are taught, you know, are the reigns without any history.’”
“To which his reply had been just of the happiest: ‘I don’t feel, my dear, if you really want to know, that anything much can now either hurt me or help me. Such as I am—but you’ll see for yourself […].’”

536.8    loci would dispose: see 9.106.21.

536.23  the troubled heart foregoes / its sigh: from Stendhal, On Love (see 536.1): “I want to impose silence on my heart, which wants to say too much. I am always afraid of only having put down a sigh when I imagine myself to have recorded a truth.”

536.26  as if a child sings / a li’l bit of doggy / heaven: apparently from a advertising jingle for canned dog food (HRC 7.4).

537.8    equisetum—horse + bristle / (field horsetail): apparently LZ is consulting a dictionary: L. equisætum, < equus, a horse, + seta, sæta, a bristle … “popularly called horsetails” (CD). Equisetum is a plant that Lorine Niedecker described to LZ as “little fern-like plants with hollow stems,” as well as mentioning that it grows in the marshy areas around her house in Black Hawk, Wisconsin and has the common name “horsetail” (Penberthy 149, 154); see Niedecker’s poem: “I rose from marsh mud, / algae, equisetum, willows, / sweet green, noisy / birds and frogs […]” (Collected Works 170). Horsehair (not equisetum) is also used for making violin bows; see 13.285.31, 19.409.10, Bottom 426 and also the manes of “A”-7.

537.9    research won’t guarantee; / tongues commonly inaccurate: from Erik Satie (1866-1925), French composer: “Although our information is inaccurate, we do not guarantee it.”

537.12  loving song greater than / anything—unhappiness: from Paul Klee (1879-1940), Swiss artist: “To love music more than anything, that is unhappiness.”

537.14  in the extended world / where does the right thumb…: from Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), Austrian philosopher, The Blue and Brown Books (1958): “We mistakenly think that a definition is what will remove the trouble (as in certain states of indigestion we feel a kind of hunger which cannot be removed by eating). The question is then answered by a wrong definition […] Philosophy, as we use the word, is a fight against the fascination which forms of expression exert upon us” (27). Quoted in LZ’s notebooks (HRC 37.4), this may have suggested 537.5.
“Suppose I feel a pain which on the evidence of the pain alone, e.g., with closed eyes, I should call a pain in my left hand. Someone asks me to touch the painful spot with my right hand. […] Do we know the place of pain in Euclidean space, so that when we know where we have pains we know how far away from two of the walls of this room, and from the floor?” (49-50). For “extended world,” see 11.125.4-5.

537.23  Neither can bent hobnails flung / chance’s play equaled aleatorical notes…: one might think LZ is alluding here to John Cage’s prepared piano work, in which nails, screws or other objects are inserted in the piano strings to create chance “notes.” However, LZ’s immediate source is an article by Helmut Kirchmeyer, “On the Historical Constitution of a Rationalisitic Music: A study of the progress of musical cominatorics from Guido d’Arezzo to the present day” in Die Reihe 8 (1968): “[…] the monk Mauritius Vogt of Prague in his musical treatise, ‘Conclave Thesauri magnae artis musicae’ (1719) wished people to compose music by the method of bending a number of hobnails into different shapes, equating each of the different shapes with a musical figure, and then throwing down the hobnails and reading off the musical figures and writing them down in exactly that order in which the hobnails had fallen.”

537.26  skiddaw rock emitting tones: from the New York Times for 21 March 1971, a review by Harold C. Schonberg (“From A (Aburukuwa) to Z (Zuzu)”) of James Blades, Percussion Instruments and Their History (1970), in which he describes an orchestra with instruments “[…] ‘invented and manufactured […] from rocks dug out of the mighty Skiddaw in Cumberland.’ This rock band (is there nothing new in terminology?) toured, with a repertory consisting of Handel, Mozart, Rossini and others, and all listeners were amazed by the ‘great artistry’ of the group. Blades laments that ‘today the stones are extremely rare, particularly those with a deep tone’ […]” A clipping of this review is among LZ’s papers (HRC 36.1).

537.29  damp cannot warm the houses— / linden thrives…: these lines through 537.32 is based on notes from a reading tour to London the Zukofskys took in May 1969 (Leggott 325-326).

538.5    from where sipped— / constant rubric handle sun jut: LZ’s notebooks indicate that these lines, plus line 538.8, describe a sun rise while drinking coffee. The “rubric” was originally ¶ as an image of the sun partially visible behind a building (HRC 37.4).

538.10  submerged name in coldénia, second / paradise trunsole…: the “submerged name” is Celia (Ahearn 191-192), see note at 536.1. In addition, a less submerged name in “coldenia” is Cadwallader Colden, the colonial governor and scientist (see 8.102.19, 12.256.24), after whom Linnaeus named the coldenia. Coldenia is a small shrub with pinkish-white flowers that prefers dry areas. The rest of the stanza is mostly worked from details in a couple pages of Gray’s Manual of Botany: A Handbook of the Flowering Plants and Ferns of the Central and Northeastern United States and Adjacent Canada, 8th edition (1950). Coldénia is in the Borage family, subfamily Heliotropoìdeae, Heliotròpium L. Turnsole. Heliotrope. “The ancient name, from the Greek helios, the sun, and trope, a turn; ancient writers believing that it turns toward the sun in flowering.” On the following page, subfamily Boraginoìdeae, Boràgo L. Borage 1. B. Officinàlis L. (of the shops).—Coarse, harshly villous-hirsute, 3-5 dem. high; principal leaves obovate to oblong, the lower petioled; corolla clear blue; anthers dark” (1197-1198).

538.10  second / paradise: from Paracelsus, see 12.146.24.

538.16  oak-ilex / holm: ilex is L. for the holm oak or holly. Holm also means an islet or a river-island; a river-meadow, a low flat tract of rich land by the side of a river (CD); see 557.14.

538.17  rushbottom chairs legs / shortened…: much of this passage through 538.31 is worked from domestic details: the chairs had been shortened for the young PZ and refurbished cushions were decorated with flower and goddess designs (Leggott 62, 386).

538.23  logic’s unanswerable: from D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Chap. 5: “‘No,’ [Clifford] replied. ‘You care for me. I don’t believe you would ever care for a man who was purely antipathetic to me. Your rhythm wouldn’t let you.’ [Connie] was silent. Logic might be unanswerable because it was so absolutely wrong. ‘And should you expect me to tell you?’ she asked, glancing up at him almost furtively.”

538.24  unstopping motion whose smallest / note further divided…: through 538.26 from the introduction to The Bach Reader (1945), eds. Hans T. David and Arthur Mendel: “Any piece of [Bach’s] music has a sort of atomic rhythmic basis—a smallest note value beyond which there is no further significant subdivision. In many of the four-part chorales, for example, the atomic unit is the eighth-note, and the four parts taken together produce an almost uninterrupted perpetual motion in eights. […] the continuous sixteenth-note motion, never interrupted from the beginning to the end except for cadences of primary importance, is shared and divided up among the parts with a subtlety and variety that seem infinite. The superimposing of varying rhythmic relations upon this continuous flow represents another triumphant realization of the ideal of many things in one.”

538.27  how dire his honor who’ll / peddle nothing: from Isaac D’Israeli (1766-1848), “The Philosophy of Proverbs” in Curiosities of Literature, quoting a Spanish proverb: “El dare es honor, / Y el pedir dolor. / ‘To give is honour, to ask is grief.’”

538.28  rendered his requiem / alive: as Leggott points out LZ once quipped during his reading at Bard College on 2 Nov. 1972 that he felt lucky to attend his own requiem, referring to CZ’s composition of “A”-24, and on another occastion that he would like to be present at his own requiem (72, 387)—“A”-11 could be understood as one such requiem.

538.31  80 / flowers: LZ was already planning his post-“A” project, 80 Flowers, by the time he wrote “A”-23; see note at 562.8.

539.1    descant / thought’s rare air, act, story / words: this lists the five “voices” of “A”-24, which are more explicitly given at 563.22: music, thought, drama, story, poem.

539.3    words earth: < Wordsworth.

539.8    Ye nó we see hay / io we hay we see…: through 539.18 adapted from a transcription of an Arapaho song related to the Peyote cult found in C.M. Bowra, Primitive Song (1962). The Arapaho are a Native American plains tribe closely associated with the Ghost Dance religion.
ye no wi ci hay
yo wi hay
wi ci hay
yo wi ci no
we ci ni

(repeat from start)

wi ni wi ci hay
yo wi hay
wi ci hay
yo wi ci ni hay
yo wi ci ni hay
yo wi how
wi ci hay
yo wi ci no
wi ni no wa  
At 539.11, bis means twice; in music, a term indicating that a passage or section is to be repeated; an exclamation, used like encore, as a request for the repetition of a musical performance, etc. (CD). Bowra gives the above as an example of a song made up of nonsense syllables: “These songs are not related to the ordinary language of the Arapaho and look like a conscious construction made on recognizable principles, since each sound consists of a consonant and a vowel, which is not the case with real Arapaho words. Moreover, some of these syllabic sequences are to be found in the songs of other peoples who have different and apparently unrelated languages. This suggests that such meaningless songs come from an ancient tradition and have survived because of their connection with a religious cult which is spread over a number of divergent tribes and may go back to a time when they were more closely connected than now” (60-61).

539.19  Akin jabber too hot to / rail all but cheek a…: through 539.24 from C.M. Bowra, Primitive Song (1962):
539.19-20: from an Australian Aranda (aboriginal) song: “ngkinjaba iturala albutjika, where three fully-charged units are combined: ngkinjaba means both ‘sun’ and ‘afternoon’; iturala means both ‘in the heat of the sun’ and ‘in the brightness of the sun’; albutjika means ‘to turn homeward.’ The whole line thus means ‘to turn home in the afternoon when the sun is bright and hot.’ Languages that work on such principles are admirably suited to poetry which aims at conveying a full impression of a state of consciousness in which ideas are far less important than sensory impressions” (32-33). See 539.28-29.
539.21-22: “The Pygmies and the Veddas [of Sri Lanka] scale trees and cliffs to find honey, and such activities are nicely displayed on the rock-paintings of Cueva de las Arañas in Valencia and Cueva de la Alpéra” (18). The caption for the reproduction of the latter cave painting reads: “Cave paintings of the late Stone Age at Alpéra, Spain, showing (right) a dancer-sorcerer, hunters with bows and arrows and (center) a honey gatherer climbing to take honey from a nest of wild bees.”
539.22-24: from a dance song from SW Africa: “You people, who run to the dance, have the women gone before me? / Go then to the dance, you women dancers” (75). “Late Paleaolithic man had at least some sort of music. Flutes and pipes made of little marrow-bones have often been found in caves […]. Where music exists, dancing is not far away, and scenes of it are not uncommon in art of the time. […] In a deeper cave at Ariège there is a painting of a figure known as ‘le Sorcier,’ who has the horns of a stag, the face of an wolf, the forelegs of a bear, the tail of a horse, and the ears of a wolf, and is plainly dancing or prancing” (14).

539.24  (5-year / planner…: this possibly refers to the fact that LZ set out a five year plan to read for and write “A”-22 & -23 beginning in 1967 (Leggott 55).

539.26  papyrus / jungle: from Gordon Childe, What Happened in History (1942), describing the Nile valley as successor of the Sumerian civilization: “Only the wide marshy Delta offered the challenge and reward that had evoked the artificial environment of Sumerian cities. But archaeologically man’s response is not directly known; the early settlements are buried deep in Nile silt under modern towns and cultivated fields. Indirect evidence comes from Upper Egypt. South of Cairo the narrow valley through the barren desert plateau has analogies, real but remote, with Sumer. It was occupied by a chain of swamps covered with a jungle of papyrus that sheltered waterfowl and game and dangerous hippopotami.”

539.27  sandhill splayed-wedge wader damsel / crane: the sandhill crane is a large bird found throughout much of North America that has splayed feet and prefers to live in marshy areas. Lorine Niedecker mentions the sandhill in a 2 May 1961 letter to LZ (Penberthy 280, see also 298-299). In this context evoking the earliest cultures, “splayed-wedge” also refers to cuniform writing.

539.28  or sun hot bright / turn home: see note at 539.19.

539.28  slowed yellow horse: apparently from “The Horse Odes of Lu” in the Confucian Book of Odes describing working horses. LZ’s notebooks indicate that he takes the phrase “mixed white hair and yellow” to refer to a palomino (HRC 37.4), whose coloring he noted in “Jaunt” (CSP 210):
Strong, sleek, move wide over moor-land, bull horses
dapple, piebald and bay,
strong on the traces
mixed white hair and yellow,
there is no end to his thinking of horse power. (trans. Ezra Pound)

539.30  Or cold with fear the / need turned small sing itself—: from C.M. Bowra, Primitive Song; quoting remarks by an Eskimo shaman to Knud Rasmussen comparing humans to an ice floe moving here and there in the current: “Something, like an abatement in the weather, will keep him thawed up. And then it will happen that we, who always think we are small, will feel still smaller. And we will fear to use words. But it will happen that the words we need will come of themselves. When the words we want to use shoot up of themselves—we get a new song” (44).

539.32  font of old white cloud / and men grown flower plough / empowers: from The Fountain of Old Poems, a Qing dynasty (18th century) collection of ancient Chinese songs, from The White Pony: An Anthology of Chinese Poetry, ed. Robert Payne. LZ is picking up words from a number of different poems in the selection—“white clouds,” “flower,” “power.” Most of the selections included in Payne’s anthology express a harmonious relationship between emperor, people and nature, including the poem that EP famously translated as the conclusion to Canto 49 that LZ quotes in “Work/Sundown” (Prep+ 165), which is here translated as “Song of the Peasants” (see 22.514.29-30):
We work when the sun rises,
We rest when the sun sets.
We dig wells for drink,
We plow the land for food.
What has the power of the Emperor to do with us? (64)

540.6    Praise! Gill . . gam . . mesh…: < Gilgamesh. Through 543.31 is a condensed retelling of the Epic of Gilgamesh (3rd millinium BC) based on the translation by N.K. Sandars (Penguin, 1960), except for an interpolation at 541.12-15 (see note below). In LZ’s version Strongest = Gilgamesh, One Kid and Stronger = Enkidu, Everlasting = Utnapishtim. For the most part LZ’s version is identifiably indebted to Sandars, although at times given different emphasis and there are a couple of parenthetical interpolations from elsewhere. Also LZ breaks off the narrative at the moment Gilgamesh obtains the plant of eternal youth, leaving out how he loses it on his way home and his eventual death and burial. The following is a summary paraphrase of Sandars’ version that attempts to outline the narrative and include details LZ incorporates—the chapter headings are those of Sandars.
            Prologue: Gilgamesh knew all things and traveled throughout the world and when he returned from a long journey, he was worn-out. He was created by the gods, including Shamash the sun, with a perfect body. They made him 2/3 god and 1/3 man. In Uruk he built the temple Enna for Anu, god of the firmament, and Ishtar, goddess of love—still today it can be seen: its outer wall with a cornice that shines with the brilliance of copper and the foundation terrace with masonry of burnt brick.
            Coming of Enkidu: Enkidu was created by Aruru as a counter or twin to Gilgamesh. He begins in an animal-like and uncivilized state, eating grass with the gazelle, and he frees animals from hunters’ traps and fills in the pit traps. At the hunter’s request Gilgamesh gives him a harlot to seduce Enkidu, which causes him to grow weak “for wisdom was in him, and the thoughts of a man were in his heart.” The harlot convinces Enkidu to return with her to Uruk and Gilgamesh, evoking a longing in Enkidu for a comrade who will understand him. He declares he will challenge Gilgamesh and claims he is the strongest. Gilgamesh relates two dreams to his mother. In the first Gilgamesh is surrounded by young heroes and walks under the stars when a meteor falls; with the help of the people of Uruk, Gilgamesh carries it to his mother who pronounces it is his brother. In the second dream he finds an ax to which he is drawn and loves like a woman—this too his mother tells him prophesizes his comrade/companion. Gilgamesh prepares to marry the Queen of love but on his way to the marriage house, Enkidu blocks his way, they fight, Gilgamesh wins, Enkidu concedes Gilgamesh’s greater strength and then the two embrace, sealing their friendship.
            The Forest Journey: Gilgamesh has a dream that Enkidu interprets as a prophecy of mortality that Gilgamesh should accept and deal justly with his people. Gilgamesh responds that therefore he must establish his fame by killing Humbaba, protector of the Land of Cedars. LZ conflates speeches Gilgamesh addresses to Enkidu and Shamash in which he declares his intention, that the man of the city dies in despair, that when he looks over his wall he sees floating corpses which will also be his fate, so he desires to go into the Land of Humbaba and if he dies there he will do so without rancor. They go into the forest until they reach the Land of Humbaba and begin cutting down the cedars. Humbaba eventually offers to become Gilgamesh’s servant and build him a palace if he will spare him, but Enkidu warns him that the evil must be killed, and they go ahead and do so, cutting down and uprooting the forest.
            Ishtar and Gilgamesh, and the Death of Enkidu: Ishtar, attracted by Gilgamesh’s beauty, asks him to marry and make love to her, offering him fabulous wealth and power. Gilgamesh rejects her offer, asking what can he possibly give her in return and recounting a long list of mortal lovers Ishtar has taken up only to cast aside: Tammuz for whom Ishtar decreed annual mourning, “the many-colored roller” whose wing she broke and who now cries “kappi, kappi, my wing, my wing” in the grove, the lion for whom she dug 7 pits, the stallion who now suffers from the whip and spur and muddies the water before he can drink, and Ishullanu the gardener of Anu who on rejecting her was turned into a blind mole in the earth (Gilgamesh catalogs a few more examples as well). Enraged, Ishtar requests from her father Anu the Bull of Heaven to ravage the earth; it threatens Enkidu who calls on Gilgamesh who kills the bull. That night Enkidu has dream in which the gods at the instigation of Enlil judge he must die for the deaths of the Bull of Heaven and Humbaba. Enkidu falls sick and curses the trapper and the harlot who lured him out of his original savage state, but Shamash speaks to him saying that the harlot was the one who brought him together with Gilgamesh, who will remember him when he is dead and wander in the desert in mourning. Enkidu is then calmed and accepts his fate; he recounts another dream to Gilgamesh of a journey to the underworld of the dead, and then ten days later he dies. Gilgamesh covers his friend with a veil like that of a bride; first raging then mourning for seven days until the worms begin to feed on the body, and finally Gilgamesh allows him to be buried. Gilgamesh commands that a statue of his friend be made with the breast of lapis lazuli and the body of gold. As an offering to the Sun, Gilgamesh sets out a hardwood table with a carnelian bowl filled with honey and another bowl of lapis lazuli filled with butter.
            The Search for Everlasting Life: Gilgamesh wanders through wilderness and over plains declaring: How can I rest with despair in my heart since what my brother is now I shall be—I will find Utnapishtim, called Faraway, who is the only mortal who has been granted immortality by the gods. Gilgamesh passes through the gate of the mountains; traveling through 12 leagues of darkness he finally comes out on the other side into the garden of the gods or the sun with bushes bearing gems and carnelian fruit, yet he still is mortal, eating flesh and wearing animal skins. By the seacoast he finds Siduri, the goddess of wine, covered with a veil, who attempts to bar the gate to him, but he threatens to break it down. Gilgamesh explains his quest, and Siduri advises him to accept his mortality and the joys and satisfactions that life offer. When he insists on crossing the ocean to find Utnapishtim, she points out that only the sun crosses the ocean and no mortal can do so. However, in the wood is Utnapishtim’s ferryman, Urshanabi who might be able to help, but if not Gilgamesh must return. Gilgamesh responds angrily and damages Urshanabi’s boat; when the latter questions Gilgamesh about his journey and points out what he has done, Gilgamesh says Urshanabi should not be angry since he is immortal. Gilgamesh cuts poles for the boat, since the sail is destroyed, and after a journey of three days that seems like a month and 15 days, they arrive at Dilmum, where the sun rises and where Utnapishtim lives. The latter asks what has happened to the boat’s tackle and sail, why are the sacred stones destroyed, why is Urshanabi not sailing the boat and who is this man with sunken cheeks and wearing the skins of beasts? Asked his purpose, Gilgamesh recounts his hardships and says he wishes to question Utnapishtim about the living and the dead and how to find eternal life. Utnapishtim tells him there is no permanence, contracts are not for all time—“only the nymph of the dragon-fly who sheds her larva and sees the sun in his glory” (107)—and the date of our death is hidden. Gilgamesh points out that although Utnapishtim looks just like him, yet he has immortality so what is his secret?
            The Story of the Flood: Utnapishtim retells the story of the flood, of which he was forewarned by Enlil, allowing him to build a great boat and therefore save his family, craftsmen and animals. Enlil then gave him and his wife immortality to live “in the distance at the mouth of rivers” (113).
            The Return: Utnapishtim says he will test Gilgamesh’s readiness for immortality by requiring him to stay awake for six days and seven nights, which Gilgamesh does not come close to achieving. Ordering Urshanabi to take Gilgamesh back, Utnapishtim at the last moment reveals a secret that there is a plant that grows underwater that restores youth. Gilgamesh obtains some of the plant, which he calls “The Old Men Are Young Again” (116), planning to take it home to share with the old men, but on his way back, while bathing in a pool, a serpent snatches the sacred plant. Gilgamesh returns to Uruk empty-handed.
            The Death of Gilgamesh: In fulfillment of destiny Gilgamesh finally dies and is buried with honor.

541.12  (Later he / agnized: rejected son supernal being…: these parenthetical lines are interpolated from the Rig Veda using A Vedic Reader by Arthur A. MacDonell (see note at 543.32); LZ works by homophonic suggestion from two hymns (Leggott, Diss. 599-600):
541.12-13: from Agni I (Rigveda I.i), verse 9. Agni > agnized [< L. agnoscere, in imitation of cognize, ult. (through F.) < L. cognoscere: see agnition.] To acknowledge; own; recognize. [Rare.] I do agnize / A natural and prompt alacrity / I find in hardness. Shak., Othello, i.3 (CD). Agni is the personification of sacrificial fire; according to MacDonell: “Agni is more closely associated with human life than any other deity. He is the only god called grha-pati lord of the house, and is constantly spoken of as a guest (atithi) in human dwellings. He is an immortal who has taken up his abode among mortals. Thus he comes to be termed the nearest kinsman of men. He is oftenest described as a father, sometimes also as a brother or even as a son of his worshippers. […] From the ordinary sacrificial Agni who conveys the offering (havyavahana) is distinguished his corpse-devouring (kravyād) form that burns the body on the funeral pyre” (2-3):
sa nah piteva sūnave,
Agne, sūpāyano bhava;
sacasvā nah suastaye.
So, O Agni, be easy of access to us, as a father to his son; abide with us for our well-being.
541.14-15: from Apām Napāt (Rigveda II.35), verse 6: [MacDonell comments:] “Brilliant and youthful, [this deity] shines without fuel in the waters which surround and nourish him. Clothed in lightning, he is golden in form, appearance and colour. Standing in the highest place, he always shines with undimmed splendour. Steeds, swift as thought, carry the Son of Waters. In the last stanza of his hymn he is invoked as Agni and must be identified with him […].” (67):
aśvasya atra janimāsya ca svar.
druho risah samprcah pāhi sūrīn.
āmāsu pūrsu paro apramrsyam
nārātayo vi naśan nānrtāni.
The birth of this steed is here and in heaven. Do thou protect the patrons from falling in with malice and injury. Him that is not to be forgotten, far away in unbaked citadels, hostilities shall not reach nor falsehoods.
[from MacDonell’s commentary:] “Though every word is clear in this stanza the meaning of the whole is somewhat uncertain. It seems to be this: Apām napāt is produced from both the terrestrial and the heavenly waters. He is invoked to protect sacrificers from injury. He himself dwells beyond the reach of foes. aśvasya: Agni is often spoken of as a steed. atra: here, i.e. in the waters of the earth” (72). As Leggott points out, Gilgamesh is referred to in Sandar’s translation as “a star in heaven.”

541.16  (decalcomania): < F. décalcomanie, < décalquer, to transfer a tracing, + Gk. μανία (mania), madness. “Decal” is the more familiar shortened noun form, of which decalcomania is the process itself. Decalcomania also became a common surrealist technique in which paint or other liquid medium is applied and while still wet a sheet is put over it and then pulled off. However, here LZ is etymologically reading calco, -are, L. meaning to tread or trample on, plus the Gk. mania, thus LZ’s “literal” rendering immediately following which relates to the destruction of the Cedar Forest by Gilgamesh and Endiku (HRC 37.4).

541.26  seel: to close, or close the eyes of, with a thread (e.g. a hawk); hence, to close, as a person’s eyes, blind, hoodwink (CD).

541.28  roller-bird: or simply roller, any bird of the family Coraciidae: so called from the way they roll or tumble about in flight; a kind of domestic pigeon, one of the varieties of tumblers (CD).

542.7    sapphire: here and at 542.21 LZ translates Sandars’ lapis lazuli as sapphire, which as Leggott notes (182) is apparently accounted for by the etymological note for sapphire in CD: < L. sapphires, ML. also saffrus, safirus, < Gk. σάπφειρος, sapphire, or more probably lapis lazuli, < Heb. sappīr = Arabic çafīr (> Persian saffīr), sapphire.

542.14  stirps: race, lineage, family; in law, the person from whom a family is descended (CD). In this context, “stirps” indicates Utnapishtim.

543.32  Sog’s freighted, o sod hear, / whisper, rain, think men unashamed…: through 543.36 is worked from the Rig Veda (see 541.12, 12.126.24-127.1, Prep+ 55, 242, Bottom 104), using Arthur A. MacDonell, A Vedic Reader for Students (1917), which includes a selection of hymns from the Rigveda with the original texts, transliterations, translations and extensive notes. LZ’s notebook (HRC 37.1) indicates he is using four hymns addressed to various deities: Parjanyánya (rain-cloud), Sóma (various associations including the moon, water and inspiration), Vata (wind) and Usas (dawn). While working for the most part homophonically, typically LZ is picking up suggestions elsewhere. The following transcriptions of MacDonell’s romanizations are unable to include all the accent marks:
543.32-33: from Parjánya (Rigveda V.83), verse 10: ávarsīr varsám: úd u sū grbhāya; / ákar dhánvāni átietavā u. / ájījana ósadhīr bhójanāya kám; / utá prajābhyo avido manīsām. (Thou hast shed rain: now wholly cease; thou hast made the deserts passable again. Thou hast made the plants to grow for the sake of food; and thou hast found a hymn of praise from (thy) creatures).
543.34-35: your minds no risk […] / prolong th’years: from Soma (Rigveda VIII.48), verse 10: rdūdárena sákhiā saceya, / yó mā ná rísyed, dhariaśva, pītáh. / ayám yá sómo niádhāyi asmé, / tásmā Índram pratiram emi āyuh. (I would associate with the wholesome friend who having been drunk would not injure me, O lord of the bays. For (the enjoyment of) that Soma which has been deposited in us, I approach Indra to prolong our years).
543.34-35: divine / dawns’ daughters: from Usás (Rigveda IV.51) where Dawn is addressed in the plural as the daughters of the sky or Heaven (divó duhitáro); see verses 1, 10 and 11.
543.35-36: go / sounds fearing no rued palm: from Vāta (Rigveda X.168), verse 4: ātmā devānām, bhúvanasya gárbho, / yathāvaśám carati devá esáh. / ghósā íd asya śrnvire, ná rūpám. / tásmai Vātāya havísā vidhema (Breath of the gods, germ of the world, this god fares according to his will. His sounds are heard, (but) his form is not (seen). To that Vāta we would pay worship with oblation).

543.37  Sheer laud anew sheer chorus / sheer laud new…” though 544.2 from Psalm 96:1 and 12:
 שִׁירוּ לַיהוָה, שִׁיר חָדָשׁ; שִׁירוּ לַיהוָה, כָּל-הָאָרֶץ
shiru layehova shir khadash shiru laadonai kol-haarets:
O sing unto the Lord a new song; sing unto the Lord, all the earth.
 יַעֲלֹז שָׂדַי, וְכָל-אֲשֶׁר-בּוֹ; אָז יְרַנְּנוּ, כָּל-עֲצֵי-יָעַר
yaaloz sadai vekhol-asher-bo az yerannu kol-atsei-yaar:
Let the field exult; and all that is therein; then shall all the trees of the wood sing for joy;

544.3    poled any mouth pant keep / pace, come back who says…: through 544.8 from Homer, the Iliad:
544.3-4: from Iliad Bk. XX.248-250; the first phrase is homophonically rendered, while the latter phrase is LZ’s adaptation of line 250, from which he looked up the first word in Liddell and Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon and found the line translated as: “as is the word thou hast spoken, such shalt thou hear again”:
στρεπτὴ δὲ γλῶσσ’ ἐστὶ βροτῶν, πολέες δ’ ἔνι μῦθοι
παντοῖοι, ἐπέων δὲ πολὺς νομὸς ἔνθα καὶ ἔνθα.
ὁπποῖόν κ’ εἴπῃσθα ἔπος, τοῖόν κ’ ἐπακούσαις.
streptē de glōss’ esti brotōn, polees d’ eni muthoi
pantoioi, epeōn de polus nomos entha kai entha.
hoppoion k’ eipēstha epos, toion k’ epakousais.
“Glib is the tongue of mortals, and words there be therein many and manifold, and of speech the range is wide on this side and on that. Whatsoever word thou speakest, such shalt thou also hear” (trans. A.T. Murray).
544.5-7: tribesettled cosmos […] order, loveliness, universe not improved upon: here LZ is interested in the meaning of the Gk. word cosmos, which in part is is taken from V. Gordon Childe, What Happened in History (1942): “The Greek name for the order of nature, cosmos, is derived from a root that in the earlier Greek of Homer is applied to the marshalling of clans for war and the settlement of tribes on the land.” Also in Liddell and Short, A Greek-English Lexicon, LZ finds under “cosmos” three distinct senses of the word: order, arrange; adorn, embellish; and a more philosophical sense of to be assigned or ascribed to. See 22.524.24 where again the Gk. sense of cosmos as both order and ornament appears, specifically in the context of playing music.
544.5-6: pigmy, a sea / clangor rǒw-on of cranes: from the opening lines of the Iliad Bk. III. The first few words homophonically render the Greek for pygmies, Πυγμαίοισι. Like EP, LZ often spoke of Homer as a master of onomatopoetic effects (Prep+ 15, 21 and TP 48), and in this case LZ punningly reproduces two such words, κλαγγὴ (klangêi) and ῥοάων (rhoaôn), meaning clangor and stream or flood respectively. The first word appears three times in the noisy lines 2-5 of Homer’s text and the latter word in line 5 (underlined in the following translation):
“Now when they were marshaled, the several companies with their captains, the Trojans came on with clamour and with a cry like birds, even as the clamour of cranes ariseth before the face of heaven, when they flee from wintry storms and measureless rain, and with clamour fly towards the streams of Ocean, bearing slaughter and death to Pigmy men, and in the early dawn they offer evil battle” (trans. A.T. Murray). 

544.8    mills’ crop yellows ground, hoy, / how they foresee…: through 544.13 from Homer, the Odyssey Bk. VII, the description of Alcinous’ palace where Odysseus arrives after being found washed ashore naked and alone by Alcinous’ daughter, Naucicaa. LZ is working from A.T. Murray’s translation while interpolating some homophonic elements suggested by the first part of the Greek passage:
πεντήκοντα δέ οἱ δμωαὶ κατὰ δῶμα γυναῖκες
αἱ μὲν ἀλετρεύουσι μύλῃς ἔπι μήλοπα καρπόν
αἱ δ’ ἱοτοὺς ὑφόωσι καὶ ἠλάκατα στρωφῶσιν
ἥμεναι οἷά τε φύλλα μακεδνῆς αἰγείροιο:
καιρουσσέων δ’ ὀθονέων ἀπολείβεται ὑγρόν ἔλαιον.
pentêkonta de hoi dmôai kata dôma gunaikes
hai men aletreuousi mulêis epi mêlopa karpon,
hai d’ histous huphoôsi kai êlakata strôphôsin
hêmenai, hoia te phulla makednês aigeiroio:
kairousseôn d’ othoneôn apoleibetai hugron elaion. (VII.103-107)
hoy, / how they foresee full-lone nakedness: from hoia te phulla makednês = like the leaves of a tall …, with foresee perhaps suggested by huphoôsi = weave
argue row: from aigeiroio = black poplar
strove o seen: from strôphôsin = twirl, turn constantly, spin.
“And fifty slave-women he had in the house, of whom some grind the yellow grain on the millstone, and others weave webs, or, as they sit, twirl the yarn, like unto the leaves of a tall poplar tree; and from the closely-woven linen the soft olive oil drips down. […] But without the courtyard, hard by the door, is a great orchard of four acres, and a hedge runs about it on either side. Therein grow trees, tall and luxuriant, pears and pomegranates and apple-trees with their bright fruit, and sweet figs, and luxuriant olives. Of these the fruit perishes not nor fails in winter or in summer, but lasts throughout the year; and ever does the west wind, as it blows, quicken to life some fruits, and ripen others; pear upon pear waxes ripe, apple upon apple, cluster upon cluster, and fig upon fig” (lines 103-107, 112-120).

544.13  Hue / gait a day—by new / sill a rose pause seen…: through 544.22 from Hesiod (8th century BC), using the Loeb Classical Library volume of Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns and Homerica, trans. Hugh Evelyn-White:
544.13-15: from Fragment 10:
οὐκέτι δὴ βαίνουσι λαροῖς ποσίν.
“No longer do they walk with delicate feet.”
544.16-18: nape—horse whose tizzied head / o my—lip own anatomy / the oak I: from Fragment 18:
νήπιος, ὅστις ἕτοιμα λιπὼν ἀνέτοιμα διώκει.
“Foolish the man who leaves what he has, and follows after what he has not.”
544.18-19: Trivial uttered / hard to stand under: from Fragment 22, which Evelyn-White translates: “And if I said this, it would seem a poor thing and hard to understand.” However, here LZ repeats his version given at 22.519.5-6, which works from the translation of Robert W. Bury of Plato’s Epistles XI, where this Hesiod fragment survives: “Trivial when uttered by me, but hard to be understanded” (see note at 544.20-22). LZ hears in Hesiod an echo of favorite lines from Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona II.5: (spoken by Launce the clown) “Why, stand-under and under-stand is all one” (see 13.313.13).
544.19-20: crave / touch gently: from Fragment 21:
χρὴ δέ σε πατρὶ … κτίλον ἔμμεναι.
“But you should be gentle towards your father.”
544.20: gray springtime: a well-known phrase from Works and Days 477 and repeated a few lines later at 491: “And so you will have plenty till you come to grey springtime (polion ear), and will not look wistfully to others, but another shall be in need of your help”; with a footnote by the editor explaining: “Spring is so described because the buds have not yet cast their iron-grey husks” (39).
544.20-22: allotted / all ways, zones know eager / echo argue less daimon: from Works and Days 483-484:
ἄλλοτε δ’ ἀλλοῖος Ζηνὸς νόος αἰγιόχοιο,
ἀργαλέος δ’ ἄνδρεσσι καταθνητοῖσι νοῆσαι.
allote d’ alloios Zēnos noos aigiokhoio,
argaleos d’ andressi katathnētoisi noēsai.
“Yet the will of Zeus who holds the aegis is different at different times; and it is hard for mortal men to tell it.”
[LZ’s attention was drawn to these lines when he looked up the context of Hesiod’s Fragment 22 in Plato’s Epistle XI (see note to 544.18-19) in his copy of the Loeb Classical Library volume of the Timaeus, Critias, Cleitophon, Menexenus and Epistles where he found a note directing him to these lines with a similar meaning].

544.22  in / ere thigh rote tone eroded— / and deem a phase shine, / died corona come as may: from the Greek Anthology, the Loeb Classics edition translated by W.R. Paton. Picking out phrases from two “amatory epigrams”:
from Alcaeus of Lesbos, 7th century BC (V.10):
᾽Σχθαίρω τὸν ῍Σρωτα (I hate Love)
from Asclepiades, 3rd century BC (V.64):
ἢν δέ μ᾿ ἀφῇς ζῇν, καὶ διαδὺς τούτων χείρονα, κωμάσομαι
(…I will go with music to her doors…)

544.26  In us laces you, hot / ay happy…: through 544.28 from the “Hymn of the Arval Brethren,” who were a college of priests in ancient Rome who oversaw agricultural ceremonies. LZ’s source is Alan Bouquet, Sacred Books of the World:
Enos Lases juvate enos Lases juvate enos Lases juvate.
neve luerve Marmar, sins incurrere in pleores (trice).
satur fu, fere Mars, limen sali sta berber (trice).
semunis alternei advocapit conctos (trice).
enos Marmar juvato (trice).
Triumpe triumpe triumpe triumpe triumpe.
[The archaic Latin is only partially understood, but Bouquet gives a translation by the Victorian scholar John Wordsworth and adds some further commentary:]
“Help us, O Lares, help us, Lares, help us.
And thou, O Marmar, suffer not
Fell plague and ruin’s rot
Our folk to devastate.
Be satiate, O fierce Mars, be satiate
(Leap o’er the threshold. Halt. Now beat the ground.)
            [thrice repeated]
(Call to your aid the heroes all. Call in alternate strain.)
            [thrice repeated]
Help us, O Marmar, help us, Marmar, help us.
(Bound high in solemn measure, bound and bound again. 
            Bound high and bound again.)
Wordsworth’s bracketing of the passages which he takes to be rubrics may be called in question, but the interpretation at any rate makes good sense, and ‘sta berber,’ i.e. ‘stand, blow or beat’ (verbere), is remarkably like the prosaic ritual instructions which Professor A.C. Moule has heard repeated in Confucian temples in China, by the master of ceremonies, for the benefit of the officiating local mandarin. Enos is archaic for nos, and Lases for Lares, so that the initial invocation is of the household gods. Triumpe, like the Greek θρίαμβος, is an onomatopoetic refrain, probably the same word as ‘tramp,’ and indicates a ritual march or procession. Marmar seems to be an archaic duplicated form of Mars” (33-34).

  544.30 all you live—near / him, sap pay rue if…: through 545.6 predominately from Joel, the first of many Old Testament prophets who will preoccupy much of the poem through the middle of 549.
544.30-34: from Joel 1:3:
 עָלֶיהָ, לִבְנֵיכֶם סַפֵּרוּ; וּבְנֵיכֶם, לִבְנֵיהֶם, וּבְנֵיהֶם, לְדוֹר אַחֵר
aleiha livneikhem saperu uveneikhem livneihem uveneihem ledor akher:
“Tell ye your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children another generation.” 

544.34  eager atone the / tie—voice to eye, sun’s: from the Homeric “Hymn to Delian Apollo,” lines 147-148:
[…] Ἰάονες ἠγερέθονται / αὐτοîς σὺν παίδεσσι καὶ αἰδοίῃς ἀλόχοισιν.
([…] long robed Ionians gather in your honour with their children and shy wives).

544.35  two doves’ highway’s shadow moves / up from earth: from the Homeric “Hymn to Apollo,” lines 164-165, as translated by George Chapman (see 547.6):
And on their [Iris and Lucina’s] way they went, like those two doves
That, walking highways, very shadow moves
Up from the earth; forc’d with their natural fear.

544.37  chimeras’ horses / marry..: continuing with Joel (see 544.30):
544.37-545.1: from the first half of Joel 2:4:
 כְּמַרְאֵה סוּסִים, מַרְאֵהוּ; וּכְפָרָשִׁים, כֵּן יְרוּצוּן
kemare susim marehu ukhefarashim ken yerutsun:
“The appearance of them is as the appearance of horses; and as horsemen, so do they run.”
545.1-2: a whole tear glee / would seem rain lashes dam: from Joel 2:21:
 אַל-תִּירְאִי, אֲדָמָה; גִּילִי וּשְׂמָחִי, כִּי-הִגְדִּיל יְהוָה לַעֲשׂוֹת
al-tiriadama gili usemakhi ki-higdil adonai laashoot:
“Fear not, O land; be glad and rejoice: for the Lord hath done great things.”
LZ’s notebooks (HRC 37.4) indicate the rain imagery is suggested by Joel 2:23: “Be glad then, ye children of Zion, and rejoice in the Lord your God: for he hath given you the fomer rain moderately, and he will cause to come down to you the rain, the former rain, and the latter rain in the first month.”
545.3: young years weave old looms: from Joel 2:28 (Hebrew 3:1)
 וְהָיָה אַחֲרֵי-כֵן, אֶשְׁפּוֹךְ אֶת-רוּחִי עַל-כָּל-בָּשָׂר, וְנִבְּאוּ, בְּנֵיכֶם וּבְנוֹתֵיכֶם; זִקְנֵיכֶם, חֲלֹמוֹת יַחֲלֹמוּן–בַּחוּרֵיכֶם, חֶזְיֹנוֹת יִרְאוּ
vehaya akharei-khen eshpokh et-rukhi al-kol-basar venibu beneikhem uvenoteikhem zikneikhem khalomot yakhalomun bakhureikhem khezyonot yiru:
“And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions.”
[Heb. khalomun = dream. LZ quotes the latter part of this verse that he is here rewriting in his talk “For Wallace Stevens” (Prep+ 27)].
545.4-5: Cut your harvest old lashed / giver: from Joel 3:10 (Hebrew 4:10):
 כֹּתּוּ אִתֵּיכֶם לַחֲרָבוֹת, וּמַזְמְרֹתֵיכֶם לִרְמָחִים; הַחַלָּשׁ, יֹאמַר גִּבּוֹר אָנִי
kotu iteikhem lakharavot umazmeroteikhem lirmakhim hakhalash yomar gibor ani:
“Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruninghooks into spears; let the weak say, I am strong.”
545.5-6: how many may make / charred roots: from Joel 3:14 (Hebrew 4:14):
 הֲמוֹנִים הֲמוֹנִים, בְּעֵמֶק הֶחָרוּץ: כִּי קָרוֹב יוֹם יְהוָה, בְּעֵמֶק הֶחָרוּץ
hamonim hamonim beemek hekharuts ki karov yom adonai beemek hekharuts:
“Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision: for the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision.”

545.6    why you goad / loved weed loam…: through 545.12 from Isaiah, specifically first Isaiah (usually considered to be Isaiah 1-39, although LZ also includes 40), which is continued at 545.20-29, with second Isaiah at 549.5-8.
545.6-9: why you goad / loved weed loam more than / harm’ll frame (why) whom now / winds’ woodpeople move, rue, ache: from Isaiah 7:2:
 וַיֻּגַּד, לְבֵית דָּוִד לֵאמֹר, נָחָה אֲרָם, עַל-אֶפְרָיִם; וַיָּנַע לְבָבוֹ וּלְבַב עַמּוֹ, כְּנוֹעַ עֲצֵי-יַעַר מִפְּנֵי-רוּחַ
vayugad leveit david lemor nakha aram al-efrayim vayana levavo ulevav amo kenoa atsei-yaar mipnei-ruakh:
“And it was told the house of David, saying, Syria is confederate with Ephraim. And his heart was moved, and the heart of his people, as the trees of the wood are moved with the wind.”
545.10-11: choir shocked call rest, pause / renew: from Isaiah 14:7:
 נָחָה שָׁקְטָה, כָּל-הָאָרֶץ; פָּצְחוּ, רִנָּה
nakha shakta kol-haarets patskhu rina:
“The whole earth is at rest, and is quiet: they break forth into singing.”
545.11: whirligig punning tempest: from Isaiah 17:13:
 לְאֻמִּים, כִּשְׁאוֹן מַיִם רַבִּים יִשָּׁאוּן, וְגָעַר בּוֹ, וְנָס מִמֶּרְחָק; וְרֻדַּף, כְּמֹץ הָרִים לִפְנֵי-רוּחַ, וּכְגַלְגַּל, לִפְנֵי סוּפָה
leumim kishon mayim rabim yishaun vegaar bo venas mimerkhak verudaf kemots harim lifnei-ruakh ukhegalgal lifnei sufa:
“The nations shall rush like the rushing of many waters: but God shall rebuke them, and they shall flee far off, and shall be chased as the chaff of the mountains before the wind, and like a rolling thing before the whirlwind.”
545.11-12: cut / sere harvest: from Isaiah 18:4:
 כִּי כֹה אָמַר יְהוָה אֵלַי, אשקוטה (אֶשְׁקֳטָה) וְאַבִּיטָה בִמְכוֹנִי, כְּחֹם צַח עֲלֵי-אוֹר, כְּעָב טַל בְּחֹם קָצִיר
ki kho amar adonai elai eshkovta eshkota veabita vimkhoni kekhom tsakh alei-or keav tal bekhom katsir:
“For so the Lord said unto me, I will take my rest, and I will consider in my dwelling place like a clear heat upon herbs, and like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest.”
545.12: massif, I saw: from Isaiah 22:1:
 מַשָּׂא, גֵּיא חִזָּיוֹן: מַה-לָּךְ אֵפוֹא, כִּי-עָלִית כֻּלָּךְ לַגַּגּוֹת
masa gei khiza.yon ma-lakh efo ki-alit kulakh lagagot:
“The burden of the valley of vision. What aileth thee now, that thou art wholly gone up to the housetops?”

545.14  shawm: a medieval and Renaissance double-reed instrument, forerunner of the oboe.

545.15  rosy-lea, rosy-lea, o lea bought-dim…: LZ’s notebooks (HRC 37.11) indicate this passage through 545.20 is from the Homeric Hymn to Pythian Apollo (this is a two-part hymn, the first addressed to Delian Apollo), presumably at least in part working from the Greek text via homophonic suggestion, although specific passages have not yet been identified. LZ’s text is the Loeb Classical Library edition of Hesiod, Homeric Hymns and Homerica, trans. Hugh Evelyn-White:
545.16-17: horses’ / drivers free: from lines 229-238: “And further still you went, O far-shooting Apollo, and came to Onchestus, Poseidon’s bright grove: there the new-broken colt distressed with drawing the trim chariot gets spirit again, and the skilled driver springs from his car and goes on his way. Then the horses for a while rattle the empty car, being rid of guidance; and if they break the chariot in the woody grove, men look after the horses, but tilt the chariot and leave it there; for this was the rite from the very first. And the drivers pray to the lord of the shrine; but the chariot falls to the lot of the god.”
545.17: right heart: at the end of the hymn, Apollo advises his worshippers to “guard you my temple and receive the tribes of men that gather to this place, and especially show mortal men my will, and do you keep righteousness in your heart.”
545.17-18: dolphin / hours ride: lines 388-544, the extended last section of the hymn, recount how Apollo brought a group of Cretans to Pytho to attend him and the temple he establishes there. These Cretans are sailing “for traffic and for profit to sandy Pylos” when Apollo “sprang upon their swift ship, like a dolphin in shape, and lay there, a great and awesome monster, and none of them gave heed so as to understand; but they sought to cast the dolphin overboard.” Apollo guides the ship to Pytho and then instructs the crew on their future duties.   
545.18: float wrist-held wrist: perhaps from line 196 where the Graces, Season, Harmonia, Hebe and Aphrodite dance “holding each other by the wrist.”

545.20  island sings spreads / a swimmer’s hands…: through 545.29 continuing with first Isaiah (see 545.6):
545.20: island sings: from Isaiah 24:14-15: “They shall lift up their voice, they shall sing for the majesty of the Lord, they shall cry aloud from the sea. Wherefore glorify ye the Lord in the fires, even the name of the Lord God of Israel in the isles of the sea.”
545.20-21: spreads / a swimmer’s hands: from Isaiah 25:11: “And he shall spread forth his hands in the midst of them, as he that swimmeth spredeth forth his hands to swim: and he shall bring down their pride together with the spoils of their hands.”
545.21-22: whose flowers / ’d fill worlds new: from Isaiah 27:6: “He shall cause them that come of Jacob to take root: Israel shall blossom and bud, and fill the face of the world with fruit.”
545.22-24: o even / when his couch’s shorter than / his story, his coverlet his / skin robbed: from Isaiah 28:20:
 כִּי-קָצַר הַמַּצָּע, מֵהִשְׂתָּרֵעַ; וְהַמַּסֵּכָה צָרָה, כְּהִתְכַּנֵּס
ki-katsar hamatsa mehistarea vehamasekha tsara kehitkanes:
“For the bed is shorter than that a man can stretch himself on it: and the covering narrower than that he can wrap himself in it.”
545.25: aim show white: from Isaiah 1:18: “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”
545.26: sitfast: possibly Isaiah 40:22: “It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in.”
545.26-27: a time as no / mismade hymn: from Isaiah 33:15:
 הֹלֵךְ צְדָקוֹת, וְדֹבֵר מֵישָׁרִים; מֹאֵס בְּבֶצַע מַעֲשַׁקּוֹת, נֹעֵר כַּפָּיו מִתְּמֹךְ בַּשֹּׁחַד, אֹטֵם אָזְנוֹ מִשְּׁמֹעַ דָּמִים, וְעֹצֵם עֵינָיו מֵרְאוֹת בְּרָע
holekh tsedakot vedover meisharim moes bevetsa maashakot noer kapav mitmokh bashokhad otem azno mishmoa damim veotsem einav merot bera:
“He that walketh righteously, and speaketh uprightly; he that despiseth the gain of oppressions, that shaketh his hands from holding of bribes, that stoppeth his ears from hearing of blood, and shutteth his eyes from seeing evil;”
545.27: wholly see:
545.27-28: call / the gay hymn nothing—efface: from Isaiah 40:17:
 כָּל-הַגּוֹיִם, כְּאַיִן נֶגְדּוֹ; מֵאֶפֶס וָתֹהוּ, נֶחְשְׁבוּ-לוֹ
kol-hagoyim keayin negdo meefes vatohu nekhshevu-lo:
“All the nations before him are as nothing; and they are counted to him less than nothing, and vanity.”
545.29: Akin: grass: peoples a veil: from Isaiah 40:7:
 יָבֵשׁ חָצִיר נָבֵל צִיץ, כִּי רוּחַ יְהוָה נָשְׁבָה בּוֹ; אָכֵן חָצִיר, הָעָם
yavesh khatsir navel tsits ki ruakh adonai nashva bo akhen khatsir haam:
“The grass withereth, the flower fadeth; because the breath of the Lord bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass.”

545.30  Each nameless allay: grass’ showers…: through 545.34 from Micah:
545.30: from Micah 4:5 and 5:7 (Hebrew 5:6): “For all people will walk every one in the name of his god, and we will walk in the name of the Lord our God for ever and ever.”
“And the remnant of Jacob shall be in the midst of many people as a dew from the Lord, as the showers upon the grass, that tarrieth not for man, nor waiteth for the sons of men.”
545.31-34: Head look my toe—justice, / we have it graced, who / hasn’t lagged modestly looking alone, the end a good note: from Micah 6:8:
 הִגִּיד לְךָ אָדָם, מַה-טּוֹב; וּמָה-יְהוָה דּוֹרֵשׁ מִמְּךָ, כִּי אִם-עֲשׂוֹת מִשְׁפָּט וְאַהֲבַת חֶסֶד, וְהַצְנֵעַ לֶכֶת, עִם-אֱלֹהֶיךָ
higid lekha adam ma-tov uma-adonai doresh mimkha ki im-ashoot mishpat veahavat khesed vehatsnea lekhet im-eloheikha:
“He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good, and what the Lord doth require of thee: only to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.”
[LZ looked up Heb. hatzneh lechet, here translated “to walk humbly,” and finds it also means modesty, as well as associations of decency, chastity, personal holiness, purity (HRC 37.11)].

545.35  saw dwellings prophecies turn back / the eyes: from Zephaniah 2:6 and 3:20:
“And the sea coast shall be dwellings and cottages for shepherds, and fold for flocks.”
“At that time will I bring you again, even in the time that I gather you: for I will make you a name and a praise among all people of the earth, when I turn back your captivity before your eyes, saith the Lord.”

545.36  Anthem th’new meadow: / rhododendron, crocus-eye color violet, white / hyacinthine narcissus’ own…: through 546.3 from the Homeric “Hymn to Demeter”; using the Loeb Classical Library edition of Hesiod, Homeric Hymns and Homerica, trans. Hugh G. Evelyn-White. LZ combines homophonic suggestion with the English translation. This begins a substantial passage, through 546.33, predominately from the Homeric Hymns from a number of different sources:
νόσφιν Δήμητρος χρυσαόρου, ἀγλαοκάρπου,
παίζουσαν κούρῃσι σὺν Ὠκεανοῦ Βαθυκόλποις                [5]
ἄνθεά τ’ αἰνυμένην, ῥόδα καὶ κρόκον ἠδ’ ἴα καλὰ
λειμῶν᾿ ἂμ μαλακὸν καὶ ἀγαλλίδας ἠδ’ ὑάκινθον
νάρκισσόν θ’, ὃν φῦσε δόλον καλυκώπιδι κούρῃ
Γαῖα Διὸς Βουλῇσι χαριζομένη Πολυδέκτῃ,
θαυμαστὸν γανόωντα σέβας τό γε πᾶσιν ἰδέσθαι             [10]

nosphin Dêmêtros chrusaorou, aglaokarpou,
paizousan kourêisi sun Ôkeanou bathukolpois                   [5]
anthea t’ ainumenên, rhoda kai krokon êd’ ia kala
leimôn’ am malakon kai agallidas êd’ huakinthon
narkisson th’, hon phuse dolon kalukôpidi kourêi
gaia Dios boulêisi charizomenê Poludektêi,
thaumaston ganoônta: sebas to ge pasin idesthai              [10]
“Apart from Demeter, lady of the golden sword and glorious fruits, [5] she [Persephone] was playing with the deep-bosomed daughters of Oceanus and gathering flowers over a soft meadow, roses and crocuses and beautiful violets, irises also and hyacinths and the narcissus, which Earth made to grow at the will of Zeus and to please the Host of Many, to be a snare for the bloom-like girl— [10] a marvelous, radiant flower.”

546.3    Doorstone see grace / so proffer own he met / her on, acclaim’s own sun / go new on: from the Greek Anthology VI.269, a dedicatory epigram “Said to be by Sappho,” from the Loeb Classical Library edition, trans. W.R. Paton (1916). LZ is primarily translating homophonically the last line and a third:
ἇ σὺ χαρεῖσα / πρόφρων ἁμετέραν εὐκλέϊσον γενεάν.
a sy charisa / prophron ameteran euclison gerean.
Translation of the poem as a whole reads: “Children, though I am a dumb stone, if any ask, then I answer clearly, having set down at my feet the words I am never weary of speaking: ‘Arista, daughter of Hermoclides the son of Sauneus, dedicated me to Artemis Aethopia. Thy ministrant is she, sovereign lady of women; rejoice in this her gift of herself, and be willing to glorify our race.’”

546.6    Rector of / ox-stealers (May’s born) a / varied finger…: through 546.25 from the Homeric “Hymn to Mercury/Hermes,” with the italicized passages from two different translations: 546.6-17 from “A Hymn to Hermes,” translated by George Chapman (c.1560-1634) from Homer’s Batrachomyomachia, Hymns and Epigrams; and 546.18-26 from “Hymn to Mercury,” translated by Percy Bysshe Shelley. LZ also consulted the Greek text and translation in the Loeb Classical Library edition of Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns and Homerica, trans. Hugh G. Evelyn-White, which suggested a number of details.
546.6-8 (Chapman’s translation, lines 21-23):
Rector of ox-stealers; and for all stealths bore
A varied finger; speeder of night’s spies,
And guide of all her dreams obscurities […]
546.7: (May’s born): alludes to the opening line: “Hermes, the son of Jove and Maia, sing, / O Muse.”
546.8-9 (Chapman, lines 34-47):
So, starting up, to Phoebus’ herd he stept,
Found straight the high-roof’d cave where they were kept,
And th’ entry passing, he th’ invention found
Of making lutes; and did in wealth abound
By that invention, since he first of all
Was author of that engine musical,
By this mean moved to the ingenious work:
Near the cave’s inmost overture did lurk
A tortoise, tasting th’ odoriferous grass,
Leisurely moving; and this object was
The motive to Jove’s son (who could convert
To profitablest uses all desert
That nature had in any work convey’d)
To form the lute […]
546.9-10 (Chapman, lines 68-73):
[Hermes addresses the tortoise:]
And since thou first shalt give me means to live,
I’ll love thee ever. Virtuous qualities give
To live at home with them enough content,
Where those that want such inward ornament
Fly out for outward, their life made their load.
’Tis best to be at home, harm lurks abroad.
546.11 (Chapman, lines 84-86, 100-104):
Where (giving to the mountain tortoise vents
Of life and motion) with fit instruments
Forged of bright steel he straight inform’d a lute, […]
All being as swiftly to perfection brought
As any worldly man’s most ravish’d thought,
Whose mind care cuts in an infinity
Of varied parts or passions instantly,
Or as the frequent twinklings of an eye.
546.12-13 (Chapman, lines 826-829):
[Apollo addressing Hermes:]
Yea, and I know thee rich, yet apt to learn,
And even thy wish dost but discern and earn.
And since thy soul so burns to know the way
To play and sing as I do, sing, and play […].
[The parenthetical phrase presumably refers back to the preceding line’s “twinklings,” in Gk. ἀμαρυγαί, meaning sparkling, twinkling, glancing].
546.13-14: the first phrase is homophonically derives from the Gk. of line 474: σοὶ δ᾿ αὐτάγρετόν ἐστι δαήμεναι, ὅττι μενοινὰς (Now you are free to learn whatever you please (Evelyn-White), which Chapman translates in the above passage as “since thy soul so burns to know the way”). The latter phrase is apparently suggested by the final word of the above line, meaning to desire eagerly and the Gk. δείκνυμι, meaning to bring to light, which apparently LZ associates with δαήμεναι, meaning to learn.
546.15-16 (Chapman, lines 670-676):
[Hermes defends himself before Jupiter:]
And credit me, O Father, since the grace
Of that name, in your style, you please to place,
I drave not home his [Apollo’s] oxen, no, nor prest
Past mine own threshold; for ’tis manifest,
I reverence with my soul the Sun, and all
The knowing dwellers in this heavenly Hall,
Love you, observe the least; […]
546.16-17 (Chapman, lines 322-328):
[Hermes to his mother, Maia:]
’Tis better here to imitate the Gods,
And wine or wench out all time’s periods,
To that end growing rich in ready heaps,
Stored with revenues, being in corn-field reaps
Of infinite acres, than to live enclosed
In caves, to all earth’s sweetest air exposed.

546.18  a new voice: from Chapman, although also marking the transition to the Shelley translation (see note at 546.6):
(Chapman, lines 779-782):
[Apollo exclaiming over Hermes’ music:]
                        Methinks I hear
A new voice, such as never yet came near
The breast of any, either man or God,
Till in thee it had prime and period.
546.18-19 (Shelley, stanza 49):
[Apollo speaking:]
‘And this among the Gods shall be your gift,
To be considered as the lord of those
Who swindle, house-break, sheep-steal, and shop-lift;—
But now if you would not your last sleep doze;
Crawl out!’—thus saying, Phoebus did uplift
The subtle infant [Mercury] in his swaddling clothes,
And in his arms, according to his wont,
A scheme devised the illustrious Argiphont.
546.19-20 (Shelley, stanza 74):
[Apollo’s response to hearing Mercury’s song:]
These words were winged with his swift delight:
‘You heifer-stealing schemer, well do you
Deserve that fifty oxen should requite
Such minstrelsies as I have heard even now.’
[LZ has here borrowed from the Evelyn-White translation: “this song of yours is worth fifty cows“].
546.20-26 (Shelley, stanza 15):
The old man stood dressing his sunny vine:
‘Halloo! Old fellow with the crooked shoulder!
You grub those stumps? Before they will bear wine
Methinks even you must grow a little older:
Attend, I pray, to this advice of mine,
As you would ’scape what might appal a bolder—
Seeing, see not—and hearing, hear not—and—
If you have understanding—understand.’ [see note at 546.24]
[LZ’s “Ho” at 546.20 is a more literal transcription of the Gk. exclamation: Ὦ].
546.22-23 (see preceding passage and Shelley, stanza 31):
Apollo passed toward the sacred wood,
Which from the inmost depths of its green glen
Echoes the voice of Neptune,—and there stood
On the same spot in green Onchestus then
That same old animal, the vine-dresser,
Who was employed hedging his vineyard there.
[LZ’s “dogwood shaft” at 546.23 is derived from Shelley’s “cornel javelin” (stanza 78), cornel is a genus of plants that includes the dogwood].

546.24  Seeing, not; hearing, / hear not: and—if you / have understanding, understand: the last two lines of stanza 15 of Shelley’s translation above echo Matthew 13:13. Jesus explains why he speaks in parables: “Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand.”

546.27  (His gain mother earth—pant / on—I sum it up) / happy (when) glory invests his / sons fit means to live: referring to the Homeric “Hymn to Earth the Mother of All.” The part within parentheses is largely a homophonic rendition of the title:
Εις γην μητερα παντων (Eis Gên Mêtera Pantôn),
while what follows is taken from the translation of George Chapman (see 546.6):
                        Happy then is he
Whom the innate propensions of thy mind
Stand bent to honour. (lines 11-13)
[…]
High happiness and riches, like this train,
Follow his fortunes, with delights that reign
In all their princes; glory invests his sons;
His daughters, with their crown’d selections
Of all the city, frolic through the meads.  (lines 20-24)
[…]
Hail, then, Great Mother of the Deified Kind,
Wife to the cope of stars! Sustain a mind
Propitious to me for my praise, and give
(Answering my mind) my vows fit means to live. (lines 30-33)

546.31  when the sun’s evening horses / down, to stand its rise / some time his own: probably worked from Chapman’s version of the Homeric “Hymn to the Sun,” which immediately follows “Hymn to Earth the Mother of All” (see preceding):
                        […] beneath whose deep folds fly
His masculine horses round about the sky,
Till in this hemisphere he renders stay
T’ his gold-yok’d coach and coursers; and his way,
Let down by heaven, the heavenly coachman makes
Down to the ocean, where his rest he takes. (lines 23-28)

546.33  Agave: / key ever she’ll rule…: though 547.20 from Jeremiah. Agave is somewhat puzzling here, but see note at 550.10, where Agave is the mother of Pentheus, the King of Thebes, in Euripides’ The Bacchae, who is torn apart by the Maenads, including his mother, for refusing to accept the Dionysian rites.
546,34-36: key ever she’ll rule, her / mirrored glory hold him, blow / away evil: from Jeremiah 2:10-11:
 כִּי עִבְרוּ אִיֵּי כִתִּיִּים, וּרְאוּ, וְקֵדָר שִׁלְחוּ וְהִתְבּוֹנְנוּ, מְאֹד; וּרְאוּ, הֵן הָיְתָה כָּזֹאת
 הַהֵימִיר גּוֹי אֱלֹהִים, וְהֵמָּה לֹא אֱלֹהִים; וְעַמִּי הֵמִיר כְּבוֹדוֹ, בְּלוֹא יוֹעִיל
ki ivru iyei khitiyim ureu vekedar shilkhu vehitbonnu meod ureu hen haita kazot:
haheimir goi elohim vehema lo elohim veami hemir kevodo belo yoil:
For pass over the isles of Chittim, and see; and send unto Kedar, and consider diligently, and see if there be such a thing. Hath a nation changed their gods, which are yet no gods? But my people have changed their glory for that which doth not profit.
546.36-37: what better prophet / or profit: the words “prophet” and “profit” both figure frequently throughout Jeremiah and was a pun LZ could not resist (see 22.528.33 where “profit” in the source is transliterated as “Prophet”). Here perhaps suggested by their proximity at 2:8: “The priests said not, Where is the Lord? And they that handle the law knew me not: the pastors also transgressed against me, and the prophets prophesied by Baal, and walked after things that do not profit.”
547.1: may say why the canna: from Jeremiah 6:20: “To what purpose cometh there to me incense from the She’ba, and the sweet cane (Heb. vekane) from a far country? Your burnt offerings are not acceptable nor your sacrifices sweet unto me.”
547.2: piece it there’s no peace: from Jeremiah 6:14: “They have healed also the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace” (this verse is repeated at 8:11).
547.3-5: voice call your eyes: call / days so shone seem cheer, / call bridgegroom call bride: from Jeremiah 16:9: “For thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel; Behold, I will cause to cease out of this place in your eyes, and in your days, the voice of mirth [Heb. ןושש, sason], and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom, and the voice of the bride.” Variations on the latter part of this verse also appear at 7:34, 25:10, 33:11.
547.5-7: heats / tree’s roots to the river / and the leaves remain green: from Jeremiah 17:8: “For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green [Heb. ra.’a.nan < remain]; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit.”
547.8: first born a watered garden: from Jeremiah 31:9 and 31:12: “They shall come with weeping, and with supplications will I lead them: I will cause them to walk by the rivers of waters in a straight way, wherein they shall not stumble: for I am a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn.”
“Therefore they shall come and sing in the height of Zion, and shall flow together to the goodness of the Lord, for wheat, and for wine, and for oil, and for the young of the flock and of the herd: and their soul shall be as a watered garden; and they shall not sorrow any more at all.”
547.9: return with their whole love: from Jeremiah 24:7: “And I will give them an heart to know me, that I am the Lord: and they shall be my people, and I will be their God: for they shall return unto me with their whole heart.”
547.11-12: not teach his / nearest: from Jeremiah 31:34: “And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”
547.16-18: sun / for a light—old, ordinances / of the moon, stars: from Jeremiah 31:35: “Thus saith the Lord, which giveth the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night, which divideth the sea when the waves thereof roar; The Lord of hosts is his name.”
547.19-20: streets razed—who chose / no heir old scion cross-wise: possibly this refers to Jeremiah’s purchase of a field in Anathoth from his cousin Hanamel (Jeremiah 32:6-15) at a time when Jerusalem was being besieged and would soon be sacked by the Babylonians (see next note).

547.21  (shreik hymning gain, raked birds / without cause all imaginations wrath)…: through 547.23 (and quite possibly the preceding two lines) from the Lamentations of Jeremiah, which describe the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 587 BC. The “razed streets” above (547.19) could fit many passages in the Lamentations such as 2:21: “The young and the old lie on the ground in the streets: my virgins and my young men are fallen by the sword; thou hast slain them in the day or thine anger; thou hast killed, and not pitied.”
Lamentations 3:14: “I was a derision to all my people; and their song all the day.”
Lamentations 3:52: “Mine enemies chased me sore, like a bird, without cause.”
Lamentations 3:60: “Thou hast seen all their vengeance and all their imaginations against me.” In the Hebrew of this line, LZ finds the word ראיתה (rā-′î-tāh) meaning “have seen” but from which he derives “wrath.”
547.23: stove labors youth’s been thru?: from Lamentations 3:27:
 טוֹב לַגֶּבֶר, כִּי-יִשָּׂא עֹל בִּנְעוּרָיו
tov lagever kiyisa ol binurav
It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.

547.24  Hush seeking oath now go…: through 547.29 from Habakkuk; LZ stitches together various phrases and words:
547.24: from Habakkuk 2:20-3:1: “But the Lord is in his holy temple: let all the earth keep silence before him. A prayer of Habakkuk the prophet upon Shi-gi’o-noth.” The rest of chapter 3 is Habakkuk’s prayer from which the rest of this passage is taken:
547.25: from Habakkuk 3:4: “And his brightness was as the light; he had horns coming out of his hand: and there was the hiding of his power.”
“He stood, and measured the earth: he beheld, and drove asunder the nations; and the everlasting mountains were scattered, the perpetual hills did bow: his ways are everlasting.”
547.25-29: from Habakkuk 3:9-19: “Thy bow was made quite naked, according to the oaths of the tribes, even thy word. Selah. Thou didst cleave the earth with rivers. The mountains saw thee, and they trembled: the overflowing of the water passed by: the deep uttered his voice, and lifted up his hands on high. The sun and moon stood still in their habitation: at the light of thine arrows they went, and at the shining of thy glittering spear. Thou didst march through the land in indignation, thou didst thresh the heathen in anger. Thou wentest forth for the salvation of thy people, even for salvation with thine anointed; thou woundedst the head out of the house of the wicked, by discovering the foundation unto the neck. Selah. Thou didst strike through with his staves the head of his villages: they came out as a whirlwind to scatter me: their rejoicing was as to devour the poor secretly. Thou didst walk through the sea with thine horses, through the heap of great waters. When I heard, my belly trembled; my lips quivered at the voice: rottenness entered into my bones, and I trembled in myself, that I might rest in the day of trouble: when he cometh up unto the people, he will invade them with his troops. Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls: Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation. The Lord God is my strength, and he will make my feet like hinds’ feet, and he will make me to walk upon mine high places. To the chief singer on my stringed instruments.”

547.30  Spirit: wheels whirring forward unmoved— / water by measure…: through 548.29 from Ezekiel, selecting from throughout the book but particularly chapters 40 and 47 describing the vision of the restored Temple and land:
547.30: the opening chapter of Ezekiel describes strange animals and wheels in a “whirlwind” identified with the spirit or word of God:
1:20-21: “Whithersoever the spirit was to go, they went, thither was their spirit to go; and the wheels were lifted up over against them: for the spirit of the living creature was in the wheels. When whose went, these went; and when those stood, these stood; and when those were lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up over against them: for the spirit of the living creature was in the wheels.”
1:12: “And they went every one straight forward: whither the spirit was to go, they went; and they turned not when they went.”
547.31: water by measure 1/6 hin: from Ezekiel 4:11: “Thou shalt drink also water by measure, the sixth part of an hin: from time to time shalt thou drink.”
547.32: bread-must now sheep ptomain: from Ezekiel 4:13-14: “And the Lord said, Even thus shall the children of Israel eat their defiled bread among the Gentiles, whither I will drive them. Then said I, Ah Lord God! behold, my soul hath not been polluted; for from my youth up even till now have I not eaten of that which dieth of itself, or is torn in pieces; neither came there abominable flesh into my mouth.” The Hebrew translated as “defiled” is טָמֵ֑א (ta.me) suggests to LZ the Gk. derived Ptomain, a generic name of alkaloid bodies formed from animal or vegetable tissues during putrefaction, and similar bodies produced by pathogenic bacteria; some of them are poisonous (CD). Ptomaine is food poisoning.
547.32-34: key / a maker’s mime-core’ll show void / by crying: from Ezekiel 7:13:
 כִּי הַמֹּכֵר, אֶל-הַמִּמְכָּר לֹא יָשׁוּב, וְעוֹד בַּחַיִּים, חַיָּתָם: כִּי-חָזוֹן אֶל-כָּל-הֲמוֹנָהּ לֹא יָשׁוּב, וְאִישׁ בַּעֲו‍ֹנוֹ חַיָּתוֹ לֹא יִתְחַזָּקוּ
ki hamokher el-hamimkar lo yashuv veod bakhayim khayatam ki-khazon el-kol-hamona lo yashu veish baavono khayato lo-yitkhazaku:
“For the seller shall not return to that which is sold, although they were yet alive: for the vision is touching the whole multitude thereof, which shall not return; neither shall any strengthen himself in the iniquity of his life.”
547.34-35: a little sanctuary / my people one heart: from Ezekiel 11:16, 19-20: “Therefore say, Thus saith the Lord God; Although I have cast them far off among the heathen, and although I have scattered them among the countries, yet will I be to them as a little sanctuary in the countries where they shall come” (see 22.530.36). […] And I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them an heart of flesh: that they may walk in my statutes, and keep mine ordinances, and do them: and they shall be my people, and will be their God.”
547.35-36: enemy / wall men vermillion: from Ezekiel 23:13-15: “Then I saw that she was defiled, that they took both one way, And that she increased her whoredoms: for when she saw men pourtrayed upon the wall, the images of the Chaldeans pourtrayed with vermilion, Girded with girdles upon their loins, exceeding in dyed attire upon their heads, all of them princes to look to, after the manner of the Babylonians of Chaldea, the land of their nativity.”
547.36-37: no gods / that slay: from Ezekiel 28:9: “Wilt thou yet say before him that slayeth thee, I am God? but thou shalt be a man, and no God, in the hand of him that slayeth thee.”
547.37: each one’s vision: from Ezekiel 12:23: “Tell them therefore, Thus saith the Lord God; I will make this proverb to cease, and they shall no more use it as a proverb in Israel; but say unto them, The days are at hand, and the effect of every vision. For there shall be no more any vain vision nor flattering divination within the house of Israel.”
548.1-2: act wherever scattered’ll know a / prophet lived once (against despite): from Ezekiel 20:11, 20:41 and 33:33: “And I gave them my statutes, and shewed them my judgments, which if a man do, he shall even live in them.”
“I will accept you with your sweet savour, when I bring you out from the people, and gather you out of the countries wherein ye have been scattered; and I will be sanctified in you before the heathen.”
“And when this cometh to pass, (lo, it will come,) then shall they know that a prophet hath been among them.”
548.3-4: paired hedge with gap in / the Land: from Ezekiel 22:30: “And I sought for a man among them, that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it: but I found none.”
548.4-5: in her Height: / comae of her branches: from Ezekiel 19:10-11: “Thy mother is like a vine in thy blood, planted by the waters: she was fruitful and full of branches by reason of many waters. And she had strong rods for the scepters of them that bare rule, and her stature was exalted among the thick branches, and she appeared in her height with the multitude of her branches.” [Comae n.pl. In bot.: (a) the leafy head of a tree, or a cluster of leaves terminating a stem, as the leafy top of a pineapple. (b) The silky hairs at the end of some seeds, as of the willow-herb, Epilobium (CD)].
548.5-7: over / days outcasts that need wandered / return a sheaf: from Ezekiel 34:16:
 אֶת-הָאֹבֶדֶת אֲבַקֵּשׁ, וְאֶת-הַנִּדַּחַת אָשִׁיב, וְלַנִּשְׁבֶּרֶת אֶחֱבֹשׁ, וְאֶת-הַחוֹלָה אֲחַזֵּק; וְאֶת-הַשְּׁמֵנָה וְאֶת-הַחֲזָקָה אַשְׁמִיד, אֶרְעֶנָּה בְמִשְׁפָּט
et-haovedet avakesh veet-hanidakhat ashiv velanishberet ekhevosh veet-hakhola akhazek veet-hashemena veet-hakhazaka ashmid erena vemishpat:
“I will seek that which was lost, and bring again [אָשִׁ֔יב (a.shiv)] that which was driven away, and will bind up that which was broken, and will strengthen that which was sick: but I will destroy the fat and the strong; I will feed them with judgment.”
548.7-10: from terror / cedar could not hide: from Ezekiel 31:3, 8: “Behold, the Assyrian was a cedar in Lebanon with fir branches, and with a shadowing shroud, and of a high stature; and his top was among the thick boughs.”
“The cedars in the garden of God could not hide him: the fir trees were not like his boughs, and the chestnut trees were not like his branches; nor any tree in the garden of God was like unto him in his beauty.”
548.8-11: Tall / and Skill all how many / cut off underground slept their / swords under their heads: from Ezekiel 32:26-27 describing the Egyptians in the underground world of the dead:
“There is Me’shech, Tu’bal, and all her multitude: her graves are round about him: all of them uncircumcised, slain by the sword, though they caused their terror in the land of the living. And they shall not lie with the mighty that are fallen of the uncircumcised, which are gone down to hell with their weapons of war: and they have laid their swords under their heads, but their iniquities shall be upon their bones, though they were the terror of the mighty in the land of the living.” LZ has allegorically translated Me’shech and Tu’bal, sons of Japheth, whose name means enlarge and from which LZ derives “Tall,” while “Skill” appears to be a speculative interpretation of Me’shech, although the name actually means to draw or drag.
548.11-17: from Ezekiel 40:20-22: “And the gate of the outward court that looked toward the north, he measured the length thereof, and the breadth thereof. And the little chambers thereof were three on this side and three on that side; and the posts thereof and the arches thereof were after the measure of the first gate: the length thereof was fifty cubits, and the breadth five and twenty cubits. And their windows, and their arches, and their palm trees, were after the measure of the gate that looketh toward the east; and they went up unto it by seven steps; and the arches thereof were before them.”
An anta (pl. antae) is an architectural term: a pilaster, especially a pilaster in certain positions as one of a pair on either side of a doorway, or one standing opposite a pillar; specifically, the pilaster used in Greek and Roman architecture to terminate one of the side walls of a building when they are prolonged beyond the face of the end wall (CD); see quotation below at 548.19-20.
548.18-19: from Ezekiel 40:28: “And he brought me to the inner court by the south gate: and he measured the south gate according to these measures.”
548.19-21: from Ezekiel 40:30: “And the arches thereof were toward the utter court; and palm trees were upon the posts thereof: and the going up to it had eight steps.”
548.21-23: from Ezekiel 41:12: “Now the building that was before the separate place at the end toward the west was seventy cubits broad; and the wall of the building was five cubits thick round about, and the length thereof ninety cubits.”
548.23: from Ezekiel 43:1-2, 4: “Afterward he brought me to the gate, even the gate that looketh toward the east: And, behold, the glory of the God of Israel came from the way of the east: and his voice was like a noise of many waters: and the earth shined with his glory. […] And the glory of the Lord came into the house by the way of the gate whose prospect is toward the east.”
548.24: from Ezekiel 47:1: “Afterward he brought me again unto the door of the house; and, behold, waters issued out from under the threshold of the house eastward: for the forefront of the house stood toward the east, and the waters came down from under the right side of the house, at the south side of the altar.”
548.25: ebb of water to sea: from Ezekiel 47:8: “Then said he unto me, These waters issue out toward the east country, and go down into the desert, and go into the sea: which being brought forth into the sea, the waters shall be healed.”
548.26: guddled runnels swerved nearer blossoms: from Ezekiel 31:4:
 מַיִם גִּדְּלוּהוּ, תְּהוֹם רֹמְמָתְהוּ; אֶת-נַהֲרֹתֶיהָ, הֹלֵךְ סְבִיבוֹת מַטָּעָהּ, וְאֶת-תְּעָלֹתֶיהָ שִׁלְחָה, אֶל כָּל-עֲצֵי הַשָּׂדֶה
mayim gidluhu tehom rommathu et-naharoteiha holekh sevivot mataa veet-tealoteiha shilkha el kol-atsei hasade:
“The waters made him great, the deep set him up on high with her rivers running round about his plants, and sent her little rivers unto all the trees of the field.”
548.27: each month thru the year: from Ezekiel 47:12: “And by the river upon the bank thereof, on this side and on that side, shall grow all trees for meat, whose leaf shall not fade, neither shall the fruit thereof be consumed: it shall bring forth new fruit according to his months, because their waters they issued out of the sanctuary: and the fruit thereof shall be for meat, and the leaf thereof for medicine.”
548.28-29: child—stranger’s like your own / none uprooted the heritage HERE: from Ezekiel 47:22-23: “And it shall come to pass, that ye shall divide it by lot for an inheritance unto you, and to the strangers that sojourn among you, which shall beget children among you: and they shall be unto you as born in the country among the children of Israel; they shall have inheritance with you among the tribes of Israel. And it shall come to pass, that in what tribe the stranger sojourneth, there shall ye give him his inheritance, saith the Lord God.”

548.30  Your nest among the stars . . / peace . . flame . . fields: from Obadiah 1:4: “Though thou exalt they self as the eagle, and though thou set thy nest among the stars, thence will I bring thee down, saith the Lord.” The next three words can be found scattered through the rest of this book.

548.31  BRANCH . .: see 12.229.25, where LZ quotes one of two instances where “branch” is thus capitalized in Zechariah 3:8 and 6:12 to designate a messianic figure in the King James version. The branch image also appears repeatedly in Isaiah (see following).

548.32  a thought not your thought…: through 549.7 predominately from second Isaiah (chapters 41-66). From Isaiah 55:8: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.”

548.33  tracing see into grain: from Anacreon, 5th century BC Greek poet, using the Loeb Classical Library edition of Lyra Graeca II, trans. J.M. Edmonds. LZ is working from the entire note (fragment 50) in which Anacreon’s phrase has been preserved:
Etymologicum Magnum: σῖτος ‘corn’: . . . The word σείω ‘to shake’ occurs also in the form σίω, which is used by Anacreon, for instance:
. . . Θρῃκίην σίοντα χαίτην (tossing (your) Thracian locks).

548.34  Is it to fast an / houre, Or rag’d to go…: through 549.4 from Robert Herrick (1591-1674), “To Keep a True Lent” (qtd. TP 79-80). Its appearance here is because LZ takes Herrick’s poem to be a reworking or recurrence of Isaiah 58 on the proper meaning of fasting (see particularly Isaiah 58:3-9):
Is this a Fast, to keep
            The Larder leane?
                        And cleane
From fat of Veales, and Sheep?

Is it to quit the dish
            Of flesh, yet still
                        To fill
The platter high with Fish?

Is it to faste an houre,
            Or rag’d to go,
                        Or show
A down-cast look, and sowre?

No: ’tis a Fast, to dole
            Thy sheaf of wheat,
                        And meat,
Unto the hungry Soule.

It is to fast from strife,
            From old debate
                        And hate;
To circumcise thy life;

to shew a heart grief-rent;
            To starve they sin,
                        Not Bin.
And that’s to keep thy Lent.

549.5    trees, wordless, horses draw from / the isles new…: through 549.8 continuing with second Isaiah (see 548.31).
549.5: from Isaiah 55:12 and 58:13: “For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all trees of the field shall clap their hands.”
“If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honourable; and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words.”
549.5-6: from Isaiah 66:18-22: “For I know their works and their thoughts: it shall come, that I will gather all nations and tongues; and they shall come, and see my glory. And I will set a sign among them, and I will send those that escape of them unto the nations, to Tarshish, Pul, and Lud, that draw the bow, to Tubal, and Javan, to the isles afar off, that have not heard my fame, neither have seen my glory; and they shall declare my glory among the Gentiles. And they shall bring all your brethren for an offering unto the Lord out of all nations upon horses, and in chariots, and in litters, and upon mules, and upon swift beasts, to my holy mountain Jerusalem, saith the Lord, as the children of Israel being an offering in a clean vessel into the house of the Lord. And I will also take of them for priests and for Levites, saith the Lord. For as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, shall remain before me, saith the Lord, so shall your seed and your name remain.”
549.6-7: from Isaiah 62:4: “Thou shalt no more be termed Forsaken; neither shall thy land any more be termed Desolate: but thou shalt be called Hephzibah, and thy land Beulah: for the Lord delighteth in thee, and they land shall be married.”
549.7: from Isaiah 66:23: “And it shall come to pass, that from one new moon to another, and from one sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith the Lord.”
549.8: from Isaiah 66:1: “Thus saith the Lord, The heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool: where is the house that ye build unto me? And where is the place of my rest?”

549.8    sowers-wage-rages . . harassed nations / good will covet, desire redeem: from Haggai 1:6 and 2:7:
“Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm; and he that earneth wages earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes.”
“And I will shake all nations, and the desire of all nations shall come: and I will fill this house with glory, saith the Lord of hosts.”

549.10  ‘I have loved you, yet / you say wherein. Return, I / return’: from Malachi 1:2 and 3:7 (see also 549.19):
“I have loved you, saith the Lord. Yet ye say, Wherein hast thou loved us? Was not Esau Jacob’s brother? Saith the Lord: yet I loved Jacob.”
“Even from the days of your fathers ye are gone away from mine ordinances, and have not kept them. Return unto me, and I will return unto you, saith the Lord of hosts. But ye said, Wherein shall we return?”

549.12  A coast unseen: from the Diamond (or Diamond-Cutter) Sutra. Probably from Alan Bouquet, Sacred Books of the World: “The Lord Buddha replied, saying: ‘Subhuti, this scripture shall be known as The Diamond-cutter Sutra, “The Transcendent Wisdom,” by means of which we reach “The Other Shore.” By this name you shall reverently regard it. And why? Subhuti, what the Lord Buddha declared as “transcendent wisdom” by means of which we reach “the other shore” is not essentially “transcendent wisdom”—in its essence it transcends all wisdom’”(150-151).

549.13  By the river sat down / remembered the harp…: through 549.18 from Psalm 137:1-6:
“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.”

549.19  ‘Child where father’: from Malachi 4:6 (Hebrew 3:24): “And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.”

549.19  Oppose pomp, / rain, go on in peace: from Jane Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (1903, 1907). The first phrase transliterates a Greek term: “The ritual of the gods called Olympian is of burnt-sacrifice and prayer, it is conducted in temples and on altars: the ritual of the other class has neither burnt-sacrifice nor prayer nor, it would seem, temple or altar, but consists in ceremonies apparently familiar to the Greek under the name of ἀποπομπαί [apopompai], ‘sendings away’ […] Our nearest equivalent to ἀποπομπαί is ‘exorcisms,’ but as the word has connotations of magic and degraded supersition I prefer to use the somewhat awkward term ‘ceremonies of riddance’’’ (8). Secondly on the conclusion of the Eleusinian Mysteries: “[Proclos] says ‘In the Eleusinian Mysteries, looking up to the sky they cried aloud “Rain,” and looking down to the earth they cried “Be fruitful.”’ The simplicity of the solemn little prayer cannot be reproduced in English. It was a fitting close to rites so primitive. Last of all, over those who had been initiated were uttered, if we may trust Hesychius, the mysterious words Κὸγξ ὄμπαξ” [this last syllable is pronounced –pax, suggesting L. pax = peace] (161).

549.21  Out hale as pole-loose horse: from Semonides of Ceos (7th century BC?), Greek iambic poet; using Loeb Classical library edition of Elegy and Iambus, vol. 2, trans. J.M. Edmonds. From a fragment quoted by Plutarch: ἄθηλος ἵππῳ πῶλος ὣς ᾅμα τρέχει (to run like a sucking foal beside his mother), whose sense Plutarch glosses as: “craving almost to be one with his good friend.”

549.22  look up, horse, a voice / foregoes a light it generates: from Bacchylides (5th century BC), Greek lyric poet. LZ’s source is the Loeb Classical Library edition of Lyra Graeca III, trans. J.M. Edmonds. From a drinking song, Fragment 71, lines 21-24:
[ὅσσο]ν ἀνθ ρώπ[ων βλεφάροισι φέρει]
λε[ύκι]ππος Ἀώς,
τόσσον ἐφ᾽ ἁλικίας
φέγγος κατ᾿ ἀνθρώπ[ους πέτασσεν.]
“[…] who in his youthful prime hath spread o’er the world as great a light as ever white-horsed Dawn bringeth unto the eyelids of mankind.”

549.27  quoin own: < koinon, Gk. common (Odlin 558-559); Gk. koiné refers to what became recognized as the common dialect of ancient Greek, and thus more generally any dominant language or lingua franca. Also, given LZ’s interest in architectural features: quoin (< F. coin, an angle, a corner, a wedge) An external solid angle; specifically, in arch. and masonry, the external angle of a building. The word is generally applied to the separate stones or blocks of which the angle is formed; when these project beyond the general surface of the walls, and have their corners chamfered off, they are called rustic quoins or bossage (CD).

549.27  lest we / lose a common curer anew…: through 550.3, with an interpolation at 549.32-34, from Aeschylus (c.525-456 BC).
549.27-30 from The Suppliant Maidens, the Loeb Classical Library edition trans. Herbert Weir Smyth. LZ has constructed this passage from a number of brief excerpts:
[King:] “’Tis not, in sooth, my private house at whose hearth ye sit. If the State is stained by pollution in its commonalty, in common let the people strive to work out the cure. For myself, I will pledge no promise before I have communicated with all the citizens touching these events” (lines 365-369).
[King:] “There is no issue without grievous hurt” (line 442).
[Chorus:] “Hither am I come to the prints of ancient feet, my mother’s, even to the region where she watched […]” (lines 538-539).
[Chorus of Handmaidens:] “[…] and to Harmonia hath been given a share of Aphrodite, and to the whispering dalliances of the Loves” (lines 1041-1042).
549.31-32: from The Persians, line 296: τίς οὐ τέθνηκε (Who is there that is not dead?);
and lines 448-449:
[…] ἣν ὁ φιλόχορος / Πὰν ἐμβατεύει, ποντίας ἀκτῆς ἔπι.
[…] hēn ho philokhoros / Pan embateuei, pontias aktēs epi.
“[…] and upon its sea-washed shore dance-loving Pan is wont to tread.”

549.32  One basket: scoop, / sifter and cradle: various details through the next 20 lines are suggested by Jane Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (1903, 2nd ed. 1907): “In primitive agricultural days, the liknon, a shovel-shaped basket, served three purposes: it was a ‘fan’ with which to winnow grain, it was a basket to hold grain or fruit or sacred objects, it was a cradle for a baby. The various forms of likna and the beautiful mysticism that gathered round the cradle and the winnowing-fan, will be considered when Orphic ceremonial is discussed. For the present it is enough to note that the ceremony of raising or waking Liknites marks clearly the worship of a child-god” (401-402). In the subsequent discussion of the Orphic Mysteries, Harrison examines these three uses or images of the basket in detail, mentioning that it might be used as a “scoop” (530) and “as a sieve for sifting” (532).

549.33  barley-and-oat- / born, a “goat” for spelt—: from Jane Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, quoting an epigram by the Emperor Julian:
“To wine made of barley.
‘Who and whence art thou, Dionyse? Now, by the Bacchus true
Whom well I know, the son of Zeus, say— “Who and what are you?”
He smells of nectar like a god, you smack of goats and spelt,
For lack of grapes from ears of grain your countryman the Celt
Made you. Your name’s Demetrios, but never Dionyse,
Bromos, Oat-born, not Bromios, Fire-born from out the skies.’
The Emperor makes three very fair puns, as follows: βρόμος oats, βρόμιος of the thunder; πυρογενῆ wheat-born, πυριγενῆ fire-born; τράγος goat and τράγος an inferior kind of wheat, spelt. […] For the present it is sufficient to note that all three have the same substantial content, there is a Dionysos who is not of heaven but of earth. Julian propounds as an elegant jest the simple but illuminating mythological truth that the title Bromios points to a god born not of the lightning and thunder but of an intoxicant made from the cereal βρόμος” (415-416).

549.35  that quicked vestigial cycles’ glomerate / horrid-eyes, pawn own none—agon…: through 550.3 continuing with Aeschylus (see 549.31), using various fragments from the Loeb Classical Library edition of Aeschylus, trans. H.W. Smyth.
549.35-36: from Fragments 107 and 108, which are from the play Promitheus Agomenosis. Fragment 107 is in Latin via Cicero (lines 25-26):
atque haec vetusta saeclis glomerata horridis
luctifica clades nostro infixa est corpori […].
“And this my ancient dolorous agony, intensified by the dreadful centuries, is fastened upon my body […].”
Fragment 108: ἵππων ὄνων τ’ ὀχεῖα καὶ ταύρων γένος / δοὺς αντίδουλα καὶ πόνων ἐκδέκτορα.
“Giving to them stallions—horses and asses—and the race of bulls to serve them as slaves and to relieve them of their toil.”
549.37: of self-sown rye: from Fragment 110: “[…] where nor plough nor mattock, that cleaves the ground, parteth the earth, but where the fields, self-sown [αυτόσποροι], being forth bounteous sustenance for mortals.”
549.37-550.1: who’s thru / part-rush: from Fragment 114:
ἐχθροῦ πατρός μοι τοῦτο φίλτατον τέκνον
“Of his sire, mine enemy, this dearest son”
550.1: sick gone, leg on: from Fragment 118: σιγων θ’ όπου δεϊ και λέγων τα καίρια
“Both silent, when there is need, and speaking in season”
550.2-3: bruiting doves phantasm unwinged pleading / wailing the labor upholding sky: from Fragment 172: “And they who bear the name of Atlas’ daughters seven oft bewailed their sire’s supremest labour of sustaining heaven, where as wingless Peleiades [πελειάδες] they have the form of phantoms [φαντασμάτων] of the night.”
[The editor notes: “The daughters of Atlas and Pleione, transformed by Zeus into the constellation of the Πλειάδες, were often regarded as doves (πελειάδες) by poetic fancy and popular mythology. The epithet ‘wingless’ is corrective, because the maidens are not real birds”].

550.4    you mean a day’s grace / stand to day I’m beside: from Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus, Loeb Classical Library edition, trans. R. Storr:
550.4: [Chorus:] “That, as we call them Gracious [Εὐμενίδας = Eumenides], they would deign / To grant the suppliant their saving grace” (lines 486-487). The Eumenides are the Furies in Greek mythology and the title of one of Aeschylus’ tragedies.
550.5: conflates parts of two lines that LZ transliterated:
“Pour [στάντα] thy libation, turning to the dawn” (line 477).
“And I shall be bold to stand thy friend” (line 491).

550.6    Back (bach) high: < Bacchae, violently fanatical female followers of Bacchus or Dionysus, also known as the Maenads, see below 550.11 and 550.14. Also the title of one of Euripides’ tragedies; see 550.10. Aside from the allusion to J.S. Bach, Bach in German means brook (see 550.10).

550.6    streaking: quite possibly LZ is puckishly thinking of the practice of nude running through public spaces, as the now familiar term “streaking” came prominently to public attention precisely at the time he was working on “A”-23 and the bacchanal context would seem apt. This would also give an addition contemporary twist to the preceding “high.”

550.6    Be / kind, kindred don’t phone in / your deaths: see Jane Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion: “It is often said that the Greeks were wont to address their heroized dead and underworld divinities by ‘euphemisitc’ title, Eumenides for Eriyes, χρμστέ, ‘Good One,’ when they meant ‘Bad One.’ Such is the ugly misunderstanding view of scholiasts and lexicographers. But a simpler, more human explanation lies to hand. The dead are, it is true, feared, but they are also loved, felt to be friendly, they have been kin on earth, below the earth they will be kind. But in primitive days it is only those who have been kin who will hereafter be kind; the ghosts of your enemies’ kin will be unkind; if to them you apply kindly epithets it is by a desperate euphemism, or by a mere mechanical usage” (334).

550.9    Babaí: from Euripides, The Cyclops (see 550.12). This is an exclamation whose appearance in The Cyclops is apparently unique, so in his translation of the play, Shelley simply transliterates it.

550.10  pent oooze beat brook, earth / its zone…: through 550.21 appear predominately concerned with Euripides, The Bacchae, already announced at 550.6, although interpolated with other materials. pent oooze < Pentheus (Πενθεύς), the King of Thebes whose resistence to Dionysius’ rites ends in his being torn apart by the Maenads, including his mother Agave (see 546.33). These first few lines draw at least in part from the first long chorus describing the wild rites of Dionysius’ followers (see HRC 37.11), while the latter section appears to be indebted primarily to Jane Harrison, although most of the details are also in Euripides’ play, which is one of the major sources Harrison is drawing upon. LZ used the translation by Henry Hart Milman, who used the title The Bacchanals, as well as having the Greek text.
550.10-12: from Milman (roughly lines 135-150 of the original Greek text):
On the mountains wild ’tis sweet
When faint with rapid dance our feet;
Our limbs on earth all careless thrown
With the sacred fawn-skins strewn,
To quaff the goat’s delicious blood,
A strange, a rich, a savage food.
[…]
And flows with milk the plain, and flows with wine,
Flows with the wild bees’ nectar-dews divine;
And soars, like smoke, the Syrian incense pale—
The while the frantic Bacchanal
The beaconing pine-torch on her wand
Whirls around with rapid hand,
And drives the wandering dance about,
Beating time with joyous shout,
And cast upon the breezy air
All her rich luxuriant hair […].
550.13: When Pentheus attempts to tie Dionysus up, the latter says:
“I warn thee, bind me not; the insane, the sane.”
550.14-15: withe with refractive bee wing / to haircurling fury: see Jane Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion: “With all these divine associations about the bee, a creature wondrous enough in nature, it is not surprising that she was figured by art as a goddess and half human. In fig. 135 we have such a representation, a woman with high curled wings and a bee body from the waist downwards” (443). Harrison also associates the Maenads with bees (442).

550.12  gods not body / in a skin: from Euripides, The Cyclops, the only complete surviving example of a Greek satyr play, as translated by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Ulysses has just introduced the Cyclops to wine in a goat-skin and is explaining who Bacchus is:
Cyclops: How does the God like living in a skin?
Ulysses: He is content wherever he is put.
Cyclops: Gods should not have their body in a skin.
Ulysses: If he gives joy, what is his skin to you?
Cyclops: I hate the skin, but love the wine within.

550.16  gold leaf, mad / strength—best one sure friend: LZ’s notebooks (HRC 37.11) indicate this is probably from Robert Browning, Aristophanes’ Apology (see 562.12 and 14), the full title of which continues “including a Transcript from Euripides, being the Last Adventure of Balaustion.” Aristophanes’ antagonist in this long poem is Balaustion, a disciple and defender of Euripides, who at one point says:
Why—genius! That’s the grandeur, that’s the gold—
That’s you—superlatively true to touch—
Gold, leaf or lump—gold, anyhow the mass
Take manufacture and prove Pallas’ casque […]. (lines 3358-3362)
As her culminating defense of Euripides, Balaustion recites Euripides’ Herakles entire, which would account for the “mad strength,” as Madness literally appears on stage to drive Hercules temporarily insane on Hera’s orders. The tragedy ends with a concluding chorus:
And we depart, with sorrow at heart,
Sobs that increase with tears that start;
The greatest of all our friends of yore,
We have lost for evermore!

When the long silence ended,—“Our best friend—
Lost, our best friend!” he [Aristophanes] muttered musingly. (lines 5081-5086)
Throughout the concluding discussion of the poem, there are repeated returns and plays on the meaning of “best friend,” which is a key theme in Euripides’ tragedy.

550.22  Maker—hard breaks his syllable. / Tesserae Graces—you Fourth out / here The Three are Graces: from Callimachus (early 3rd century BC), Greek poet.
550.22: from the Greek Anthology IX.566 (Declamatory epigrams); LZ transliterates the first and last Greek words of the epigram: “A successful poet [Μικρή], Dionysus, is a man of few words. The most he says is ‘I conquer.’ But he whom thy auspicious gale favours not, if he be asked ‘What luck?’ says ‘Things go hard with me.’ Let such phrases be his who broods on fancied injustice. But mine, O Lord, be the few syllables [η βραχυσυλλαβίη]” (trans. W.R. Paton).
550.23-24: from Epigram 52, using the Loeb Classical Library edition of Callimachus, Lycophron and Aratus, trans. A.W. Mair: “Four are the Graces [Τέσσαρες αἱ Χάριτες]; for beside those three another has been fashioned lately and is yet wet with perfume. Happy Berenice and resplendent among all—without whom even the Graces themselves are not Graces.”

550.25  próchoös hand pours seek a / lane to sing odes…: through 550.28 from Leonidas of Tarentum (3rd century BC) in the Greek Anthology:
550.25-26: from VI.120 (Dedicatory epigrams), line 3. This poem is spoken in the voice of a cicada:
προίκιος ἀνθρώποισι κελευθίτησιν ἀοιδός (making music for the wayfarer without payment)
[prochoos: in Greek antiquity, a small vase of elegant form used especially to pour water on the hands before meals were served (CD)].
550.27-28: from VI.205: “These are the tools of the carpenter Leontichus, the grooved file, the plane, rapid devourer of wood, the line and ochre-box, the hammer lying next them that strikes with both ends, the rule stained with ochre, the drill-bow and rasp, and this heavy axe with its handle, the president of the craft; his revolving augers and quick gimlets too, and these four screw-drivers and his double-edged adze—all these on ceasing from his calling he dedicated to Athene who gives grace to work.”

550.29  sieves emblazed suns: from Antipater, Greek Anthology VI.291: “She took a sieve, and looking through its close meshes, saw even more than a hundred suns.”

550.29  Cypress hidden / sky-starred bema, god egg-candled / kindling—falling toward—earth cypress: from details related to the Orphic mysteries and hymns found in Jane Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion. The Orphic cosmology posited a world egg out of which was born the god or principle of love which in turn created the other gods. A bema [Gr. βῆμα a step, a stage, a platform] in Gr. antiq., a stage or kin d of pulpit on which speakers stood when addressing an assembly. In the Gr. Church, the sanctuary or chancel; the inclosed space surrounding the altar (Century Dictionary); also similarly used in Judaic tradition. A few details are picked up from the following fragment of the Orphic Tablets: 
‘Thou shalt find to the left of the House of Hades a Well-spring,
And by the die thereof standing a white cypress.
To this Well-spring approach not near.
But thou shalt find another by the Lake of Memory,
Cold water flowing forth, ad there are Guardians before it.
Say: ” I am a child of Earth and of Starry Heaven;
But my race is of Heaven (alone). This ye know yourselves. […]”
(from Harrison, appendix on the Orphic Tablets by Gilbert Murray)

550.32  at one with the hill-genius / wistaria cloaked, ivy girded smiling / lost in azalea, fallen meteor…: at least through 550.35 from Chʽü Yüan (Qu Yuan), 4th century BC Chinese poet to whom are attributed the major poems of the Songs of Chu (or Songs of the South). The Songs of Chu are strongly influenced by shamanism, often recounting visionary journeys with a lush botanical imagery that would have appealed to LZ. Chʽü Yüan’s great poem Li Sao or Encountering Sorrow (> meeting sorrow at 551.4), as also with other poems attributed to him, is an elaborate allegorical account of Chʽü Yüan’s fall from political favor and quest to be reunited with his prince. LZ draws on at least two sources, Herbert A. Giles, A History of Chinese Literature (see 22.515.10) and The White Pony, ed. Robert Payne, from which he appears to freely blend scattered images.
550.32-35: from Giles’ version of “The Genius of the Mountain,” one of the Nine Songs: “Methinks there is a Genius of the hills, clad in wistaria, girdled with ivy, with smiling lips, of witching mien, riding on the red pard, wild cats galloping in the rear, reclining in a chariot, with banners of cassia, cloaked with the orchid, girt with azaleas, culling the perfume of sweet flowers to leave behind a memory in the heart. […] I pluck the larkspur on the hillside, amid the chaos of rock and tangled vine. I hate him who has made me an outcast, who has now no leisure to think of me. […] I shade myself beneath the spreading pine […] And I am thinking of my Prince, but in vain; for I cannot lay my grief” (52-53). EP reworked this translation by Giles as “After Ch’u Yuan” (Personae 110). “Fallen meteor” may allude both to Chʽü Yüan’s political downfall as well as to the fact that he drowning himself in despair over the corruption and weakness of the Chu court by grasping a large stone and wading into a river; the annual Dragon Boat Festival continues to commemorate his death.

551.4    meeting sorrow: see note at 550.32.

551.5    ‘pine, wherever your hanging garden, / my prince…: partially from Ch‛ü Yüan, see quote at 550.32.

551.8    Quasi poet quire repair to / men, elude—where’s his similar: from Plautus (c.254-184 BC), Pseudolus, lines 401-404. LZ’s text is that of the Loeb Classical Library edition of Plautus, vol. 4, trans. Paul Nixon:
sed quasi poeta, tabulas cum cepit sibi,
quaerit quod nusquamst gentium, reperit tamen,
facit illud veri simile, quod mendacium est,
nunc ego poeta fiam […].
“But the same as a poet, once his tablets are in hand, hunts for what is nowhere on this earth, yet finds it, and makes a lie look like the truth, I’ll turn poet myself now.”

551.10  tan hallow tan glow can: from Moschus (c.150 BC), Greek bucolic poet. LZ’s text is the Loeb Classical Library edition of The Greek Bucolic Poets, trans. J.M. Edmonds; from IV “[A Comparison],” opening half line:
Τὰν ἅλα τὰν γλαυκὰν ὅταν ὥνεμος ἀτρέμα βάλλη […]
“When the wind strikes gently upon a sea that is blue […]

551.11  allay, mix lips summon eye: from the Greek bucolic poet Bion (c.100 BC) via Shelley, the famous “Lament for Adonis,” the passage where Aphrodite addresses the dead Adonis, which Shelley translates in part:
                                    ‘Stay, Adonis!
Stay, dearest one, . . .
                                  and mix my lips with thine—
Wake yet a while, Adonis—oh, but once,
That I may kiss thee now for the last time […].’

551.12  burn cold, sob by sea: from Meleager (1st century BC), Greek poet, in The Greek Anthology V.160. LZ’s text is the Loeb Classical Library edition, vol. 1, trans. W.R. Paton:
ἔστι καὶ ἐν ψυχροῖς σάββασι θερμὸς Ἔρως. (Love burns hot even on cold Sabbaths.)

551.13  floated head drowned others drowns: from a famous anecdote about Hillel, 1st century BC rabbinic father: : “On one occasion he saw a skull floating, and he said: ‘Because you drowned others, you were drowned, and in the end they that drowned you shall likewise be drowned.’” From the Pirke Aboth (The Sayings of the Fathers) Chap. 2 (Wisdom of Israel 129). Hillel is also used at 22.523.8-10.

551.14  tree-haft wields ax: from the Talmud: “A tree is cut down by an axe which is joined to a piece of the tree itself. Eliyahu Rabbah, 29″ (Wisdom of Israel 294).

551.14  redeems captivity / a minim worth: from Terence (2nd century BC) Roman playwright; however, almost certainly taken from Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew I.1, where Tranio quotes a somewhat corrupt version of a line via Lilly’s Latin Grammar from the play The Eunuch: “Redime te captum, quam queas minimo” (Ransom yourself from captivity as cheaply as you can) (qtd. Bottom 397)—Terence’s original is: “Quit agas? Nisi ut te redimas captum quam queas minimo.”

551.16  cane, mossed hurdles, / arbutus wicker: from Virgil (70-19 BC), Georgics I.166:
virgea praeterea Celei vilisque supellex,
arbuteae crates et mystica vannus Iacchi.
“[…] further, the common wicker ware of Celeus, arbute hurdles and the mystic fan of Iacchus” (trans. H.R. Fairclough).

551.18  outwitted outwit a / sea put to’t, pear, nubile / illumine: from Virgil, Aeneid VI.454: qualem primo qui surgere mense
aut vide taut vidisse putat per nubile lunam
“[…] even as, in the early month, one sees or fancies he has seen the moon rise amid the clouds” (trans. H.R. Fairclough).

551.19  not smoke of flame, / light from smoke…: these italicized lines from Horace (65-8 BC), “Art of Poetry,” lines 155 and 194 as translated by Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603). Further translations by Elizabeth appear at 552.20-26 and 555.13-33 (text from Bradner):
Shew me, my muse, a man in after tims of taken Troy
The manars of many a man that saw togither with their towns.
Who miss not smoke of flame but light from smoke to giue,
That thens he may shewe wondars great:
[…]
Lest, therfor, agid part be giuen vnto the young
And mans estate bequived to the boy,
Let vs abide in suche as best agre and in ther time.

551.21  humus / humider flowers: candid lily carpet: from Ovid (43BC-17/18), Metamorphoses V.390-392 (qtd. Bottom 409):
frigora dant rami, tyrios humus umida flores:
perpetuum ver est. quo dum Prosperpina luco
ludit et aut violas aut candida lilia carpit […]
“The branches afford a pleasing coolness, and the well-watered ground bears bright-coloured flowers. There spring is everlasting. Within this grove Proserpina was playing, and gathering violets of white lilies” (trans. Frank J. Miller).

551.23  no scanter violet: from Persius (34-62), Satire I.40 (qtd. Bottom 411, where LZ reads a recurrence with Hamlet V.i.261: “Lay her i’ th’ earth, / And from her fair and unpolluted flesh / May violets spring…”). Note mention of violets in preceding quotation:
nunc non e manibus illis,
nunc non e tumulo fortunataque favilla
nascentur violae?
“[…] will not violets now spring up from those remains, from the tomb and its thrice-blessed ashes?” (trans. G.G. Ramsay).

551.23  rosebud rime-matted / imperative purple’s furious calyxes: from an epigram by Crinagoras of Mitylene (70BC-18) in The Greek Anthology VI.345 (first two lines):
Εἴαρος ἤνθει μὲν τὸ πρὶν ῥόδα, νῦν δ’ ἐνὶ μέσσῳ
   χείματι πορφυρέας ἐσχάσαμεν κάλυκας […]
“Roses used to flower in spring, but we now in mid-winter burst scarlet from our buds […]” (trans. W.R. Paton).

551.25  Imbibe the clepsydra, blue charioteer / nose offend…: through 552.15 predominately from the Roman poet Martial (c.40-104), Epigrams, using the Loeb Classical Library edition, 2 vols. trans. Walter C.A. Ker.
551.25: Imbibe the clepsydra: from VI.35, lines 5-6:
ut tandem saties vocemque sitimque, rogamus
   iam de clepsydra, Caeciliane, bibas.
“That you may once for all sate your oratory and your thirst, we beg you, Caecilianus, now to drink out of the water-clock [clepsydra].”
551.25: blue charioteer: from VI.46:
“The four-horse car of the Blue charioteer is repeatedly lashed on, and yet goes slow. You are doing a great feat, Catianus.” [Editor’s note:] “the charioteers of the circus were divided into four factions, red, white, green, and blue, the last being out of favour with Domitian. Martial means that the Blue driver pulled his horses, not wishing to win.”
551.26-27: nose offend a more ambulant / scene: from VII.48, line 5:
nos offendimur ambulante cena.
“We are annoyed by a peripatetic dinner.”
551.27-28: “what cracker deafs our / ears”: from Shakespeare, King John II.i: “Austria: What cracker is this same that deafs our ears / With this abundance of superfluous breath?”
551.28-30: as to what rarest / temper reads our matter, post / fate her time-veined glory: from V.10, lines 1-2,11-12 :
“Esse quid hoc dicam vivis quod fama negatur
   et sua quod rarus tempora lector amat?”
[…]
vos tamen o mostri ne festinate libelli:
   si post fata venit gloria, non propero.
“‘How shall I explain this—that to living men fame is denied, and that few readers love their own times?’ […] Yet be not too eager, O ye books of mine! So after death come glory, I hurry not.”
551.30: kin / air too late: from I.25, last phrase:
post te victurae per te quoque vivere chartae
incipiant: cineri gloria sem venit.
“Let writings that will live after you by your aid also begin to live now; to the ashes of the dead glory comes too late.”
551.31-32: (no proper / grief would attest its dole): from I.33, last line:
ille dolet vere qui sine teste dolet.
[translation of poem as whole:] “Gellia weeps not while she is alone for her lost father; if any one be present, her tears leap forth at her bidding. He does not lament who looks, Gellia, for praise; he truly sorrows who sorrows unseen.”
511.33-34: censure plays, faults nameless who’d / “love” her “kind” autograph: from VIII.2: “You compel me to correct my poems with my own hand and pen, Pudens. Oh, how overmuch you approve and love my work who wish to have my trifles in autograph!”
551.35-37: bookstore remainder given free, but / is she worth such poor / taste?: from I.117: “There is a shop opposite Caesar’s Forum with its door-posts from top to bottom bearing advertisements, so that you can in a moment read through the list of poets. Look for me [i.e. my books] in that quarter. No need to ask Atrectus (that is the name of the shopkeeper): out of the first or second pigeon-hole he will offer you Martial smoothed with pumice and smart with purple, for three shillings. ‘You’re not worth it,’ you say? You are wise, Lupercus.”
551.37-552.1: Molest your hand? No— / fake and go: from X.25. lines 5-6:
nam cum dicatur tunica praesente molesta
   “Ure manum,” plus est dicere “Non facio.”
“For, when it is said to you, while the torturing tunic is by you, ‘Burn your hand,’ it is the bolder thing to say ‘I refuse.’”
552.1-2: Without clamber, / bunt, our book’s my own: from XII.3, lines 17-18:
quid titulum poseis? Versus duo tresve legantur,
   clamabunt omnes te, liber, esse meum.
“Why do you require a title? Let two or three verses be read: all will cry that you, O book, are mine.”
552.3: delight seen one time: so: / married once: from IV.13, lines 9-10:
diligat illa senem quondam, sed et ipsa marito
tum quoque, cum fuerit, non videatur anus.
“May the wife love her husband when anon he is grey, and she herself, even when she is old, seem not so to her spouse!”
552.4-5: mirrored fire admired / animal probities father risk: from XI.103:
Tanta tibi est animi probitas orisque, Safroni,
   ut mirer fieri te potuisse patrem.
“Such is your modesty in mind and aspect, Safronius, that I wonder you have managed to become a father.”
552.5-6: Keys / punt: from X.30, line 12: nec languet, aequor, viva sed quies ponti (yet is not the sea-floor still, but a slumberous swell…).
552.6: arbors tutor us: air: from VIII.14, lines 7-8:
sic habitare iubes veterem crudelis amicum?
arboris ergo tuae tutior hospes ero.
“Is it in such a lodging you cruelly bid your old friend dwell? Then as the guest of one of your trees I shall be more protected.”
arbors tutor us also suggests the trailing arbutus, a fragrant creeper of the U.S., blooming in the spring, and also known as the May-flower; also a genus of evergreen shrubs or small trees of southern Europe and western North America, natural order Ericaceæ, characterized by a free calyx and a many-seeded berry (CD); see 551.17, 563.24.
552.6-8: air / is, air is, short or / long sounds air’s measure: from IX.11, lines 13-17:
dicunt Eiarinon tamen poetae,
sed Graeci quibus est nihil negatum
et quos Ἆρες Ἄρες decet sonare:
nobis non licet esse tam disertis
qui Musas colimus serveriores.
“Yet poets speak of Eiarinos; but they were Greeks, to whom nothing is denied, and whom it becomes to sound Ares short as Ares long. We cannot be so versatile, who court Muses more unbending.” [Editor’s note:] “Homer (Iliad v.31) uses both quantities in one line.”
552.8-12: In / toga—chord: release—pine, dewed…: from XIII.1:
Ne toga cordylis et paenula desit olivis
   aut inopem metuat sordida blatta famem,
perdite Niliacas, Musae, mea damna, papyros:
   postulat ecce novos ebria bruma sales.
non mea magnanimo depugnat tessera telo,
   senio nec nostrum cum cane quassat ebur:
haec mihi charta nuces, haec est mihi charta fritillus:
   alea nec damnum nec facit ista lucrum.
“That tunny-fry may not lack a gown, and olives a capote, nor the foul black beetle fear pinching hunger, destroy, ye Muses—the loss is mine—papyrus from the Nile: see tipsy winter calls for new pleasantries. No die of mine contends with dauntless weapon, nor does sice together with ace shake my ivory box: this paper is my nuts, this paper is my dice-box; hazard that bring me no loss nor yet any gain.”
552.13-15: Surge to breakfast bakery’s pattycake, / birds tackling crust sound look, / kiss: Aves: from XIV.223, which has the title Adipata (Rich Dainties):
Surgite: iam vendit pueris ientacula pistor
   cristataeque sonant undique lucis aves.
“Get up: already the baker is selling to boys their breakfast, and the crested fowls of dawn are crowing on all sides.”

552.15  inexpert hum quests / (tacet) statuary brume…: through 552.19 from the Roman poet Statius (c.45-c.96), Sylvae IV.5 (lines 7-8, 16) and V.4 “To Sleep” (lines 6, 17-18). LZ’s text is the Penguin Book of Latin Verse, trans. Frederick Brittain, which gives a trucated version of the first poem; the above line numbers refer to the Penguin text:
Nunc cuncta vernans frondibus annuis
Crinitur arbos, nunc volucrum novi
   Questus, inexpertumque carmen,
      Quod tacita statuere bruma. […]

Non mille balant lanigeri greges,
Nec vacca dulci mugit adultero,
   Unique siqmando canenti
      Mutus ager domino reclama.
“Now every tree is fringed with the leaves that spring brings every year, now the new complaints of the birds are heard, and the untried song which they planned in the silent winter.” […]
“There are no thousands of fleecy sheep to bleat, no cow lows to her pleasing suitor; and the silent field answers only its master, whenever he sings.”

Crimine quo merui, juvenis, placidissime divum,
Quove errore miser, donis ut solus egerem,
Somne, tuis? tacet omne pecus volucresque feraeque
Et simulant fessos curvata cacumina somnos,
Nec trucibus fluviis idem sonus; occidit horror
Aequoris, et terris maria acclinata quiescunt. […]
                        nec te tota infundere pennas
Luminibus compello meis (hoc turba precetur
Laetior). Extremo me tange cacumine virgae
(Sufficit) aut leviter suspenso poplite transi.
“O youthful sleep, most peaceful of all the gods, what crime or what error have I, wretch that I am, committed, that I alone should be deprived of thy gifts? All the cattle, birds, and wild beasts are silent, the curved tree-tops look as though they were sleeping through weariness, and not even the turbulent rivers keep their wonted sound. The dread sea has grown calm and the ocean is leaning on the earth in peace. […] I do not force thee to press all the strength of thy wings upon my eyes. Let those who are happier pray for that! It is enough if thou dost merely touch me with the extreme tip of thy wand or if thou dost merely pass over me with lingering step.”

552.20  some . . / served . . ther cities . . altering . . the / sons arising place…: through 552.26 from Plutarch (c.46-120), Greek historian and essayist; from “On Curiosity” in the Moralia as translated by Queen Elizabeth I (text from Bradner); see other translations by Elizabeth at 551.19-21 and 555.13-33:
And some have served ther cities turne by altering suche.
A sample may my country make, as said hit it,
That bending to Zephirus wynde and from Parnasus taking sone,
That to ye west his course did turn by Cherons help,
Hit wryed was to east, the sons arising place. (1.9-13)
[…]
Therfor if plagy wilz ther be that noyful ar unsound,
Arising tempest great and dimly marks the mynd,
Best shal hit be giue them repuls and down throw flat to ground;
So to ourselues we bride an air clear, a ligh and brethe ful pur. (1.19-22)
[…]
What of myne shal I imparte as of my gift to the? (4.15)
[…]
And so can not be shuned, but slandar felowes the busy care,
Wiche made Pithagoras teche fiue yeres silence to young men,
Wiche cal he did Έχεμυθια, the suafes thing that silence doth expres. (9.1-3)
[…]
But who is freed from this disease and is of mildy spirit
Nor gilty is of any iuel shal thus begin to say:
O goddis, how wise art thou, that dost forget the yl. (14.24-26)

552.26  History our arm script oars? / cresset?…: through 552.29 from the Roman satirist Juvenal (c.60-c.140); for the most part working from the Latin text using the Loeb Classical Library edition of Juvenal and Persius, trans. G.G. Ramsay (1918).
552.26-28: from Satire VII.98-102:
Vester poro labor fecundior, historiarum
scriptores? Perit hic plus temporis atque olei plus.
nullo quippe modo millensima pagina surgit
omnibus et crescit multa damnosa papyro;
sic ingens rerum numerus iubet atque operum lex.
“And is your labour more remunerative, ye writers of history? More time, more oil, is wasted here; regardless of all limit, the pages run up to thousands; the pile of paper is ever mounting to your ruin. So ordains the vast array of facts, and the rules of the craft.”
552.28-29: from Satire XV.171-174:
                                    quid diceret ergo
vel quo non fugeret, si nunc haec monstra videret
Pythagoras, cunctis animalibus abstinuit qui
tamquam homine et ventri indulsit non omne legumen?
“What would Pythagoras say, or to what place would he not flee, if he beheld these horrors of to-day,—he who refrained from every living creature as if it were human, and would not indulge his belly with every kind of vegetable?”
A Thought Worshipped: probably from a passage where Juvenal refers to the Jews: “Some who have had a father who reveres the Sabbath, worship nothing but the clouds, and the divinity of the heavens [caeli numen]” (XIV.96-97), which is then footnoted by the editor: “The phrase caeli numen is hard to translate. What Juvenal means is that the Jews worshipped no concrete deity, such as could be portrayed, but only some impalpable mysterious spirit. They did not worship the sky or the heavens, but only the numen of the heavens. This is what Tacitus means when he says (Hist. v. 5) ‘The Jews worship with the mind alone.’ So Lucan ii. 592-3 dedita sacris Incerti Judaca dei.”

552.30  Or thrall a lull sing / swallows dawn: from Philippus of Thessalonica (2nd century?) in The Greek Anthology VI.247, line 1. The Greek word LZ transliterates means “early chattering” and the entire line is underlined in the following translation of the full epigram:
Κερκίδας ὀρθρολάλοισι χελιδόσιν εἰκελοφώνους […]
“Pallantian Maid who lovest the loom, Aesione, now bowed with age, suspends to thee the gift of her poverty, her weaving-comb that sings like the early-chattering swallows, with the prongs of which weaver Pallas smooths the thread, her comb for dressing the wool, her spindle worn by the fingers, swimming (?) with the twirling thread, and her wicker basket which the wool dressed by her teeth once filled” (trans. W.R. Paton).

552.31  Crabbed age / and youth . . together. Feast . . eies . . / Short night to night…: through 553.1 from Shakespeare, “The Passionate Pilgrime” (for “Feast” see next note). LZ is probably using a facsimile text he owned, Poems and Pericles, ed. Stanley Lee (1905), which he used in Bottom (293-294, 320-322).
Crabbed age and youth cannot liue together,
Youth is full of pleasance, Age is full of care […] (XII)
[“eies” (eyes) appears three time in the poem.]
Pack night, peep day, good day of night now borrow
Short night to night, and length thy selfe to morrow. (XIV)
Through the veluet leaues the wind
All vnseen gan passage find,
That the louer (sicke to death)
Wisht himselfe the heauens breath, […] (XVI)
Thus art with armes contending, was victor of the day,
Which by a gift of learning, did beare the maid away,
Then lullaby the learned man hath got the Lady gay,
For now my song is ended. (XV)

552.32  Feast . . eies . .: from an interview with the Russian-American sculptor, Louise Nevelson (1899-1988), in the Sunday New York Times for 24 Jan. 1971, Roy Bongartz, “Darkness into Light”: “And, finally, asked what her work amounts to for her personally, she admits: ‘It’s not really for an audience, it is really for my visual eye. It is a feast—for myself?'”

553.1    Night / round Day on: post qualm / phoebe-phoenix: from Lactantius (c.250-c.320), Latin Christian poet from north Africa; from a lyric given the title “The Phoenix” in the Penguin Book of Latin Verse, trans. Frederick Brittain:
Postquam Phoebus equos in aperta effudit Olympi
   Atque orbem totum protulit usque means,
Illa ter alarum repetito verbere plaudit
   Igniferumque caput ter venerata silet.

Atque eadem celeres etiam discriminat horas
   Innarrabilibus nocte dieque sonis,
Antistes luci nemorique veranda sacerdos
   Et sola arcanis coscia, Phoebe, tuis.
“When Phoebus has brought his horses out into the open spaces of the sky and, continually advancing, has displayed his whole orb, the phoenix greets him with a three-fold flapping of its wings, worships its fire-bearing lord three times, and is silent.
            It marks the fleeting hours with ineffable melody night and day, for it is the revered priest of the grove and of the woods and is the only bird that is privy to thy secrets, Phoebus.”

553.3    scent: too frigit dims: from Pentadius (c.290), late Latin poet, “The Return of Spring” in the Penguin Book of Latin Verse, trans. Frederick Brittain:
Sentio, fugit hiemps; Zephyrisque animantibus orbem
   Jam tepet Eurus acquis: sentio, fugit hiemps […]
“I feel that winter has fled. While the zephyrs are reviving the world Eurus is already blowing warmly over the waters. I feel that winter has fled […].”

553.4    Vagabond “stars” hale old windjammer…: through 553.14 from Greek prose romances using the text of Three Greek Romances, trans. Moses Hadas.
553.4-10: from Dio Chrysostom (c.40-c.120), The Hunters of Euboea, which is actually a lengthy introductory narrative to Chrysostom’s 7th Discourse. The narrator is a city man but with a penchant for travel and begins: “The story I shall tell is not a thing I heard from others, but what I myself saw. Wordiness is an old man’s way: It is not easy to put a gray-beard off once he has begun to talk. But maybe it is a vagabond’s way too. The reason is old men and vagabonds alike have lived through much and like to recall their experiences.” The narrator is travelling to Euboea on a small boat (windjammer) when a storm blows up and they wreck on the shore, where he encounters an old hunter who then gives an extended narrative of his experiences when visiting the city. There he followed a crowd “into a theater—a sort of hollow valley, not, however, straight up and down, but half round. It is not a natural formation, but built of stones” —where various public debates take place. Eventually the old man himself is brought forward and accused by one orator of being an example of country people who live off public land for free, paying no taxes and becoming rich while pretending to be poor. Another rises to counter these accusations and propose that such people ought to be encouraged to tend the land that would otherwise remain wilderness. The old man himself then describes their way of life: “‘We have wives and children. We live in two fine huts, and there is a third for storing the grain and the skins.’ ‘Yes, by Zeus,’ the [accuser] said, ‘and for burying your money too, belike.’ ‘Then go and dig it up, fool. Who buries money? It doesn’t grow, you know.’”
553.10-12, 14: from Longus (2nd century), Daphnis and Chloe (LZ quotes from this tale in Bottom 376):
“With Chloe, then, he want to the grotto of the Nymphs, and gave her his tunic and script to hold while he stood by the fountain and washed his hair and all his body. Now his hair was black and full, and his body tinted by the sun; one might suppose it took its color from the shadow of his hair. Chloe looked on and thought him beautiful, and, having never thought him beautiful before, she thought that the bath was what conferred beauty. […] He wanted to look at Chloe, but when he looked he was suffused with blushes. Then for the first time did he admire her hair because it was yellow, and her eyes, because they were big and soft like a heifer’s, and her face, because it was truly whiter than his own goat’s milk. It was as if he then first acquired eyes, having had none before. […] [The concluding paragraph:] But these things they did and these names they gave in later years. Upon that occasion, when night fell, the entire company escorted them to their bridal chamber, some playing pipes, some flutes, and others raising large torches. And when they came near the door, they sang out in shrill and harsh tones, as if they were breaking ground with three-pronged forks, not chanting a hymeneal. Daphnis and Chloe lay down together naked. They embraced and kissed one another, and were no less wakeful than owls. And Daphnis performed as Lycaninion had taught him, and for the first time Chloe learned that their pastime in the woods had been mere pastoral play.”
553.12-14: from Xenophon of Ephesus (2nd-3rd century), An Ephesian Tale. There are a good many similarities between this tale and that of Longus, and LZ appears to be choosing complementary details, including the celebrations of “hymeneals”:
“When [Anthia] had said all this she fondled his face and drew all his hair to touch her eyes; and then she removed the wreaths, and applied her lips to his in a close kiss, and the thoughts that were in the mind of each they transmitted through their lips from the soul of one to the soul of the other. And when she kissed his eyes she said, ‘Ah, ye twain that have so often inflicted pain upon me, ye that first thrust the goad into my spirit, yet that were then cruel but now filled with love, well have eye served me, passing well have ye conveyed love of me into the soul of Habrocomes.’ […] Finally Habrocomes collected himself and said, ‘Miserable wretches that we are, what tribulations shall we undergo in this barbarous country, delivered to the brutality of pirates? The woes prophesied now begin. Now is the god exacting vengeance on me for my overweening pride. Corymbos is in love with me, Euxinos with you. Ah for our unseasonable beauty! It is for this, forsooth, that I have preserved my chastity until now, that I might submit to the filthy passion of a robber love.’”
553.13-14: peril (peoples stone / lifelong) trothplight names later: these lines concern the character Perilaos (> peril), the chief of law and order in Cilicia, who saves the heroine, Anthia, from a brigand and proposes marriage to her, which she accepts but puts off to stay true (lifelong) to Habrocomes (therefore: trothplight names later). LZ looked up the latter half of Perilaos’ name and found: λᾶας (lãos), meaning stone, but also an irregular genitive form of λᾶος (lãas), meaning a people.

553.14  Peace— / Place Whose Streams—unregretful minds / always sense roses: LZ’s notebooks (HRC 37.4) indicate a combination the Hebrew Pirke Aboth (Sayings of the Fathers) and the late Roman poet Ausonius (310-395). Apparently “Peace” is redacted from the following anecdote: “R. Jose B. Kisma said: Once I was walking by the way when a man met me, and gave me (the salutation of) ‘Peace,’ and I returned him (the salutation of) ‘Peace.’ Said he to me, ‘Rabbi, from what place art thou?’ Said I to him, ‘from a great city of sages and scribes am I.’ Said he to me, “Rabbi, (should it be) thy pleasure that thou dwell with us in our place, I will give thee a thousand thousand denarii of gold, and precious stones and pearls.’ Said I to him: ‘If thou shouldest give me all the silver and gold, precious stones and pearls that are in the world, I would not dwell (anywhere) excepting in a place of Torah’” (Aboth VI, Baraitha 9). Also it is quite possible LZ has the etymological meaning of Jerusalem in mind, < Shalom = peace, a point LZ notes a number of times in his notebooks. 
Place Whose Streams from Psalm 46:4: “There is a river, the steams whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the most High.”
553.15-16: unregretful minds / always sense roses: Ausonius is best known for two poems: one on the river Moselle, evoking a serene closeness to nature, and another “On Newborn Roses” (Ver erat et blando mordentia frigora sensu) that is one of the prototypical works of the carpe diem motif, whose concluding stanza in particular was imitated by Robert Herrick (“Gather Thee Rosebuds”) among many others:
Yet wise is she, that hath so soon die,
And lives her life in some succeeding rose.
O maid, while youth is with the rose and thee,
Pluck thou the rose: life is as swift for thee.
(trans. Helen Waddell, Mediaeval Lyrics (1948): 29; this volume was in the Zukofsky library).

553.16  grape, clematis / twine rage ridge of porcupine: from an anonymous dedicatory epigram in The Greek Anthology VI.169: “Comaulus, seeing the porcupine carrying grapes [ῥᾶγας > rage] on its spines, slew it in this vineyard, and having dried it, he dedicated to Dionysus, who loves untempered wine, the spoiler of Dionysus’ gift” (trans. W.R. Paton).

553.18  Loyal . . extrauagant . . erring . . redeems infernos / ’gainst…: through 553.22 in italics from Shakespeare, Hamlet I.i.144-167, using the First Folio text (other quotations from Hamlet at 553.36 and 554.5-6), but its appearance here is due to a conjunction with Prudentius (348-c.405), late Roman Christian poet, represented here by the unitalicized phrase “redeems infernos.” The hidden connection is the cock’s crow, as the phrases and words from Hamlet are picked from the exchange between Horatio (= Loyal) and Marcellus on the abrupt exit of the ghost of Hamlet’s father, while the relevant poem by Prudentius is “Ad Gallicinium” (At Cock Crow). LZ found the following stanza from Prudentius’ poem in Helen Waddell, The Wandering Scholars of the Middle Ages (1927):
   Inde est, quod omnes credimus
      illo quietis tempore,
   quo gallus exsultans canit,
      Christum redisse ex inferis. (Waddell 244)
(Thence is it, as we all believe, / At this same hour of quiet, / The jocund crowing of the cock, / Christ came back from the lower world. (Waddell 19))
From Hamlet I.i:
Marcellus: ’Tis gone.      Exit Ghost.
We do it wrong, being so Maiesticall
To offer it the shew of Violence,
For it is as the Ayre, invulnerable,
And our vaine blowes, malicious Mockery.
Barnardo: It was about to speake, when the Cocke crew.
Horatio: And then it started, like a guilty thing
Vpon a fearfull Summons. I haue heard,
The Cocke that is the Trumpet to the day,
Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding Throate
Awake the God of Day: and at his warning,
Whether in Sea, or Fire, in Earth, or Ayre,
Th’extrauagant, and erring Spirit, hyes
To his Confine. And of the truth heerein,
This present Obiect made probation.
Marcellus: It faded on the crowing of the Cocke.
Some sayes, that euer ’gainst that Season comes
Wherein our Sauiours Birth is celebrated,
The Bird of Dawning singeth all night long:
And then (they say) no Spirit can walke abroad,
The nights are wholsome, then no Planets strike,
No Faiery talkes, nor Witch hath power to Charme:
So hallow’d, and so gracious is the time.
Horatio: So haue I heard, and do in part beleeue it.
But looke, the Morne in Russet mantle clad,
Walkes o’re the dew of yon high Easterne Hill,
Breake we our Watch vp, and by my aduice
Let vs impart what we haue seene to night
Vnto yong Hamlet. For vpon my life,
This Spirit dumbe to vs, will speake to him:
Do you consent we shall acquaint him with it,
As needfull in our Loues, fitting our Duty?

553.22  Naked at birth / naked in earth reads wrath…: through 553.30 from Palladas, 4th century Greek poet and grammarian of Alexandria, whose bitter epigrams are collected in The Greek Anthology. LZ uses the Loeb Classical Library edition, vols. 3 & 4, trans. W.R. Paton (Leggott 87, 389):
533.22-23: Naked at birth / naked in earth: from X.58: “Naked I alighted on the earth and naked shall I go beneath it. Why do I toil in vain, seeing the end is nakedness?”
553.23-24: reads wrath / illumined: from IX.168, which begins:
Μῆνιν οὺλομένην γαμετὴν ό τάλας γεγάμηκα […]
“I, unhappy man, have married a wife who is ‘pernicious wrath’ [quoting Homer], and my profession, too obliges me to begin with ‘wrath.’ Oh, man of much wrath forced to consort with wrath in two things, my calling as a grammarian and my combative wife!” [The editor notes:] “‘Wrath’ being the first word of the Iliad [as well as of Palladas’ epigram], which as a grammarian he had to read”; and in fact there are quite a few epigrams by Palladas playing on this word, usually bemoaning his lot as a grammarian and/or husband (see also IX.165, 169, 173, 174).
553.24-25: ‘took’ (ay) down a / tone Fortune’s Temple Miss-Fortune’s Tavern: Palladas has a group of four epigrams (IX.180-183) “written on the subject of a Temple of Fortune converted into a Tavern.” Fortune = Τύχη, which in this case has come down, with perhaps some play suggested by -tune of Fortune. The translation of 181 probably suggested to LZ his own attempt to replicate Palladas’ play on the word: “Things are turned topsy-turvy as I see, and we now see Fortune in misfortune.”
553.26: nation smoked-cheesecake: from IX.395: “Odysseus said ‘nothing is sweeter than a man’s fatherland’ [Odyssey I.24], for in Circe’s isle he never ate cheesecake. If he had seen even the smoke curling up from that [Odyssey I.58], he would have sent ten Penelopes to the deuce.”
553.26: Awe together deterrent: from IX.489:
Γραμματικοῦ θυγάτηρ ἔτεκεν φιλότητι μιγεῖσα
   παιδίον ἀρσενικόν, θηλυκόν οὐδέτερον.
“A grammarian’s daughter, having known a man, gave birth to a child which was masculine, feminine, and neuter.”
553.27: Long years cellarer flatters no-one: from X.86: “I too rear, not sumptuously, but still I rear children, a wife, a slave, poultry and a dog—for no flatterer sets foot in my house.”
553.28: pursuing daimon. Melée he’s daimon: from X.34:
Εἰ τὸ μέλειν δύναταί τι, μερίμνα καὶ μελετω σοι
   εἰ δὲ μέλει περὶ σοῦ δαίμονι, σοὶ τί μέλει;
οὔτε μεριμνήσεις δίχα δαίμονος, οὔτ᾿ ἀμελήσεις
   ἀλλ᾿ ἵνα σοί τι μέλη, δαίμονι τοῦτο μέλει.
“If concern avail aught, take thought and let things concern thee; but if God is concerned for thee, what does it concern thee? Without God thou shalt neither take thought nor be unconcerned; but that aught concern thee is the concern of God.”
553.29: agog o league a-god ran-on: from XI.293:
Ιππον ὑποσχόμενός μοι Ὀλύμπιος ἤγαγεν οὐράν,
   ἧς ὀλιγοδρανέων ἵππος ἀπεκρέματο.
“Olympius promised me a horse, but brought me a tail from which hung a horse at its last gasp.”
553.30: Ai need’s ane harassed stone: from the opening phrase of XI.341: Αινίξειν μεν άριστον (It is best to praise).

553.31  Young name grew old, older /names another: hermit…: through 554.4 from Tʽao Yuan-ming (365-427), also known as Tʽao Chʽien, among the greatest of pre-Tang poets who established a particularly venerable pastoral tradition in Chinese poetry: the rejection of an official career for a life of retirement and rustic simplicity (even poverty) in the countryside. “He was a hermit who wrote with a studied gravity and careless indifference to fame, content to plow his farm and watch his children playing in the farmyard […]” (White Pony 129). LZ evidently identified himself with Tʽao and uses him to lead into the subsequent personal passage describing his circumstances in Port Jefferson on the north shore of Long Island (554.6-37), to which the Zukofskys had retired in Oct. 1973, in highly idyllic terms that incorporate various details from Tʽao’s poetry (see also note at 554.6).
            LZ’s primary source here is The White Pony: An Anthology of Chinese Poetry (1947), ed. Robert Payne. For the first five lines, LZ picks out scattered details from various poems and T‘ao’s biography, while 553.7-554.4 use a single poem. However, lines 553.34-35 (particularly the curious detail about the cloud) appear to draw on Herbert Giles’ version of an immensely famous prose piece describing Tʽao’s retirement from public service to his farm: “And now I take my pleasure in my garden. There is a gate, but it is rarely opened. I raise my head and contemplate the lovely scene. Clouds rise, unwilling, from the bottom of the hills […] I’ll have no friendships to distract me hence. The times are out of joint for me; and what have I to seek from men? In the pure enjoyment of the family circle I will pass my days, cheering my idle hours with lute and book […]. What boots it to wear out the soul with anxious thoughts? I want not wealth; I want not power; heaven is beyond my hopes. Then let me stroll through the bright hours as they pass, in my garden among my flowers; or I will mount the hill and sing my song, or weave my verse beside the limpid brook. Thus will I work out my allotted span, content with the appointments of Fate, my spirit free from care” (A History of Chinese Literature 129-130).
From The White Pony:
553.31-32: apparently LZ’s take on the following lines from “In Imitation of Old Poems”: “I bid farewell to my youthful friends. / We have not been true and steadfast. / In our passion we wished to risk our lives. / After we have parted, where is our pledge?” (139).
553.32-33: “Living in the Country” concludes: “Why should I care when my clothes are wet? / I only hope to make myself a hermit” (141).
“Remembering the Ancient Farmstead”: “In the early morning I prepare my yoke, / At the beginning my mind has already traveled afar off: / […] The land is remote—few visit it” (137).
553.33-35: “The Beggar“: “Hunger drives me along my road: / I do not know where I am going” (135).
“In Early Morning” the poet is visited by an old man who tells him:
“All the generations are the same:
I beg you not to let your legs be caked in mud”
I was so deeply moved by that old man’s words,
For my soul is fashioned otherwise than theirs. (141).
“The Poor Scholars”: “If no one knows my character, / Let it be—why should I grieve?” (140) (see 554.5 and note).
553.37-554.4: from a debate poem, “Substance, Shadow, and Spirit” (cf. Andrew Marvell, “A Dialogue Between the Soul and Body,” qtd Bottom 186-187):
Substance says to Shadow
Heaven and Earth endure eternally,
Mountains and streams will never change;
The plants know their natural course,
They wither and flourish in frost and dew. […]
Shadow says to Substance […]
In the shadow we seem to part for a while,
But in the sun we are always together. […]
Spirit expounds
Virtuous deeds bring happiness,
But how can we be certain of praise? […] (134-135)

553.36  . . man’s life’s . . to say “One”: from Shakespeare, Hamlet V.ii: “Hamlet: It will be short: the interim is mine; / And a man’s life’s no more than to say ‘One’” (see 554.5-6 for further quotations from the same scene and 553.18-22 from elsewhere in Hamlet).

554.5    Let be . . […] all readiness: from Shakespeare, Hamlet V.ii (qtd. Bottom 77, 106, 152, 302, 358); see end of note at 553.33 (also 553.36 and 554.5-6):
“Horatio: If your mind dislike anything, obey it. I will forestall their repair hither and say you are not fit.
Hamlet: Not a whit, we defy augury; there’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come, if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all. Since no man knows aught to what he leaves, what isn’t to leave betimes? Let be.”

554.6    pitched high / ridgeplate (kingpost roofed) one’s eavesdropping / secret…: through 554.37 describes the Zukofskys’ residence at 306 East Broadway, Port Jefferson on the north shore of Long Island, to which the Zukofskys retired after living their entire lives in NYC. This was a modest sized suburban house with a substantial yards both front and back (north and south) and, as described, was surrounded with various trees and plants primary tended to by CZ. The Zukofskys moved to Port Jefferson in Oct. 1973, during the period “A”-23 was composed. The botanical focus anticipates the concerns of 80 Flowers, which by this time LZ already had well in mind. A ridge-plate is the same as a ridge-pole, the board or timber at the ridge of a roof, into which the rafters are fastened (CD). A kingpost roof is a roof having but a single vertical post (kingpost) in each truss (CD). The Port Jefferson house had a high-pitched roof.
            This idyllic passage is significantly informed by Tʽao Yuan-ming (see note at 553.31), who LZ is partially over-writing. T‘ao’s own descriptions of his country life suggests various details, including the views from each of the four directions—which also echoes Ezekiel’s description of the restored Temple (548.11-26). The passage’s concluding mention of chrysanthemums may very well describe actual such flowers in the Zukofskys’ yard, but this flower is especially associated with Tʽao and two of his poems in The White Pony are entitled “Chysanthemums.” Here LZ draws especially on two famous poems as translated in The Penguin Book of Chinese Verse, trans. Robert Kotewall and Norman L. Smith (although different versions of both poems also appear in The White Pony). Both translations are reproduced complete below, as well as a number of further relevant lines from The White Pony:
Returning to live in the country, I
In my youth I was out of tune with the common folk:
My nature is to love hills and mountains.
In my folly I fell into the net of the world’s dust,
And so went on for thirty years.
The caged bird longs for its old woodland;
The pond-reared fish yearns for is native stream.
I have opened up a waste plot of the south moor,
And keeping my simplicity returned to garden and field.
A homestead of some ten acres,
A thatched cottage with eight or nine rooms;
Elms and willows shading the hinder eaves;
Peach and plum trees ranking before the hall.
Dim, dim is the distant hamlet;
Lagging, lagging hangs the smoke of the market-town;
A dog barks in the deep lane;
A cock crows on the top of the mulberry tree.
My door and courtyard have no dust and turmoil;
In the bare rooms there is leisure and to spare.
Too long a captive in a cage,
I have now come back to Nature.

Drinking wine, V
I built my hut amid the throng of men,
But there is no din of carriages or horses.
You ask me how this can be.
When the heart is remote, earth stands aloof.
Culling chrysanthemums by the eastern hedge,
I see afar the southern hills:
The air of the hills at sunset is good;
The flying birds in company come back to their nests.
In this is the real savour,
But, probing, I can find no words.

From The White Pony, further “Drinking Songs”:
“Drunk and Sober”:
“When day dies, / Light a candle.” (see 554.28-29)

“The Orchard” (see 554.27 and 34-35):
Continuing the road, he has lost the old pathway:
With faith in reason he may find the way out.
Once awakened, let him think of returning.
When the birds are all killed, the bow is thrown away. (139) 

554.18  rhus: or sumac, genus of shrubs or small trees.

554.18  woodhouses: LZ’s notebooks (HRC 37.11) suggest a pun on P.G. Wodehouse.

554.22  pachysandra: genus of evergreen used as groundcover in shady areas.

554.23  box-like shrub holly: Japanese holly (Ilex crenata); apparently the specific description LZ picks up here is from Norman Taylor, The Guide to Garden Shrubs and Trees: Their Identity and Culture (1965), which LZ uses extensively in 80 Flowers: “An immensely valuable Japanese evergreen shrub with box-like habit and foliage, and much faster growing than the box” (Leggott 197).

554.23  kalmia: or mountain laurel, an evergreen shrub named by Linnaeus after his student, the explorer and botanist Pehr Kalm; see 22.513.22, 22.514.3, 514.9-15 and 23.561.24.

554.24  díscolor willow with the: salix discolor is the American pussy willow; discolor means two-color. with the < withy, which can mean any kind of willow or more commonly a twig or osier, such as is used in thatching; as an adj. made of such withies or having their character of tough and flexible (Leggott 394).

555.1    Rose spume’s disarmed enamored readiness / close a wind about her…: through 555.10 from Lucius Apuleius (c.123-c.180), the Cupid and Psyche episode from The Golden Ass. LZ’s text is the Temple Classics edition of The Story of Cupid and Psyche, which includes the Latin text en face with the classic Renaissance translation by William Aldington (1566). Typically, LZ works with both the Latin text and Aldington’s translation from a list of brief excerpts he made in his notebooks, producing a highly compacted version of the story.
555.1: […] et ros spumantium fluctuum educavit (and the froth of the spurging waves had nourished).
[…] flammis et sagittis armatus, per alienas domos nocte discurrens ([Cupid] armed with fire and arrows, running up and down in the nights from house to house).
[…] per flammae istius mellitas uredines (by the pleasant heat of thy fire).
555.2-3: sed tantum spiritu quodam impulsa subministrantur ([Psyche is served not by anyone] but as it were with a wind)
555.3-5: […] lacrimasque eius suis crinibus detergens se facturum spopondit et praevertit statim lumen nascentis diei ([Cupid] wiping away her teares with his hair, did yield unto his wife. And when morning came, departed as he was accustomed to do).
555.5-7: […] cuius aspectu lucernae quoque lumen hilaratum increbruit et acuminis sacrilegi novaculam paenitebat. ([while Cupid sleeps, Psyche out of curiosity takes a look] at whose sight the very lamp increased his light for joy, and the razor turned his edge).
555.7-8: “On each side she [Psyche] saw great dragons, stretching out their long and bloody necks, that never slept, but appointed to keep the river there: the waters seemed to themselves likewise saying: ‘Away, away, what wilt thou do? Fly, fly or else thou wilt be slain.’”
555.8-10: “‘You [Venus] are his mother, and a kind woman, will you continually search out his dalliance? Will you blame his luxury? Will you bridle his love, and will you reprehend your own art and delights in him?’”

555.10  grass, almond / quick noon calm unmarried wit / quick quick married grass almond / —to day, to morrow: from the refrain of Pervigilium Veneris, Latin poem, probably 4th century, describing the awakening of spring (qtd. Bottom 411):
Cras amet qui nunquam amavit quique amavit cras amet.
“Let whoever never loved, love tomorrow, / Let whoever has loved, love tomorrow” (trans. EP in the Spirit of Romance (19-20), which LZ quotes at the end of Arise 52).

555.13  Turning / to sounding stringe . . Won by / his song…: through 355.33 from the verse sections of Boethius (c.480-524), Consolation of Philosophy as translated by Queen Elizabeth I. For further translations by Elizabeth see 551.19-21 and 552.20-26 (following text from Bradner):
III.xii
Ther faining verse,
Tuning to sounding stringe
What he drew from springes
The greatest of mother gods […]
At last wailing said the juge
Of shady place: We yield;
To man we giue his wife for feere,
Won by his song.
I.v
O framar of the starry circle,
Who, lening to the lasting groundstone,
With whorling blast hevens turnest
And law compelst the skies to beare […]
O weldar apeace the roring floudes
And with what boundz the great heauen though gidest
The stable erthe do stedy.
II.ii
If sandz such store by raging flawes
As stured sea turnes up,
Or skies bidect with might stars
The heauens al that lights […]
IV.v
None musith that the southest wynd
With hurling waue astones the shore,
Nor that ye hardnid snowy ball by cold
By feruent heate of sonne resolues.
V.ii
In moment stroke his mynd all sees,
What wer, what be, what shal bifall,
Whom sole alone for that he al espies
Truly the may sole call.
V.iii
Or how may he finde, or found knowe
Suche forme of wiche he knowes not shape?
V.iv
Ons in the porch wer broght in men
If obscure line, and old the wer,
Who sens and image out of lest motes
In mens myndz ingrauen beliue,
As oft haps the running stile
In sea paper leue,
Some printid lettars stik,
That marke haue none at all. […]
But yet a passion doth begin and sturs
The myndz fors while body liues,
Whan ether light the yees doth hit,
Or sound in ear doth strike.
Than sturred strength of mynd
What figures within hit holds
Joigned like he cals,
Applies them to the outward knowen,
And fancies mixe to formes
That hiden rest within.

555.34  pine branched an acre moonstone-divided / centuries, gleamed night horse: from Ernest Fenollosa, Epochs of Chinese and Japanese Art: An Outline History of East Asiatic Design, vol. 1 (1912); see also 556.9-10: “This brings us down to the age of the next great Emperor, Tenchi, whose short reign, beginning in 668, was celebrated by the removal of the capital to Shiga, near the present Otsu, on Lake Biwa. The famous Karasaki pine, covering more than an acre of ground, is believed to be the last relic of his palace gardens” (68). [On the 6th century Korean painting and architecture of the Tamamushi Shrine, “a miniature two-story temple made of wood, to be used as a reliquary”:] “This fine Corean curvature we must explain as an outcome of the Babylonian of Han, re-inforced by the Persio-Indian of Buddhist originals, like the ‘moonstones,’ made delicate by Tartar Art in the divided centuries, and strong again by the specially decorative genius of the Coreans” (49).
[Describing a military scene from a scroll by the 13th century Japanese painter, Sumiyoshi Keion, which is reproduced in Fenollosa:] “The pawing action of the white horse is fine enough; but what shall we say of the sudden leap of the black, which centres the whole van to the eye? All four feet have left the ground at once. The nostril of the raised head is high in air. The rider tries to pull it down by a vertical rein. Though fault might possibly be found with some of the anatomical details of the steed, particularly if enlarged in photography, yet on the actual scale of only a few inches it is hardly possible to conceive of a more vitally rendered action, or a a greater beauty of gleaming curves” (192-193).

555.35  roan / buoyed desert sounded dispersed hawks…: through 556.8 from the Mabinogion, a collection of medieval Welsh prose tales; surviving manuscripts are from the 14th century but the tales are older and probably from the 11th century. LZ uses the classic translation by Lady Charlotte Guest (1838-1849), who adds to the Mabinogion proper a number of further Welsh legendary tales. LZ is particularly interested in the “Tale of Taliesin,” but the passage begins with several pieces culled for their mention of horses.
555.35-36: roan / búoyed: from “The Dream of Ronabwy”: “And this tale is called the Dream of Ronabwy. And this is the reason that no one knows the dream without a book, neither bard nor gifted seer; because of the various colours that were upon the horses, and the many wondrous colours of the arms and of the panoply, and of the precious scarfs, and of the virtue-bearing stones.”
555.36-37: désert sounded dispersed hawks, / dawn snow; hilt bone sea-horse:
from “Peredur the Son of Evrawc” (see also 559.34): “And Peredur went to the place where they kept the horses that carried firewood, and that brought meat and drink from the inhabited country to the desert. […] And in the morning he arose, and when he went forth, behold a shower of snow had fallen the night before, and a hawk had killed a wild fowl in front of the cell. And the noise of the horse scared the hawk away, and a raven alighted upon the bird. […] And two young pages were shooting the hilts of their daggers, of the bone of the sea-horse” (there are a few further mentions of sword clasps made of sea-horse bone).
556.1-8: (go on, back brook, April’s / radiant forehead…: from “Tale of Taliesin,” a legendary account of the 6th century Welsh poet (there is a homophonic rendition from Taliesin in Little 119):
“And [Caridwen, Taliesin’s mother] went forth after [Gwion Bach (= brook)], running. And he saw her, and changed himself into a hare and fled. But she changed herself into a greyhound and turned him. And he ran towards a river, and became a fish. And she in the form of an otter-bitch chased him under the water, until he was fain to turn himself into a bird of the air. She, as a hawk, followed him and gave him no rest in the sky. And just as she was about to stoop upon him, and he was in fear of death, he espied a heap of winnowed wheat on the floor of a barn, and he dropped among the wheat, and turned himself into one of the grains. Then she transformed herself into a high-crested black hen, and went to the wheat and scratched it with her feet and found him out and swallowed him. And, as the story says, she bore him nine months, and when she was delivered of him, she could not find it in her heart to kill him, by reason of his beauty. So she wrapped him in a leathern bag, and cast him into the sea [on sea surges, cf. 22.511.12] to the mercy of God, on the twenty-ninth day of April.”
            [Taliesin is then found caught in a weir by Elphin:] “Well, they took up the leathern bag, and he who opened it saw the forehead of the boy, and said to Elphin, ‘Behold a radiant brow!’ ‘Taliesin be he called,’ said Elphin. […] Then came Elphin to the house or court of Gwyddno his father, and Taliesin with him. And Gwyddno asked him if he had had a good haul at the weir, and he told him that he had got that which was better than fish. ‘What was that?’ said Gwyddno. ‘A Bard,’ answered Elphin. Then said Gwyddno, ‘Alas, what will he profit thee?’ And Taliesin himself replied and said, ‘He will profit him more than the weir ever profited thee.’ Asked Gwyddno, ‘Art thou able to speak, and thou so little?’ And Taliesin answered him, ‘I am better able to speak than thou to question me.’ ‘Let me hear what thou canst say,’ quoth Gwyddno. Then Taliesin sang,—
In water there is quality endowed with a blessing,
On God it is most just to meditate aright;” […]
            “And so, when the bards and the heralds came to cry largess, and to proclaim the power of the king and his strength, at the moment that they passed by the corner wherein he was crouching, Taliesin pouted out his lips after them, and played ‘Blerwm, blerwm,’ with his finger upon his lips. Neither took they much notice of him as they went by, but proceeded forward till they came before the king, unto whom they made their obeisance with their bodies, as they were wont, without speaking a single word, but pouting out their lips, and making mouths at the king, playing ‘Blerwm, blerwm,’ upon their lips with their fingers, as they had seen the boy do elsewhere.” [… Taliesin then sings a song at the King’s request, which includes the lines:]
I have been fostered in the land of the Deity,
I have fled as a white grain of pure wheat,
I have been teacher to all intelligences,
I am able to instruct the whole universe.” […]
            “All these things did the youth fulfil, giving a blow to every one of the king’s horses, and throwing down his cap on the spot where his horse stumbled. And to this spot Taliesin brough his master after his horse had won the race. And he caused Elphin to put workmen to dig a hole there; and when they had dug the ground deep enough, they found a large cauldron full of gold. And then said Taliesin, ‘Elphin, behold a payment and reward unto thee, for having taken me out of the weir, and for having reared me from that time until now.” […]
            [from a long final song Taliesin sings called “One of the Four Pillars of Song”:]
Moses did obtain,
In Jordan’s water,
The aid of the three
Most special rods.

556.9    the close hem / curved-up corolla: from Ernest Fenollosa, Epochs of Chinese and Japanese Art (see 555.34): “By far the tallest of the Corean figures is the standing Kwannon with a vase, still on the great altar of the Kondo of Horiuji. The head is small and well formed, but the body of excessive length, some fifteen heads perhaps. The close fitting of the long downward drapery lines, with almost no relief, is essentially Corean, but that phase of it which may be Sassanian is native. A stiff formal curvature is given to the openings of folds, the ends of mantles curving up like flower petals” (vol. I, 48-49). There is an illustration of this statue in Fenollosa. Perhaps the spelling of Corea helped suggest “corolla,” although of course LZ had a long-standing botanical interest that was about to reach its apotheosis with 80 Flowers. For LZ this image echoes that of 11.125.4: “the great hem of the extended / World that nothing can leave.”

556.10  What we garden / ah in year-day home: homophonic translation of the first line of Beowulf: “Hwæt, wē gar-dena   in gēar-dagum” (Listen! We of the Spear-Danes in the days of yore; trans. Benjamin Slade). As Salvato points out, this serves as an announcement of the extended passage worked from Anglo-Saxon poetry that follows at 556.13-557.13.

556.12  an air of Horses Water / at Great Wall: the title of a poem by the Tang Emperor Li Shih-ming (597-649) in The White Pony: An Anthology of Chinese Poetry, ed. Robert Payne, where the title is “To the Tune of ‘Horses Drinking by the Great Wall,’” and includes the line: “[The soldiers] water their horses at the foot of the Great Wall.” The poem celebrates the hardships of warfare and achievement of peace with the non-Han peoples beyond the Great Wall.

556.13  Lady peace, / wanderer’s want tuned to thanks: through 557.13 largely homophonic renditions from various Anglo-Saxon poems (see 556.10-11). LZ seems to have used two sources for the following Old English texts: Beowulf, with the Finnesburg Fragment, ed. C.L. Wrenn (1953) and Bright’s Anglo-Saxon Reader, rev and enlarged by James R. Hulbert (1957). Both of these are scholarly texts designed for learners of Old English and include extensive notes and glossaries but not translations. I have, however, added translations for convenience and interest. For the most part, Salvato and Leggott have identified the specific texts and passages LZ used.
556.13-14 from “Widsith” (lines 5-6, 135-137):
                        He mid Ealhilde,
faelre freoϸuwebban,[…]
Swa scriþende     gesceapum hweorfað
gleomen gumena     geond grunda fela,
þearfe secgað,     þoncword sprecaþ […]
                     “He with Ealhilde,
the fair peace-weaver […]
Wandering like this, driven by chance,
minstrels travel through many lands;
they state their needs, say words of thanks” (trans.Bella Millett)
556.15-16: Seeding Earth’s earthen mother each / era wax, end dree: from “Charm for Unfruitful Land,” lines 51-54. Aside from the obvious relevance of “seeding” to this evocation of Mother Earth, this also links back to the “garden” LZ found in the first line of Beowulf (556.10):
Erce, Erce, Erce,    eorþan modor,
geunne þe se alwalda,    ece drihten,
æcera wexendra    and wridendra,
eacniendra    and elniendra […]

Erce, Erce, Erce,    Mother of Earth,
May the Almighty grant you,    the Eternal Lord,
Fields sprouting    and springing up,
Fertile    and fruitful […] (trans. Gavin Chappell)
556.16-17: out / little spear: from “Charm for the Sudden Stitch,” lines 6-9:
Ut, lytel spere,    gif her inne sie!
Stod under linde,    under leohtum scylde,
þær ða mihtigan wif    hyra mægen beræddon
and hy gyllende    garas sændan […]

Out, little spear,    if herein it be!
Stood under linden,    under a light shield,
where mighty women    proclaimed their power
and, yelling, they    sent spears […] (trans. Benjamin Slade)
556.17-18: that’s over (odd) / this is so—(may): from the refrain of “Deor”:
Þæs ofereode,    þisses swa mæg!
That passed away    so may this (trans. Benjamin Slade)
556.18-21: light / enwound gem studded five up / on—ax’ll span eye beheld, stand / stem bed riven: from “The Dream of the Rood”:
Þuhte me þæt ic gesawe    syllicre treow
on lyft lædan,    leohte bewunden,
beama beorhtost.    Eall þæt beacen wæs
begoten mid golde.    Gimmas stodon
fægere æt foldan sceatum,    swylce þær fife wæron
uppe on þam eaxlegespanne. (4-9)

It seemed to me that I saw    a most wondrous tree,
the brightest of rood-trees,    extend aloft
encircled by light.    That sign was completely
covered with gold;    jewels stood,
beautiful, at the surface of the earth;    likewise there were five
up on the shoulder-beam. (trans. Alexander M. Bruce)

Hwæðere þær fuse    feorran cwoman
to þam æðelinge.    Ic þæt eall beheold.
Sare ic wæs mid sorgum gedrefed,    hnag ic hwæðre þam secgum to handa,
eaðmod elne mycle.    Genamon hie þær ælmihtigne god,
ahofon hine of ðam hefian wite.    Forleton me þa hilderincas
standan steame bedrifenne;    eall ic wæs mid strælum forwundod. (57-62)

But there the eager ones    came from afar
to the Prince.    I beheld it all.
I was with sorrows sorely afflicted;    I bent down nevertheless to the hands of the warriors,
submissive, with great zeal.    They took there the almighty God,
raised him from the heavy torture.    The warriors left me
to stand covered over by moisture;    I was all with punctures wounded.
                                                            (trans. Alexander M. Bruce)
556.21-28: Dragged thole / load—sea-dark bided […] so that men life don / heartily: from the “Creation Hymn” in Beowulf, lines 86-101. As Leggott points out (59), LZ’s version draws on both homophonic transliteration and translation:
ða se ellengæst    earfoðlice
þrage geþolode,    se þe in þystrum bad,
þæt he dogora gehwam    dream gehyrde
hludne in healle;    þær wæs hearpan sweg,
swutol sang scopes.    Sægde se þe cuþe
frumsceaft fira    feorran reccan,
cwæð þæt se ælmihtiga    eorðan worhte,
wlitebeorhtne wang,    swa wæter bebugeð,
gesette sigehreþig    sunnan ond monan
leoman to leohte    landbuendum
ond gefrætwade    foldan sceatas
leomum ond leafum,    lif eac gesceop
cynna gehwylcum    þara ðe cwice hwyrfaþ.
Swa ða drihtguman    dreamum lifdon
eadiglice,    oððæt an ongan
fyrene fremman    feond on helle.

Then the bold spirit,    impatiently
Endured dreary time,    he who dwelt in darkness,
he that every day    heard noise of revelry
loud in the hall;    there was the harmony of the harp,
the sweet song of the poet;    he spoke who knew how
the origin of men    to narrate from afar;
said he that the almighty one    wrought the earth,
(that) fair, sublime field    bounded by water;
set up triumphant    the sun and moon,
luminaries as lamps    for the land-dwellers
and adorned    the corners of the earth
with limbs and leaves;    life too He formed
for each of the species    which lives and moves.
So the lord’s men    lived in joys,
Happily,    until one began
To execute atrocities,    a fiend in hell. (trans. Benjamin Slade)
556.28-37: o that forth-looking ’s fast— […] early-dreed then see all stand: from “The Wanderer”:
                        Ic to soþe wat
þæt biþ in eorle    indryhten þeaw,
þæt he his ferðlocan    fæste binde,
healde his hordcofan,    hycge swa he wille. (lines 11-14)

                        I in sooth know,
that it is in man    a noble quality,
that he his soul’s coffer    fast bind,
hold his treasure.    Strive as he will.

þinceð him on mode    þæt he his mondryhten
clyppe ond cysse,    ond on cneo lecge
honda ond heafod,    swa he hwilum ær
in geardagum    giefstolas breac. (41-44)

that seems to him in mind,    that he his lord
embraces and kisses,    and on his knee lays
hands and head,    as when he ere at times,
in former days,    his gifts enjoy’d.

Sorg bið geniwad,
þonne maga gemynd    mod geondhweorfeð;
greteð gliwstafum,    georne geondsceawað
secga geseldan.    Swimmað oft on weg!
Fleotendra ferð    no þær fela bringeð
cuðra cwidegiedda.  (50-55)

                                                sorrow is renew’d,
when his friends’ remembrance    through his mind passes;
when he greets with songs,    earnestly surveys
the seats of men,    swims again away.
The spirit of seafarers,    brings there not many
known songs:

Hwær cwom mearg? Hwær cwom mago?    Hwær cwom maþþumgyfa? (92)
Where is horse, where is man?    Where is the treasure-giver ?

Eorlas fornoman    asca þryþe,
wæpen wælgifru,    wyrd seo mære,
ond þas stanhleoþu    stormas cnyssað,
hrið hreosende    hrusan bindeð,
wintres woma,    þonne won cymeð,
nipeð nihtscua,    norþan onsendeð
hreo hæglfare    hæleþum on andan. (99-105)

The men has swept away    the spearmen’s band,
the slaughter-greedy weapon,    and fate omnipotent
and these stone shelters    storms dash,
fierce-rushing;    binds the earth
the winter’s violence;    then comes dusky,
darkens, the shade of night,    from the north sends
the rough hail-shower,    to men’s grievance.

Wel bið þam þe him are seceð,
frofre to fæder on heofonum,    þær us eal seo fæstnung stondeð. (114-115)

Well it is for him who seeketh mercy,
comfort, at the Father in heaven,    where all our fastness standeth. (trans. Benjamin Thorpe)
557.1-6: Regal mien swathed unrustling tread […] fold (and my name?)—: from Riddle 7 in the Exeter Book; the answer is the Swan:
Hrægl min swigað,    þonne ic hrusan trede,
oþþe þa wic buge,    oþþe wado drefe.
Hwilum mec ahebbað    ofer hæleþa byht
hyrste mine,    ond þeos hea lyft,
ond mec þonne wide    wolcna strengu
ofer folc byreð.    Frætwe mine
swogað hlude    ond swinsiað,
torhte singað,    þonne ic getenge ne beom
flode ond foldan,    ferende gæst.

Silent is my dress     when I step across the earth,
reside in my house,     or ruffle the waters.
Sometimes my adornments     and this high windy air
lift me over     the livings of men,
the power of the clouds     carries me far
over all people.     My white pinions
resound very loudly,     ring with a melody,
sing out clearly,     when I sleep not on
the soil or settle on grey waters     a travelling spirit. (trans. Kevin Crossley-Holland)
557.7-13: these lift, bear, little over […] name / themselves—‘starlings’: from Riddle 57 in the Exeter Book; there is no consensus on the precise answer to this riddle, although general agreement that it is a bird and LZ’s “starlings” is a common contender:
 ðeos lyft byreð    lytle wihte
ofer beorghleoþa.    Þa sind blace swiþe,
swearte salopade.    Sanges rope
heapum ferað,    hlude cirmað,
tredað bearonæssas,    hwilum burgsalo
niþþa bearna.    Nemnað hy sylfe.

This wind wafts     little creatures
high over the hill-slopes.     They are very
swarthy,     clad in coats of black.
They travel here and there     in hordes all together,
singing loudly,     liberal with their songs.
Their haunts are wooded cliffs,     yet they sometimes
some to the houses of men.     They name themselves. (trans. Kevin Crossley-Holland)

557.13  ait, aight, eyet, / eyot, eyght sing the same…: through 557.16 from CD entry for ait: “Little used in literature; also spelled aight, eyet, eyot, eyght, < ME. eyt, œit, (also in comp. eitlond and œitlond, an island), earlier *eyet, < AS. ēget, a prob. var. of ige (found once in the AS. Charters), an ait, another form of the reg. (W. Saxon) igoth, also spelled igeoth, iggoth, iggath (*ēgath not found), an island, with suffix –oth, –ath, here appar. dim., < ig, var. ēg, an island, found in Mod. E. only as the first element in i-land, now spelled improperly island, and as the final element in certain place-names. A small island in a river or like. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows. Dickens [Bleak House].”

557.16  A laugh . . / and not butt my head. / Claque-law…: through 557.24 homophonic renditions from medieval Welsh poetry using texts from Gwyn Williams, An Introduction to Welsh Poetry (1954). In a few instances LZ reworks lines or phrases already renders in the opening segment of “A”-22 (see esp. 22.510.16f), but mostly here and in subsequent workings from Welsh in this movement he is drawing on the same set of notes. LZ’s first venture into rendering Welsh poetry appeared in Little (see note); see also the early pages of “A”-22 and 559.35-560.2, 560.33 and 561.2-4.
557.16-17: from the Brythonic-Welsh prince and poet Llywarch Hen (6th-7th century) in the Red Book of Hergest (9th century?). LZ transliterated this poem differently in Little 54:
Alaf yn eil meil am veg
nyt eidun detwyd dyhed
amaewy adnabot amyned.

Cattle in the shed, a cup for mead;
the happy do not ask for fighting.
Patience is the fringe of knowing. (Williams 36)
557.18: Claque-law—bard hard, fire yet: from The Red Book of Hergest (see 22.510.18-19):
Gwacllaw bard hard effeiryat
(Empty-handed the poet, splendid the priest)  (Williams 66).
557.19-20: miracle porker-lane, apple, birch, greetings, / calf-eyed, pie betide thee: the former line is from Myrddin parchellan Affallenneu, Bedwenni, Hoianneu. This line renders the name of the author, Myriddin, and the titles of three prophetic poems ascribed to him, meaning respectively: Apple Trees, Birch Trees, and Greetings, from The Black Book of Carmarthen. Parchellan means little pig, who is greeted in the third of these poems (Rieke 223; Williams 66; see also 22.510.19). The second line is from Myriddin’s “Apple Trees” poem: “Kaffaud paub y teithi” (Everyone shall have his due) (Williams 70). Myriddin is a legendary poet probably of the late 6th century and the prototype for Merlin of the King Arthur cycle.
557.20-21: gore / off head a great delight: from the title of Gwalchmai’s 12th century poem Gorhoffedd meaning “a great delight” (Williams 75).
557.22: beguile war in the nightingale—: from Gwalchmai’s Gorhoffedd:
Gwylein yn gware ar wely lliant
(loud the nightingale’s familiar song) (Williams 75); the larger passage includes images of war.
557.23-24: lulla / tree, snow-lee—eyry air goad: from another poem by Gwalchmai:
Ilywy Iliw eiry ar goed (a girl of the color of snow on trees) (Williams 77).

557.23  lullaby to your bounty: from Shakespeare, Twelfth Night V.i:
“Duke Orsino: You can fool no more money out of me at this throw: if you will let your lady know I am here to speak with her, and bring her along with you, it may awake my bounty further.
Clown: Marry, sir, lullaby to your bounty till I come again. I go, sir; but I would not have you to think that my desire of having is the sin of covetousness: but, as you say, sir, let your bounty take a nap, I will awake it anon.”

557.25  Flute, feather stridor, horse-scamper; beggar / clown-sage, love-must know: from Herbert Giles, A History of Chinese Literature, on ancient Chinese drama: “The movements of the dancers were methodical, slow, and dignified. Long feathers and flutes were held in the hand and were waved to and fro as the performers moved right or left. […] In the Tso Chuan [ancient chronicle], under B.C. 545, we read of an amateur attempt of the kind, organised by stable-boys, which frightened their horses and caused a stampede” (256-257). On early drama among the Tartars (Mongols): “In 1031 Kʽung Tao-fu, a descendant of Confucius in the forty-fifth degree, was sent as envoy to the Kitans, and was received at the banquet with much honour. But at a theatrical entertainment which followed, a piece was played in which his sacred ancestor, Confucius, was introduced as the low-comedy man; and this so disgusted him that he got up and withdrew, the Kitans being forced to apologise” (258).
557.26: love-must know: from a short play, The Flowery Ball: “Now my true love will discover / That I can discriminate” (Giles 268).

557.26  dessert desért: apparently this alludes to the Jewish afikoman, the piece of matzo that is broken as part of the Passover Seder and later eaten after the meal as “dessert.” The Hebrew word is derived from the Gk. epikomen meaning what comes after or dessert. The matzo or unleavened bread is the primary symbol of Passover which commemorates the exodus from Egypt and so the association with desert is appropriate. See passages from the Haggadah below at 557.30 and 557.32-34.

557.27  (earth’s ring bare knee . . ice…: through 557.29 from “The Tale of the Greenlanders” (Greenlanders Saga), one of the two main narratives of Norse exploration of North America. LZ’s text is the Everyman’s Library edition of Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla: The Olaf Sagas, 2 vols, trans. Samuel Laing. “The Tale of the Greenlanders” is not by Sturluson nor properly part of the Heimskringla, but an abridged version is incorporated into vol. 1 of this edition.
earth’s ring: from the title Heimskringla, which is derived from the first two words of the saga meaning the circle or ring of the world. 
bare knee < Biarne Heriulfson (late 10th century), who as the Greenlanders Saga relates was sailing from Iceland to Greenland when he encountered bad weather: “At last they saw the sun, and could distinguish the quarters of the sky; so they hoisted sail again, and sailed for one day and night, when they made land. They spoke among themselves what this land could be, and Biarne said that, in his opinion it could not be Greenland”—largely because the land was heavily wooded and lacked high mountains. Although he did not land, despite the urging of his crew, he thus became the first Norseman to sight and report back on North America. This inspired Leif Erikson a decade later to make a trip, also described in the Greenlanders Saga, of exploration along the northeast coast of the continent, where he famously found grapes and called it Vinland, meaning Wine-land. They were also impressed by the abundance of salmon, which may explain the appearance of sprag in line 557.29, meaning “a young salmon of the first year” (CD), although this is probably farfetched. A ness is a point of land running into the sea, a headland or cape.

557.30  create sky-fires…: through 558.12 is predominately from Jewish prayers, using the Haggadah (instructions and texts for the Sidur or ritual feast that marks the beginning of Passover) and  the Siddur or Jewish prayer book. This first phrase is from the Haggadah: “Blessed art thou, O Lord, our God! King of the universe, who hast created the light of the fire.”

557.32  who knows one . . all alone / 3 the fathers…: through 557.34 from the Haggadah, the Hebrew text read at Passover (see 557.30):
Who knoweth One? —I know One: One is God, who is over heaven and on earth.
Who knoweth two? —I know two: the two tables of the covenant; One is our God who is over heaven and earth.
Who knoweth three? —I know three: the three patriarchs, the two tables of the covenant, but One is God who is over heaven and earth.
Who knoweth four? —I know four: the four mothers, the three patriarchs, the two tables of the covenant, but One is God who made heaven and earth. […]
Who knoweth nine? —I know nine: the nine months preceding child birth, the eight days preceding circumcision, the seven days in the week, the six orders of the Mishnah, the five books of the Law, the four mothers, the three patriarchs, the two tables of the covenant, but One is our God who is over heaven and earth.”
[This catalog ends with 13, which anticipates the 13 frets of 558.1: “Who knoweth thirteen? —I know thirteen: the thirteen divine attributes, the twelve tribes, the eleven stars, the ten commandments, the nine months preceding child-birth, […].]
            Apparently all alone associates a closely related counting song from the Christian tradition which begins: “One’s one all alone, and evermore shall be so,” continuing up to the number twelve apostles.

557.34  my / dove ’ll echo . . of guide-rules sleep . . / be a Shown ware eye / given to waylay fear: through 558.12 is predominantly from the various prayers and hymns from Jewish morning service. LZ uses Magil’s Complete Linear Prayer Book Comprising the Prayers for the Whole Year with parallel Hebrew and English:
557.34-35: from the opening line of the prayer Ma Tovu:
ma tovu ohalekha Ya’akov (How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob)     (8)
557.35-37: from the hymn Adon Olam:
B’yado af’kid ruhi / b’et ’ishan v’a’ira / v’im ruhi g’viyati / Adonai li v’lo ‘ira
(I commit my spirit, when I sleep and when I awake. I commit my body also; the Lord is with me, and I will not fear).     (9)

557.37  m’core— / fountain: from Solomon ibn Gabirol (c.1021-c.1058), Hebrew poet and neo-platonic philosopher from Spain, whose major philosophical work is Fons Vitae (Fountain of Life), which in Hebrew is M’Kor Chayyim (see Bottom 119)—originally written in Arabic and widely influential in its Latin translation, especially on Duns Scotus. Not surprisingly, the phrase also appears in the Jewish morning service (see 557.34).

558.1    heart-strings […] frets: from Shakespeare, “The Rape of Lucrece,” lines 1191-1192: “These means, as frets upon an instrument, / Shall tune our heart-strings to true languishment.” See 558.22.

558.1    13 frets / propound a law of ‘all’…: continuing from the Jewish morning service (see 557.34); through 558.6 is from the Baratita or 13 rules of Rabbi Ishmael for the interpretation of the Torah (see note at 557.32 on connection with the 13 divine attributes). In condensing this passge, LZ identifies the Hebrew terms miklal, meaning general, in which he discerns “law” and “all” and ufrat, meaning particulars, from which he derives “fret(s)” and thus make the musical association (cf. the description of the Chinese K‘in (qin) in “A”-13.300.23-301.8, with its 13 “studs” (300.27) and the cosmological significance of its construction):
“Rabbi Ishmael says: By means of thirteen rules the Law is expounded: […] 4. By a general description followed by the enumeration of particulars. 5. And by an enumeration of particulars followed by a general description. 6. When a general description, followed by a particular one, is again followed by a general one, thou must not determine except according to the tenor of the particular one. […] 9. Anything that was included in the general description and it was singled out to prove an argument which is like its subject, it was singled out to alleviate, but not to aggravate. 10. Any thing that was included in a general description, and it was singled out, to prove another argument which is not like its subject, it was singled out both to alleviate and to aggravate. […] 12. A thing that is learned from its context, and a thing that is learned from its end. 13. And thus is with two texts that contradict each other, until there comes a third text and harmonizes (between) them” (Magil 36-38).
558.6-7: the preceding text of the 13 rules is followed by a short prayer that alludes to the rebuilding of the Temple (temple’s second), and this in turn is followed by Psalm 30 which is “A Song for the Dedication of the House [or Temple] of David,” and includes the lines: “In the evening may lodge weeping, / but in the morning cometh song.”

558.7    ‘this bane above’— […] This bane abhorred / betrayed and sold hod…: apparently this passage through 558.12 represents LZ’s version of the mourner’s kaddish, which in the everyday Jewish morning service immediately follows Psalm 30 (see 558.6-7) and concludes the everyday service. However, rather than a prayer of praise, LZ seems to be evoking a whole tradition of various laments or complaints. The mention of “One Kid” (= Enkidu) clearly enough echoes the lament of Gilgamesh from earlier in the movement (542.12-18). The references to “bane” are almost certainly meant to echo the “bane foe” of 14.317.2 from LZ’s homophonic rendition from Psalms 104, which itself is part of the morning service.

558.8    the third morning praises, ‘shoregrass / dances, finished!’: this apparently refers to the third day of creation in Genesis 1:9-12: “And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good. […] And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good” (1:10 & 12). Given the contiguous seas, this is plausibly “shoregrass,” and the Hebrew translated here as “grass” is  de.se (= dances). In a couple of places in his notebooks, LZ mentions a remark by Rashi (1040-1105), the great medieval commentator on the Hebrew Bible, on why the tag phrase “and it was good” does not appear at the end of the second day of creation (Genesis 1:8); Rashi’s explanation is that the creation remained incomplete at this point. Evidently LZ interprets this as meaning creation is essentially finished on the third day, when God creates the world with vegetation, that is, life, which in turn suggests that this creation account represents a primordial praise song. See note and quotation at 561.17.

558.12  As wide the / Land (so gret feith: from Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1343-1400), The Legend of Good Women, “The Legend of Lucrecia,” lines 195-203 (see 558.1 for Shakespeare’s Lucrece):
I tell hit, for she was of love so trewe,
Ne in her wille she chaunged for no newe.
And for the stable herte, sad and kinde,
That in these women men may alday finde;
Ther as they caste hir herte, ther hit dwelleth.
For wel I wot, that Crist him-selve telleth,
That in Israel, as wyd as is the lond,
That so gret feith in al the lond he ne fond
As in a woman; and this is no lye.
And as of men, loketh which tirannye
They doon alday; assay hem who so liste,
The trewest is ful brotel for to triste.

558.13  could / have her sob or sigh: from Bernart de Ventadorn (1148-1195), troubadour poet; from “Can vei la lauzeta mover” (When I see the lark a-moving), opening lines of the second stanza: “Ai, las! tan cuidava saber / D’amor, e tan petit en sai!” (Alas, I thought I knew so much / Of Love, and I know so little of it; trans. EP, The Spirit of Romance 42).

558.15  who throws his forces no / stray way benign his mother / quests: from Poema del Cid I.18: “«Çid, ¿do son vuestros esfuerços?   •  en buena nasquiestes de madre; / pensemos de ir nuestra vía’ […]»” (“Cid, where is your courage?  Lucky the hour your mother bore you! / Enough of this life…”; trans. J.M. Cohen).

558.17  ‘munch it, long eyes / dote, hance […] / demurrer’s infant’s fear: from the 12th century French mystery play Adam. Although Henry Adams discusses this play in Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres, he does not quote the specific lines LZ uses here, which are spoken by Satan as he offers Eve the apple:
Manjue le, n’aies dotance! / Li demorers seroit enfance!
(Eat it, have no fear! / [And] remain an infant!)

558.18  stamped the leasing: from Shakespeare, Coriolanus V.ii (see  558.22 and 558.36 below). The phrase means certifying or authenticating a falsehood:
Menenius: Good my friends,
If you have heard your general talk of Rome
And of his friends there, it is lots to blanks
My name hath touched your ears: it is Menenius.
1st Watch: Be it so, go back. The virtue of your name
Is not here passable.
Menenius: I tell thee, fellow,
Thy general is my lover. I have been
The book of his good acts whence men have read
His fame unparalleled, haply amplified;
For I have ever verified my friends,
Of whom he’s chief, with all the size that verity
Would without lapsing suffer. Nay, sometimes,
Like to a bowl upon a subtle ground,
I have tumbled past the throw, and in his praise
Have almost stamped the leasing. Therefore, fellow,
I must have leave to pass.

558.20  a long time / to zee, the rush of / fountain clears: from the troubadour poet Jaufre Rudel (early-mid 12th century): “Quan lo rius de la Fontana / S’esclarzis.” (When the rush of the fountain / clears). Apparently at least one source of the first phrase is a remark by CZ, referring to the completion of “A”, that it took a long time to reach the letter Z (Leggott 289).

558.22  lots to blanks: from Shakespeare, Coriolanus V.ii; see quotation at 558.18, also 558.36. The phrase means more than an even chance (lots as in a lottery, blanks are those who fail to win a prize).

558.23  ‘Sober toes soul’s reveler solaced / trope in-their-midst’: homophonic versions of two lines by the Provençal troubadour, Giraut de Bornelh (fl. 1165-1200): “Si per mon Sobre-Totz no fos” (Were it not for my All-excelling one) and “Per solatz reveillar que s’es trop endormitz” (Solely to awake which is too much sleep), taken from Dante’s De Vulgari Eloquentia. LZ’s source is the Temple Classics edition of the Latin Works of Dante, trans. A.G. Ferrers Howell and Philip H. Wicksteed. Rieke identifies (172-173) the source of these lines as EP’s The Spirit of Romance (50-51), who includes these quotations because they appear as illustrative examples in Dante, although LZ seems to have consulted Dante directly.

558.24  ‘blazed, man, trove-airs / occlude sots, grant chant’s precise / that’s it praise—none “equal,” touch’: from Raimbaut d’Aurenga (of Orange) (c.1147-1173), troubadour poet particularly identified with the obscure trobar clus (close verse) style. LZ’s text is Nouvelle anthologie des troubadours, eds. Jean Audiau and René Lavud (rev. 1928). Following are the opening two stanzas of a poem addressed to Giraut de Bornelh (or Borneill, see 558.23), a leading advocate of trobar leu or light style:
Era m platz, Giraut de Borneil,
Que sapcha per qu’anatz blasman
Trobar clus ni per cal semblan.
            Aiso’m diatz
            Si tan prezatz
So que vas totz comunal?
Car adonc tuch seran egal.

Senher Linhaure, nom corelh,
Si quecs se trob’a so talan;
Mas me eis volh jutjar d’aitan
            Qu’es mais amatz
            Chans e prezatz,
Qui’l fai levet e venansal,
E vos no m’o tornetz a mal.

Now, I’d like to know, Giraut de Borneil,
why you go criticizing
trobar clus and why it’s important.
So tell me, please,
why it means so much to you
that everything be common to all,
for then all would be equal.

Lord Lignaura, I don’t object
to each man composing as he desire
but it is my opinion
that is more to be cherished
and more praiseworthy
when it’s light and popular
—and don’t misinterpret me here.

558.27  (Chicken manure petrol, old man / of tot ness, the far-out…: through 558.29 from The Last Whole Earth Catalog (1971), which reprints an article from the National Enquirer (June 1970) on home-made “Chicken Manure Fuel” as produced by the farmer and maverik inventor, Harold Bate (Odlin, “Materials” 315-316). Odlin reproduces the article in full, from which the following is excerpted: “‘Put a chicken in your tank’ may never match the zap of Esso’s ‘Put a tiger in your tank’ slogan. But British inventor Harold Bate will tell you that chicken power will run your car faster, cleaner and better than gasoline. […] Methane is not only cheap and efficient, said the inventor, but it is better for your car—no carbon deposit on your cylinders and no engine wear and no poisonous carbon monoxide fumes.” The Last Whole Earth Catalog appends Bate’s mailing address: Pennyrowden, Blackawton, Totnes—Devon, TQ 9.7 Dn., England, which accounts for LZ’s “tot ness” and perhaps also for “the far-out” as well. During their 1957 summer trip to Europe, the Zukofsky family visited Dartington Hall, which has a well-know summer music school, just outside Totnes, which is no doubt why LZ noticed the name in the article on Bate (SL 236-238).

558.29  the waste . . the / perfecting machine corrupt within: from Henry James, A London Life (1889): “[…] but she marvelled at the waste involved in some human institutions (the English country gentry for instance) when she perceived that it had taken some much to produce so little. […] She had often been struck with it before—with that perfection of machinery which can still at certain times make life go on of itself with a stately rhythm long after there is corruption within it.” See 22.509.27-28.

558.31  ‘Time may’t please hear her / voice praise good all th’sum: from Dante (c.1265-1321), Purgatorio XXVI.140-147. The speaker is the troubadour poet Arnaut Daniel (12th century) speaking in Provençal:
   ‘Tan m’ abelis vostre cortes deman,
   qui’ieu no-m puesc, ni-m vueil a vos cobrire.
Ieu sui Arnaut, que plor e vau cantan;
   consiros vei la passada folor,
   e vei jausen lo jorn, qu’ esper, denan.
Ara vos prec, per aquella valor
   que vos guida al som de l’escalina,
   sovegna vos a temps de ma dolor.’
“‘So doth your courteous request please me that I cannot, nor will I, hide me from you. I am Arnault that weep and go a-singing; in thought I see my past madness, and I see with joy the day which I await before me. Now I pray you, by the Goodness which guideth you to the summit of the stairway, be mindful in due time of my pain’” (trans. Philip Henry Wicksteed).

558.34  ‘a lent tear air’: from Peire Vidal (1175-1205). LZ would appear to be working from the text in EP’s The Spirit of Romance (49): “Ab l’alen tir vas me l’aire / Qu’eu sen venir de Provensa” (Breathing I draw the air to me / which I feel coming from Provença); however, in this working notebooks LZ noted down the version from Audiau and Lavaud: “Avec mon haleine j’aspire l’air / que je sens venir de Provence.”

558.36  Rock . . oak not wind-shak’d surge / wind-shaken mane, cast water, on / the burning Bear: two similar lines from Shakespeare are intertwined:
From Coriolanus V.ii (the same scene as the quotations at 558.18 & 22 above:
Second Watch: “He’s the rock, the oak not to be wind-shaken.”
From Othello II.i:
Montano: Methinks the wind hath spoke aloud at land;
A fuller blast ne’er shook our battlements;
If it hath ruffian’d so upon the sea,
What ribs of oak, when mountains melt on them,
Can hold the mortise? What shall we hear of this?
Second Gentleman: A segregation of the Turkish fleet;
For do but stand upon the foaming shore,
The chidden billow seems to pelt the clouds;
The wind-shak’d surge, with high and monstrous mane,
Seems to cast water on the burning Bear
And quench the guards of th’ ever-fixed Pole:
I never did like molestation view
On the enchafed flood.

559.1    prefers truth / doubt, not reason what’s hidden: from the medieval philosopher, John of Salisbury (c.1120-1180), as quoted in Henry Adams, Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres (1913): “‘I prefer doubt,’ he said, ‘rather than rashly define what is hidden.’”

559.3    felling hymn, dispersions, chords collect / grow…: through 559.5 from Richard of St. Victor, 12th century mystical theologian. LZ’s source is EP, “Quotations from Richard of St. Victor” (Selected Prose, 71-72), which is a short selection of Richard’s Latin with EP’s translations:
Felicem cui datum est dispersions cordis in unum colligere.
(Happy who can gather the heart’s fragmentations into unity.)
Amare videre est.
(To love is to perceive.)
Qui secundum quod cor dictat, verba componit.
(Who composes words, as the heart dictates.)

559.5    (mane’s crier, / sum professes): from Adam de Saint-Victor, 12th century poet and composer. LZ’s source is Henry Adams, Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres, which quotes extensively from Adam’s hymns:
Quid sit gigni, quid processus,
Me nescire sum professus,
   Sed fide non dubia.
“What is birth and what procession
Is not mine to make profession,
   Save with faith unswerving.”

559.6    Patience diligence seek / her, flute woodnotes…: through 559.21 is largely or entirely concerned with St. Francis of Assisi (1186-1226). A major source is Henry Adams, Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres, in which St. Francis is discussed at length in the chapter on “The Mystics” and includes significant quotations, including the original Latin, from the various writings about St. Francis. However, LZ is also using other sources, and there were at least three volumes of St. Francis materials in his library.
559.6-7: from Sacrum Commercium, a 12th century allegorical work in which St. Francis with companions seek out Lady Poverty and dedicate themselves to her. When St. Francis asks where he can seek out Poverty, he is instructed by two wise old men: “patientiam habe, quia recti diligunt te” (have patience which will diligently (carefully) lead you).
559.7-8: “At Assisi, once, when a theologian attacked Fra Egidio by the usual formal arraignment in syllogisms, the brother waited until the conclusion were laid down, and then, taking out a flute from the folds of his robe, he played his answer in rustic melodies. The soul of Saint Francis was a rustic melody and the simplest that ever reached so high an expression”  (Adams 375). An enthymeme: 1. In Aristotle’s logic, an inference from likelihoods and signs, which with Aristotle is the same as a rhetorical syllogism. 2. A syllogism one of the premises of which is unexpressed (CD). A sortes: 1. A kind of sophism invented by Chrysippus in the third century before Christ, by which a person is led by gradual steps from maintaining what is manifestly true to admitting what is manifestly false. 2. A chain-syllogism, or argument having a number of premises and one conclusion, the argumentation being capable of analysis into a number of syllogisms, the conclusion of each of which is a premise of the next (CD).
559.8-10: [Adams summarizing St. Francis’ theology:] “All nature was God’s creature. The sun and fire, air and water, were neither more nor less brothers and sisters than sparrow, wolves, and bandits. Even ‘daemones sunt castalli Domini nostri,’ the devils are wardens of our Lord” (379).
“‘My brothers, my brothers, God has called me by the way of simplicity and humility, and has shown me in verity this path for me and those who want to believe and follow me; so I want you to talk of no Rule to me, neither Saint Benedict nor Saint Augustine nor Saint Bernard, nor any way or form or Life whatever except that which God has mercifully pointed out and granted to me. And God said that he wanted me to be a pauper [poverello] and an idiot—a great fool—in this world, and would not lead us by any other path of science than this. But by your science and syllogisms God will confound you, and I trust in God’s warders, the devils, that through them God shall punish you, and you will yet come back to your proper station with shame, whether you will or no.’”
“For once when [St. Francis] was sitting by the fire, as a spark, without his knowing it, caught his linen drawers and set them burning near the knee, and when he felt the heat he would not extinguish it; but his companion, seeing his clothes on fire, ran to put it out, and he forbade it, saying: ‘don’t, my dearest brother, don’t hurt the fire!’” (Adams 380-381; from The Mirror of Perfection, Chap. 116).
559.14-15: St. Francis’ dress code came about “on hearing on a day at the celebration of Mass those words that Christ spake unto His disciples when He sent them forth to preach, that they should carry on their journey neither gold nor silver, nor wallet, nor staff, nor have sandals nor two coats […]” (from The Legend of St. Francis).
559.15-18: A cell was made for St. Francis to pray in somewhat away from the main hermitage, which he protested was “too fair” and asked for a more rudimentary structure: “But on a day, when he had gone out of that cell, a certain friar went to see it, and afterward came to the place where blessed Francis was. And when the blessed Father saw him he said to him, ‘Whence comest thou, brother?’ And he said, ‘I come from thy cell.’ And blessed Francis said, ‘For that thou hast called it mine, another shall stay there henceforth, and not I’” (from The Mirror of Perfection, Chap. 9).
559.18-21: “‘But now there are many who, merely by telling of what those men did, want to receive honour and human praise. So, too, among us are many who, merely by reciting and preaching the works which the saints have done, want to receive hour and praise, . . . After you have got the psalter, you will covet and want a breviary; and after getting the breviary, you will sit on your throne like a bishop, and will say to your brother: “Bring me the breviary!”’ While saying this, Saint Francis with great vehemence took up a handful of ashes and spread it over his head; and moving his hand about his head in a circle as though washing it, said: ‘I, breviary! I, breviary!’” (Adams 373; from The Mirror of Perfection, Chap. 4).

559.21  ‘Love / more, come follow another’s region / or—’: from Dante, Paradiso XII.31-32 (St. Bonaventura speaking):
“‘L’amor che mi fa bella
mi tragge a ragionar dell’altro duca
per cui del mio si ben ci si favella […].’”
“‘The love which maketh me beautiful draweth me to discourse of the other chief [St. Dominic], on whose account such fair utterance is made to us concerning mine [St. Francis]’” (trans. Philip Henry Wicksteed).

559.23  ‘(if) light’s inchoate inform’d / sphere rendered its matter powerless…: through 559.28 from Robert Grosseteste (c.1175-1253), English medieval philosopher; from the famous treatise “On Light,” the original Latin title of which is “De Luce (De Inchoacione Formarum) (On Light, The Beginning of Forms). EP was very much interested in this treatise (see esp. “Cavalcanti,” Literary Essays 158-161), and LZ quotes from it in Bottom 127. The following translations are by Clare C. Riedl:
Lux ergo praedicto modo materiam primam in formam sphaericam extendens et extremas partes ad summum rarefaciens, in extima sphaera complevit possibilitatem materiae, nec reliquit eam susceptibilem ulterioris impressionis.
(In this way light, by extending first matter into the form of a sphere, and by rarefying its outermost parts to the highest degree, actualized completely in the outermost sphere the potentiality of matter, and left this matter without any potency to further impression.)
Et sicut unitas potentia est omnis numerus sequens, sic corpus primum multiplicatione sui luminis est omne corpus sequens.
(And just as unity is potentially every number that comes after it, so the first body, through the multiplication of its light, is every body that comes after it.)
Terra autem est omnia corpora superiora aggregatione in se luminum superiorum. Propterea ipsa est, quae a poetis Pan dicitur id est totum; et eadem Cybele, quasi cubile, a cubo id est soliditate nominatur, quia ipsa est omnium corporum maxime compressa, hoc est Cybele mater deorum omnium, quia, cum in ipsa superior lumina sint collecta, non sunt tamen in ea per operationes suas exorta, sed possible est educi ex ea in actum et operationem lumen cuiuscunque sphaerae volueris; et ita ex ea quasi ex matre quadam quivis deorum procreabitur.
(Earth is all the higher bodies because all the higher lights come together in it. For this reason earth is called Pan by the poets, that is ‘the whole,’ and it is also given the name Cybele, which is almost like cubile, from cube that is, a solid. The reason for this is that earth, that is to say, Cybele, the mother of all the gods, is the most compact of all bodies, because, although the higher lights are gathered together in it, nevertheless they do not have their source in the earth through its own operations, but the light of any sphere whatever can be educed from it into act and operation. Thus every one of the gods will be begotten from it as from a kind of mother.)

559.28  ‘Guide, o were / a star seem us 1’: from Dante, Sonnet 52 addressed to Guido Cavalcanti (see next note). LZ is probably echoing the famous opening of this sonnet in Anew 42, “You three…” (CSP 99):
Guido, vorrei che tu e Lapo ed io
fossimo presi per incantamento,
e messi ad un vascel, ch’ad ogni vento
per mare andasse a voler vostro e mio;
sicche fortuna, od altro tempo rio
non ci potesse dare impedimento,
anzi, vivendo sempre in un talento,
di stare insieme crescesse il disio.

Guido, I would that Lapo, thou, and I,
Led by some strong enchantment, might ascend
A magic ship, whose charmed sails should fly
With winds at will where’er our thoughts might wend,
So that no change, nor any evil chance
Should mar our joyous voyage; but it might be,
That even satiety should still enhance
Between our hearts their strict community: (trans. Percy Bysshe Shelley)

559.30  ‘We cannot meet so the / false Spirit fly, leave thee / thy integrity’: from Guido Cavalcanti (c.1250-1300), sonnet responding to Dante’s sonnet quoted at 559.28 as translated by Percy Bysshe Shelley. LZ used poems by Cavalcanti as formal templates for both “A”-9 and “A”-11:
I dare not now through thy degraded state
Own the delight thy strains inspire—in vain
I seek what once thou wert—we cannot meet
As we were wont. Again and yet again
Ponder my words: so the false Spirit shall fly
And leave to thee thy true integrity.

559.32  Null all true, / see chanting, trust descant scaling: from two passages of Dante;
From Purgatorio X.60: faceva dir l’un “No,” l’altro “Si, canta.”
(made the one say “no,” the other, “yes, they do sing.”)
The second phrase is suggested by Paradiso XXI.25-32 where Dante sees Jacob’s ladder:
Dentro al cristallo, che il vocabol porta,
   cerchiando il mondo, del suo chiaro duce,
   sotto cui giacque ogni malizia morta,
di color d’oro, in che raggio traluce,
   vid’io uno scaleo eretto in suso
   tanto, che nol seguiva la mia luce.
Vidi anche per li gradi scender giuso
   tanti splendor, ch’io pensai ch’ogni lume
   che par nel ciel quindi fosse diffuso.
(Within the crystal which doth bear the name, circling the world, of its illustrious leader, beneath whom every wickedness lay dead, coloured like gold which doth recast the ray, I saw a ladder erected upward so far that my sight might not follow it. I saw, moreover, descend upon the steps so many splendours that methought every light which shineth in the heaven had been thence poured down.)

559.34  redder than reddest: from the Mabinogion, the tale of “Peredur the Son of Evawc” (see 555.37): “And whiter was her skin than the bloom of crystal, and her hair and her two eyebrows were blacker than jet, and on her cheeks were two red spots, redder than whatever is reddest” (trans. Lady Charlotte Guest). The Mabinogion appears significantly in Little, particularly the tale of “Manawyddan the Son of Llyr” (CF 127, 128, 131, 144, 159, 175).

559.35  whither lamp crier this glare / can willow man…: through 560.2 from medieval Welsh poetry using Gwyn Williams, Introduction to Welsh Poetry (see also 557.16-24, 560.33 and 561.3).
559.35-36: from Madog Benfras (c.1320-1360) (see 22.527.19):
Pan ddel merched y gwledydd,
o rai teg i’r un oed dydd,
y bydd tebyg ei hoew loewbryd,
bun ymysg merched y byd,
fyth i’r lamp grair ddisgleirlan
ymysg y canwyllau man.

When the girls of all countries come,
the fair ones to one meeting,
her lovely lucent face,
maid amongst the girls of the world,
will be like a bright shrine lamp
amongst the little tapers.      (Williams 99)
559.36: look April-eyed: from Gruffudd ap Adda (d. 1344), from a poem addressed to a birch tree cut down to make a maypole:
ni chel y drem uchel draidd / y briallu ebrillaidd
(Nor will your features, reaching high, / hide April’s primroses) (Williams 97).
559.37: silver clasps and rings mercy’n’ / lewd gold mop his sister’s / hair this ghoul fool ogling: from Dafydd ap Gwilym (1325-1380), combining elements transcribed from the original Welsh, Williams’ translation, plus an added note (Williams 108):
Y mab llwyd wyneb mursen
a gwallt ei chwaer am ei ben,
pa ddisgwyl ffol ei olwg?
Gwyr ei ddrem garu I ddrwg.

That pale fellow with the affected look
And his sister’s hair on his head,
what does he expect, the silly ogler?
His looks are for bad loving.
(A note in MS Gwyneddon 3 says that Dafydd ap Gwilym was tall and thin, with long curly yellow hair, full of silver clasps and rings).

560.3    úp-on a rouncy as he / couthe: from Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1343-1400), “General Prologue” to The Canterbury Tales, line 393:
A Shipman was ther, woning fer by weste:
For aught I woot, he was of Dertemouthe.
He rood up-on a rouncy, as he couthe,
In a gowne of falding to the knee.

560.4    The firste stok, fader / of gentilesse . . the firste fader: from Geoffrey Chaucer, the balade “Gentilesse”; the first and last of the poem’s three stanzas follow:
The firste stok, fader of gentilesse—
What man that claymeth gentil for to be,
Must folowe his trace, and alle his wittes dresse
Vertu to sewe, and vyces for to fle.
For unto vertu longeth dignitee,
And noght the revers, saufly dar I deme,
Al were he mytre, croune, or diademe.
[…]
Vyce may wel be heir to old richesse;
But ther may no man, as men may wel se,
Bequethe his heir his vertuous noblesse;
That is appropred unto no degree,
But to the firste fader in magestee,
That maketh him his heir, that wol him queme,
Al were he mytre, croune, or dyademe.

560.6    in a summer season when / soft was the sun…: through 560.17 from William Langland (c.1330-c.1400), Piers Plowman, B-Version Prologue. This appears to be LZ’s own modernization with occasional homophonic rendering. The following excerpt gives Langland’s text as edited by W.W. Skeat, which is the edition LZ owned:
In a somer seson   whan soft was the sonne,
I shope me in shroudes   as I a shepe were,
In habite as an heremite   vnholy of workes,
Went wyde in this world   wondres to here.
Ac on a May mornynge   on Maluerne hulles
Me byfel a ferly   of fairy me thoughte;
I was wery forwandred   and went me to reste
Vnder a brode banke   bi a bornes side,
And as I lay and lened   and loked in the wateres,
I slombred into a slepyng   it sweyued so merye.
Thanne gan I to meten   a merueilouse sweuene,
That I was in a wildernesse   wist I neuer where,
As I bihelde in-to the est   an hiegh to the sonne,
I seigh a toure on a toft   trielich ymaked,
A depe dale binethe   a dongeon there-Inne,
With depe dyches & derke   and dredful of sight.
A faire felde ful of folke   fonde I there bytwene,
Of alle maner of men   the mene and the riche,
Worchyng and wandryng   as the worlde asketh.  (1-19)
[…]
Bidders and beggeres   fast aboute yede
With her bely and hire bagge[s]   of bred ful ycrammed;
Fayteden for here fode   foughten atte ale;
In glotonye, god it wote   gon hij to bedde,
And risen with ribaudye   tho roberdes knaves,
Slepe and sori sleuthe   seweth hem euer. (40-45)
[…]
The kyng and Knyghthode   and clergye bothe
Casten that the comune   shulde hem-self fynde.
The comune contreued   of kynde witte craftes,
And for profit of alle the people   plowmen ordeygned,
To tilie and trauaille   as trewe lyf asketh.
The kynge and the comune   and kynde witte the thridde
Shope lawe & lewte   eche man to knowe his owne.
Thanne loked up a lunatik   a lene thing with-alle,
And knelyng to the kyng   clergealy he seyde;
“Crist kepe the, sire kyng   and thi kyngriche,
And leue thee lede thi londe   so leute the louye,
And for thi rightful rewlyng   be rewarded in heuene.” (116-127)
[…]
As dykers & delueres   that doth here dedes ille,
And dryuen forth the [longe] day   with “Dieu vous saue, Dame Emme!”
Cokes and here knaues   crieden, “hote pies, hote!
Gode gris a[nd] gees   gowe dyne, gowe!”
Tauerners vn-til hem   tolde the same,
“White wyn of Oseye   and red wyn of Gascoigne,
Of the Ryne and of the Rochel   the roste to defye!”—
—Al this seigh I slepyng   and seuene sythes more. (224-231)

560.18  Terrainal paradise’s consolation, solace will / agree years improve her salutations: from Juan Ruiz, Archpriest de Hita (14th century), “Des las propriedades que las dueñas chicas han” (Of the Characteristics of Small Ladies); from the Penguin Book of Spanish Verse, trans. Ralph Cohen:
De la muger pequeña non hay comparación,
terrenal paraíso es e consolacíon,
solaz et alegría, placer et bendición:
mejor es en la prueva que en la salutación.
(With a little woman there is nothing to compare; / she is a paradise upon earth and a comfort, / a solace and a joy, a pleasure and a blessing; / she is better in the testing than at first meeting.)

560.20  An album leaf: from both Ludwig Wittgenstein, “Preface” to Philosophical Investigations, see quotation at 560.21, and Stéphane Mallarmé, title of the poem “Feullet d’album.”

560.20  on the Hill / together looking down children: LZ’s notebooks indicate that here he has in mind Melvern Hill on which the poet of Piers Plowman fell asleep and had his vision of the “faire felde ful of folke” (see 560.6).

560.21  crisscrossing— / ‘misunderstood stung vanity almost the / same points from different directions…: through 560.25 from Ludwig Wittgenstein, Preface to the Philosophical Investigations (1953), but suggested by the preceding two line:
“And this was, of course, connected with the very nature of the investigation. For this compels us to travel over a wide field of thought criss-cross in every direction.— The philosophical remarks in this book are, as it were, a number of sketches of landscapes which were made in the course of these long and involved journeyings.
            The same or almost the same points were always being approached afresh from different directions, and new sketches made. Very many of these were badly drawn or uncharacteristic, marked by all the defects of a weak draughtsman. And when they were rejected a number of tolerable ones were left, which now had to be arranged and sometimes cut down, so that if you looked at them you could get a picture of the landscape. Thus this book is really only an album.
            Up to a short time ago I had really given up the idea of publishing my work in my lifetime. It used, indeed, to be revived from time to time: mainly because I was obliged to learn that my results (which I had communicated in lectures, typescripts and discussions), variously misunderstood, more or less mangled or watered down, were in circulation. This stung my vanity and I had difficulty in quieting it” (vii-viii; trans. G.E.M. Anscombe).
            Also “criss-crossing” appears twice in Wittgenstein’s famous definition of “family resemblances” in Philosophical Investigations: “And the result of this examination is: we see a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing: sometimes overall similarities, sometimes similarities of detail” (I.66-67).

560.25  ‘not for them / but with them, prest lips…: through 560.29 primarily from Nadezhda Mandelstam, Hope Against Hope: A Memoir, trans. Max Hayward (1970), on her life with the Russian poet Osip Mandelstam (1891-1938). LZ apparently met Max Hayward when he was resident at Villa Serbelloni in Bellagio, Italy in Nov.-Dec. 1972 and began reading Hope Against Hope while there.
560.25-27: “The work of the poet, as the vehicle of world harmony, has a social character—that is, it is concerned with the doings of the poet’s fellow men, among whom he lives and whose fate he shares. He does not speak ‘for them,’ but with them, nor does he set himself apart from them: otherwise he would not be a source of truth. I was always struck by the absolute character of the urge to serve—with and among one’s fellow men—as an instrument by which harmony reveals itself. In this sense it was impossible either to simulate or induce it artificially, and of course it is nothing but a misfortune for the poet himself. […] The urge dies together with the poet, though the movement of his lips is recorded for all time in the verse he leaves behind. […] Poetry only really lives in the poet’s own voice, which is preserved in his work forever. In the period when I lived with Akhmatova, I was able to watch her at work as well, but she was much less ‘open’ about it than M., and I was not always even aware that she was ‘composing.’ She was, in general, much more withdrawn and reserved then M. and I was always struck by her self-control as a woman—it was almost a kind of asceticism. She did not even allow her lips to move, as M. did so openly, but rather, I think, pressed them tighter as she composed her poems, and her mouth became set in an even sadder way. M. once said to me before I had met Akhmatova—and repeated to me many times afterword—that looking at these lips you could hear her voice, that her poetry was made of it and was inseparable from it” (188-189). The latter part of this passage in particular seems obviously relevant to LZ’s homophonic renditions in Catullus (cf. 14.355.29-356.7) and throughout the late movements of “A”, particularly “A”-23.
560.27: the bent dray-horse: this is LZ favorite image of himself as a working poet (see e.g. 12.179.10ff), which he found echoed in Mandelstam’s “Fourth Prose”: “No matter how much I work, if I carry horses on my back, if I turn millstones, still I shall never become a worker” (HRC 37.4).
560.27-28: pack / illumined sweat-light: this is largely a homophonic transcription of the romanized Russian of a line by Pushkin that appears in Clarence Brown’s introduction to Hope Against Hope: “‘Pechal moya svetla,’ Pushkin wrote, ‘My sadness is luminous’; and Mandelstam not only could but did use the line” (ix).
560.29: “I imagine that for a poet auditory hallucinations are something in the nature of an occupational disease. As many poets have said—Akhmatova (in ‘Poem Without a Hero’) and M. among them—a poem begins with a musical phrase ringing insistently in the ears; at first inchoate, it later takes on a precise form, though still without words. […] Akhmatova told me that when ‘Poem Without a Hero’ came to her, she was ready to try anything just to get rid of it, even rushing to do her washing. But nothing helped. At some point words formed behind the musical phrase and then the lips began to move. I sometimes saw M. trying to get rid of this kind of ‘hum,’ to brush it off and escape from it. […] I have a feeling that verse exists before it is composed (M. never talked of ‘writing’ verse, only of ‘composing’ it and then copying it out). The whole process of composition is one of straining to catch and record something compounded of harmony and sense as it is relayed from an unknown source and gradually forms itself into words. The last stage of the work consists of ridding the poem of all words foreign to the harmonious whole which existed before the poem arose” (70-71).
“M’s feeling that form and content are absolutely indivisible evidently came to him from the process of working on his poetry, which was always born from a single impulse—the initial ‘ringing in the ears,’ before the formation of words, already embodied in what is called ‘content’” (187). 

560.30  Of Nought—light, leaf, grief— / lend grace wife and her / son keep to life’s end: from the Wakefield cycle of medieval mystery plays. LZ’s source is The Wakefield Mystery Plays, ed. Martial Rose (1951), which gives modernized versions.
From “Creation”: “We praise thee, Lord, with all our thought, / that such things could make of nought”
From “Annunciation,” final stanza (Joseph speaking):
Lo, I am as light as a leaf:
He that can quench all grief
   And every wrong amend,
Lend me grace, power, and might
My wife and her sweet son of light
   To keep to my life’s end.

560.33  serein (horse) a full lawn: from Dafydd ap Edmwnd (c.1450-1497), Welsh poet, two lines describing a woman’s hair: “sirian o nef, ser y nos” (cherries from heaven, the stars of night), and “A fu lwyn cyn felyned?” (paraphrased as: whether a bush was ever so yellow); see another reworking of the same at 22.511.1-2. LZ’s text is Gwyn Williams, Introduction to Welsh Poetry (161); see other renderings from Welsh at 557.16-24, 559.35-560.2 and 561.3.
Serein (sė-ran´), n. [F.: see serene.] a mist of exceedingly fine rain which falls from a cloudless sky, a phenomenon not unusual in tropical climates (CD). Serene from F. serein, means the chilly damp of evening; unwholesome air; blight (CD). Perhaps the “-rein” of “serein” suggests the “horse” to LZ.

560.34  An art of honor, laud— / ‘pleasure do’ wit’s joys accord: the break in the text preceding these lines marks off the last hundred lines of the movement, although not broken into 5-line stanzas as in “A”-22. These lines are from François Rabelais (c.1494-1553), Gargantua and Pantagruel, Book I, Chap. 54, from the inscription over the main door of the Abbey of Thélème, whose motto could aptly be summed up by “pleasures do.” The free translation by Samuel Putnam is noted down in LZ’s notebook:
Honneur, los, decuict,                                      Honor, praise, delight
Ceans est decuict                                            Rule here, day and night;
Par joyeux acords;                                           We’re gay, and we agree;
Tous sont sains au corps;                                We’re healthy, bodily;
Par ce, bien leur dict                                         And so, we have a right
Honneur, los, decuict.                                       To honor, praise, delight.

561.1    so on hand-vowed integrities: LZ’s notebooks indicate this is from Friar Luis De Leon (1527-1591), although the precise source is unidentified. It may be from The Perfect Wife (1583), which was translated by a “distant cousin” of WCW. LZ mentions De Leon and the various correspondences he found with his own life and work in the lecture on Wallace Stevens (Prep+ 25).

561.1    unaltered / syllables, the fended wrist, fires’ / light rest: from letters by Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542) and the Welsh poet Sion Tudor (c.1522-1602).
The relevant Wyatt letters are all on the topic of honesty. First a 1541 letter to the Privy Council in his own defense against charges of treason: “And besides that, it is a small thing in altering of one syllable either with pen or word, that may make in the conceiving of the truth much matter or error. For in this thing, ‘I fear,’ or ‘I trust,’ seemeth but one small syllable changed, and yet it maketh a great difference, and may be of an hearer wrong conceived and worse reported; and yet, worst of all, altered by an examiner.” Then two letters to his son (c.1536): “And although glory and honest name are not the very ends wherefore these things are to be followed, yet surely they must needs follow them as light followeth fire, though it were kindled for warmth. […] When there is a custom gotten of avoiding to do evil, then cometh a gentle courage. Be content to be idle, and to rest without doing any thing” (from the first letter).
561.2: the fended wrist: from lines in which the poet is addressed by a horse (from Gwyn Williams, An Introduction to Welsh Poetry):
Wyf gwympus dripiadus drwm / a phendrist a chyffondrwm
(I fall, I stumble, I’m heavy / sad-headed and heavy tailed)      (Williams 188)

561.3    bourne eyed ’ll guide: from the Welsh poet Tudor Aled (c.1465-1525), describing a horse: “Llygaid fal dwy ellygen / llymion byw’n llamu’n ei ben” (Eyes that are like two pears, / lively and keen, they leap from his head). From Gwyn Williams, An Introduction to Welsh Poetry (174); see other renditions from Welsh at 557.16-24, 559.35-560.2 and 560.33.

561.4    gar them hear: from Robert Burns, although LZ found this in the Century Dictionary looking up the definition of “gar,” Old English and Scottish meaning to cause, make, force, compel, and with examples from Piers Plowman, the York Plays, Spenser’s Faerie Queene and this line from Burns’ “Prayer to the Scotch Representatives”: “Get warmly to your feet / An’ gar them hear it.”  

561.4    draw ear: from Dic Huws (Richard Hughes) (1565-1618), Welsh poet; using Gwyn Williams, An Introduction to Welsh Poetry:
Pen droyr chwai allan mewn awr bach
ir ewch i’n gleiriach issig
megis keffyl hen pan droyr [= turn, change]
i borfa oer fynyddig.
(You’ll be turned out in a short while / a vile and broken creature / like a horse when he is old / to the cold mountain pasture.) (Williams 227)

561.5    brute dear: from Luis de Camões (c.1524-1580), The Lusiads, from an anti-imperialist harangue by an old man as Vasco de Gama’s expedition fleet leaves harbor at the end of Canto 4, which LZ also uses at 22.530.24-26): “‘Now your fickle fancy has become infatuated with this folly that describes as enterprise and valour what is but the cruel ferocity of the brute creation, and boasts of its contempt for life, which should always be held dear if only because he who gives it was so loath to lose his own'” (Penguin Classics 120, trans. William C. Atkinson).

561.5    úp-on a rouncy: see 560.3.

561.6    aske nomore . . go: from Edmund Spenser (1552-1599), The Shepeardes Calender, from the concluding envoy; see 22.530.20-24:
Goe little Calender, thou hast a free passeporte,
Goe but a lowly gate emongste the meaner sorte.
Dare not to match thy pipe with Tityrus his style,
Nor with the Pilgrim that the Ploughman played a whyle:
But followe them farre off, and their high steppes adore,
The better please, the worse despise, I aske nomore.

561.6    Clear honor / liquid element, dull th’arroyo: from Luis de Góngora (1561-1625), the sonnet beginning: “Oh claro honor del líquido elemento, / dulce arroyuelo de corriente plata!” (O lucent honor of the liquid element, / sweet brook of running silver). For this and the following Spanish poets through 561.14, LZ’s text is the Penguin Book of Spanish Verse, ed. and trans. J.M. Cohen (1956), whose translations I give.

561.7    codas— / rising: repeated, sun’s a comet: from Luis de Góngora (1561-1625), the sonnet “De la brevedad engañosa de la vida,” lines 6-8: “A quien lo duda, / fiera que sea de razón desnuda, / cada sol repetido es un cometa” (Even for one who doubts it, / beast that he is and naked of reason, / each sun as it is repeated is (as fatal as) a comet).

561.9    to string a kit with: from John Beaumont and Francis Fletcher, Philaster Or Love Lies A-Bleeding V.iv: “I’ll have his little gut to string a kit with; / For certainly a royal gut will sound like silver.”

561.10  (sheep feint a bee hue-new: from Lope de Vega (1562-1613), the title of his play, Fuente Ovejuna (1619), which is the name of a village in Andalucia meaning Fountain or Well of the Sheep. However, LZ noted (HRC 37.4) that this village name was apparently a corruption from its original designation, Fuente Abejuna, meaning Fountain (Well) of Bees.

561.11  pulverable enamour’d): from Francisco de Quevedo (1580-1645), the sonnet “Cerrar podrá mis ojos la postrera sombra,” lines 12-14: “[…] su cuerpo dejarán, no su cuidado: / serán ceniza, mas tendrá sentido, / polvo serán, mas polvo enamorado” ([The last shadow […] may close my eyes] will forsake their body but not their passion / will be ashes but will retain their feeling, / will be dust but dust in love).

561.11  ‘one body’s resurrection / not half so great as / one flown grain uprising wheat’—: from Robert Herrick (1591-1674), “The Resurrection possible, and probable”:
For each one Body, that i’the earth is sowne,
There’s an up-rising but of one for one:
But for each Graine, that in the ground is thrown,
Threescore or fourscore spring up thence for one:
So that the wonder is not halfe so great,
Of ours, as is the rising of the wheat.

561.14  ‘seek gloss hours fáre on’: from Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600-1681), the last line of the sonnet “Éstas que fueron pompa y alegría”: “que pasados los siglos, horas fueron” (for when centuries have passed they were but hours).

561.15  ‘structure a winding stair at / two removes’: from George Herbert (1593-1633), “Jordan (I),” first two stanzas:
Who sayes that fictions onely and false hair
Become a verse? Is there in truth no beauty?
Is all good structure in a winding stair?
May no lines pass, except they do their dutie
            Not to a true, but painted chair?

Is it no verse, except enchanted groves
And sudden arbours shadow course-spunne lines?
Must purling streams refresh a lovers loves?
Must all be vail’d, while he that reades, divines,
            Catching the sense at two removes?

561.17  frond then tagging silvers—increate / garden only first hour thatch / reading earth’s scripture: from Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682), The Garden of Cyrus; or, The Quincuncial Lozenge, or Net-Work Plantations of the Ancients, Artificially, Naturally, Mystically, Considered (1658); see 22.531.9-17. The first phrase is a homophonic transliteration from Ovid in the opening paragraph of Chap. I of Browne’s text, and the rest freely worked from the same passage, which LZ seems to correlate with Haggadah version of creation (see 558.8-9):
“That Vulcan gave arrows to Apollo and Diana the fourth day after their nativities, according to Gentile theology, may pass for no blind apprehension of the creation of the sun and moon, in the work of the fourth day: when the diffused light contracted into orbs, and the shooting rays, of those luminaries. Plainer descriptions there are from Pagan pens, of the creatures of the fourth day. While the divine philosopher [note: Plato in Timæo] unhappily omitteth the noblest part of the third, and Ovid (whom many conceive to have borrowed his description from Moses) coldly deserting the remarkable account of the text, in three words [note: Fronde tegi silvas ([He ordered] the woods to be covered with leaves)] describeth this work of the third day,—the vegetable creation, and first ornamental scene of nature,—the primitive food of animals, and first story of physick, in dietetical conservation. For though physick may pleade high, from that medicall act of God, in casting so deep a sleep upon our first parent, and chirurgery finde its whole art, in that one passage concerning the rib of Adam; yet is there no rivality with garden contrivance and herbary; for if Paradise were planted the third day of creation, as wiser divinity concludeth, the nativity thereof was too early for horoscopy: gardens were before gardeners, and but some hours after the earth.”

561.19  while a / star knows yew vinted lower / trysts weave…: the sources behind this passage through 561.33 have been closely examined by Rieke (206-216). On the basis of LZ’s notebooks, she identifies the presence of the following texts: Jean Racine’s Athalie (1691), Anthony Trollope’s Barchester Towers (1857), Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia (1787), Peter Kalm’s Travels in North America (1770), Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Grandfather’s Chair (1841), Cotton Mather’s “The Life of John Eliot” (1702), Henry David Thoreau’s Journals, Jonathan Swift’s The Battle of the Books (1704) and Herbert A. Giles’ A History of Chinese Literature (1901)—a number of which were used in “A”-22.
561.19-21: a homophonic translation from Jean Racine (1639-1699), Athalie II.ix: “Quel aster à nos yeux vient de luire? / Quel sera quelque jour cet enfant merveilleux?” (What star has, in our sight, just risen? / What will this wondrous child become some day?), and Act V.ii: “Il est vrai, de David un trésor est resté, / La garde en fut commise à ma fidélité, / C’était de tristes Juifs l’espérance dernière, / Que mes soins vigilants cachaient à la lumière” (It is true David’s treasure still remains. / I was entrusted with its custody. / It was the last hope of the hapless Jews, / that I hid carefully from public view). Rieke further claims (207) the word “vinted” was suggested by its appearance in Trollope’s Barchester Towers, Chap. 21: “I wouldn’t give a straw for the best wine that ever was vinted, after it had lain here a couple of years,” although LZ probably found this quotation when he looked up “vint” in CD.

561.21  the sheep happier / without the care of wolves / West redskins’ talk grammars older / than East’s: from Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (1787) (see 22.514.5, 22.514.16), the chapter on “Aborigines”: “This practice [of being ‘separated into so many little societies’] results from the circumstances of their having never submitted themselves to any laws, any coercive power, any shadow of government. Their only controls are their manners, and that moral sense of right and wrong, which, like the sense of tasting and feeling in every man, makes a part of his nature. An offence against these is punished by contempt, by exclusion from society, or, where the case is serious, as that of murder, by the individuals whom it concerns. Imperfect as this species of coercion may seem, crimes are very rare among them; insomuch that were it made a question, whether no law, as among the savage Americans, or too much law, as among the civilized Europeans, submits man to the greatest evil, one who has seen both conditions of existence would pronounce it to be the last; and that the sheep are happier of themselves, than under care of the wolves. It will be said, that great societies cannot exist without government. The Savages therefore break them into small ones. […]
            But imperfect as is our knowledge of the tongues spoken in America, it suffices to discover the following remarkable fact: Arranging them under the radical ones to which they may be palpably traced, and doing the same by those of the red men of Asia, there will be found probably twenty in America, for one in Asia, of those radical languages, so called because if they were ever the same they have lost all resemblance to one another. A separation into dialects may be the work of a few ages only, but for two dialects to recede from one another till they have lost all vestiges of their common origin, must require an immense course of time; perhaps not less than many people give to the age of the earth. A greater number of those radical changes of language having taken place among the red men of America, proves them of greater antiquity than those of Asia.”

561.24  Tongues: lark’s wings: from Peter Kalm, Travels in North America (see 22.513.22, 514.3, 514.9-15, 23.554.23): “In Canada nobody ever hears the French language spoken by anyone but Frenchmen, for strangers seldom come there, and the Indians are naturally too proud to learn French, and compel the French to learn their language. Therefore it naturally follows that the sensitive Canadian ladies cannot hear anything uncommon without laughing at it. […] When a young fellow comes in, whether they are acquainted with him or not, they immediately lay aside their work, sit down by him, and begin to chat, laugh, joke, and invent “double-entendres” and make their tongues go like a lark’s wings; this is considered avoir beaucoup d’esprit.”

561.25  ‘hi!’ requires a serious answer: from Henry Thoreau, Journals for 14 March 1838: “If thy neighbor hail thee to inquire how goes the world, feel thyself put to thy trumps to return a true and explicit answer” (qtd. Rieke 211-212).

561.26  agglutinative questions when no redskins / lust white gospel in red-tongue: from discussions of John Eliot and Native American languages found in Cotton Mather, “The Life of John Eliot” from Magnalia Christi Americana (1702), Book III, and in Nathaniel Hawthorne, Grandfather’s Chair (1841), a children’s history of early America (see 14.336.13-14):
            From Cotton Mather, “The Life of John Eliot”: “The First Step which he judg’d necessary now to be taken by him, was to learn the Indian Language; for he saw them so stupid and senseless, that they would never do so much as enquire after the Religion of the Strangers now come into their Country, much less would they so far imitate us, as to leave off their beastly way of living, that they might be Partakers of any Spiritual Advantage by us [….] but if their Alphabet be short, I am sure the Words composed of it are long enough to tire the Patience of any Scholar in the World, they are Sesquipedalia Verba, which their Lingua is composed; one would think, they have been growing ever since Babel, unto the Dimensions to which they are now extended. For instance, if my Reader will count how many Letters there are in this one Word Nummatchekodtantamooonganunnonash, when he has done, for his Reward I’ll tell him, it signifies no more in English than our Lusts, and if I were to translate, our Loves; it must be nothing shorter than Noowomantammooonkanunonnash. Or, to give my Reader a longer Word than either of these, Kummogkodonattoottummooetiteaongannunnonash, is in English, Our Question: But I pray, Sir, count the Letters! Nor do we find in all this Language the least Affinity to, or Derivation from any European Speech that we are acquainted with” (The Puritans: A Sourcebook of Their Writings, eds. Perry Miller & Thomas H. Johnson, Vol. 2, p. 506).
            From Part I, Chap. 8 of Hawthorne, Grandfather’s Chair: “My dear children, what a task would you think it, even with a long lifetime before you, were you bidden to copy every chapter, and verse, and word, in yonder family Bible! Would not this be a heavy toil? But if the task were, not to write off the English Bible, but to learn a language utterly unlike all other tongues, a language which hitherto had never been learned, except by the Indians themselves, from their mothers’ lips,—a language never written, and the strange words of which seemed inexpressible by letters,—if the task were, first to learn this new variety of speech, and then to translate the Bible into it, and to do it so carefully that not one idea throughout the holy book should be changed,—what would induce you to undertake this toil? Yet this was what the apostle Eliot did. […] ‘Read this, my child,’ would he say; ‘these are some brethren of mine, who would fain hear the sound to thy native tongue.’ Then would the Indian boy cast his eyes over the mysterious page, and read it so skillfully that it sounded like wild music. It seemed as if the forest leaves were singing in the ears of his auditors, and as the roar of distant streams were poured through the young Indian’s voice. Such were the sounds amid which the language of the red man had been formed; and they were still heard to echo in it.”

561.28  O my dear Ms Tress / don’t it know…: through 561.36 mostly from Jonathan Swift (1667-1745). The first line is LZ’s version of Swift’s coded manner of addressing Stella: “Omi dearmis tres, / Imi na dis tres” (O my dear mistress / I’m in a distress). See further use of Swift at 14.345.16-19 and 22.532.3-8. LZ’s source is a review by Sherwin D. Smith from the New York Times Book Review for 22 Oct. 1967 of Luis d’Antin Van Rooten, Mots d’Heures: Gouses, Rames: The d’Antin Manuscript; the clipping survives among LZ’s papers (HRC 4.6). Van Rooten’s work would have intrigued LZ because, although it purports to be an obscure book of poems in archaic French, it is actually Van Rooten’s homophonic translation of English nursery rhymes into French. Van Rooten’s title is worked from “Mother Goose Rhymes.”
561.29-31: naturally . . Pride . . / Daughter of Riches . . the Republick / of Dogs . . the Many: from the opening sentences of The Battle of the Books in the A Tale of the Tub (1710): “Whoever examines with due Circumspection into the Annual Records of Time, will find it remarked that War is the child of Pride, and Pride the daughter of Riches; The former of which Assertions may be soon granted; but one cannot so easily subscribe to the latter: For Pride is nearly related to Beggary and Want, either by father or Mother, and sometimes by both; And, to speak naturally, it very seldom happens among Men to fall out, when all have enough: Invasions usually traveling from North to South, that is to say, from Poverty upon Plenty. The most antient and natural Grounds of Quarrels, are Lust and Avarice; which, tho’ we may allow to be Brethren or collateral Branches of Pride, are certainly the Issues of Want. For, to speak in the Phrase of Writers upon the Politicks, we may observe in the Republick of Dogs, (which in its Original seems to be an Institution of the Many) that the whole State is ever in the profoundest Peace, after a full Meal; and, that Civil Broils arise among them, when it happens for one great Bone to be seized on by some leading Dog, who either divides it among the Few, and then it falls to an Oligarchy, or keeps it to Himself, and then it runs up to a Tyranny.” 

561.31  usurps / sympathy, salted hurt: apparently from Herbert A. Giles, A History of Chinese Literature (see 22.515.10), from a long quotation from a cookbook by Yuan Mei (1715-1797) that Giles gives, which includes some advise on the use of salt: “Don’t over salt your soups; for salt can be added to taste, but can never be taken away” (410-411).

561.32  cutting off / feet wanting shoes. Fame’s fib…: through 561.36 continuing from Jonathan Swift (see 561.28), from “Thoughts on Various Subjects”: “The Stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.”
561.33-35: from “Battle of the Books” in Tale of a Tub:
“All things violently tending to a decisive Battel; Fame, who much frequented, and had a large Apartment formerly assigned her in the Regal Library, fled up strait to Jupiter, to whom she delivered a faithful account of all that passed between the two Parties below. (For, among the Gods, she always tells the Truth.)”
[In the dispute between the spider and the bee, Aesop renders his judgment:] “As for Us, the Antients, We are content with the Bee, to pretend to Nothing of our own, beyond our Wings and our Voice: that is to say, our Flights and our Language; For the rest, whatever we have got, has been by infinite Labor, and search, and ranging thro’ every Corner of Nature: The Difference is, that instead of Dirt and Poison, we have rather chose to till our Hives with Honey and Wax, thus furnishing Mankind with the two Noblest of Things, which are Sweetness and Light” [this is the origin of the phrase later made so famous by Matthew Arnold].
561.35: whale-of-a-swale: “[…] seamen have a custom, when they meet a whale, to fling him out an empty tub, by way of amusement, to divert him from laying violent hands upon the ship. This parable was immediately mythologized. The whale was interpreted to be Hobbes’s Leviathan, which tosses and plays with all schemes of religion and government, whereof a great many are hollow, and dry, and empty, and noisy, and wooden, and given to rotation.”
561.35: two hearts one / case: from Swift’s version of Catullus 92, “Catullus de Lesbia”:
Lesbia for ever on me rails,
To talk of me she never fails.
Now, hang me, but for all her art,
I find that I have gain’d her heart.
My proof is this: I plainly see,
The case is just the same with me;
I curse her every hour sincerely,
Yet, hang me but I love her dearly.

561.36  argute mute: inventive?: from Laurence Sterne (1713-1768), Tristram Shandy via the CD definition for argute: “[<L. argutus, clear, bright, sharp, sagacious, formally pp. of arguere, make clear] 1. Sharp, as a taste; shrill, as a sound. —2. Subtle; ingenious; sagacious; shrewd; keen. I will have him, continued my father, . . . vigilant acute, argute, inventive. Sterne, Tristram Shandy.”

561.37  had seen a man High-hill’n / front, warm woods back: from Horace Walpole, “Letter to George Montague,” 15 June 1768; LZ’s source is probably English Prose, Vol. III: Walpole to Lamb, ed. William Peacock (Oxford UP, 1921), where this passage is given the title, “English Summers”: “The best sun we have is made of Newcastle coal, and I am determined never to reckon upon any other. We ruin ourselves with inviting over foreign trees, and make our houses clamber up hills to look at prospects. How our ancestors would laugh at us, who knew there was no being comfortable, unless you had a high hill before your nose, and a thick warm wood at your back! Taste is too freezing a commodity for us, and, depend upon it, will go out of fashion again!”

562.1    grig / ling, furze, gorse, fern: from Gilbert White (1720-1795), The Natural History of Selborne; LZ’s source is probably English Prose, Vol. III: Walpole to Lamb, ed. William Peacock (Oxford UP, 1921), where this passage is given the title, “Wolmer Forest”: “Though (by statute 4 and 5 William and Mary, c.23) ‘to burn on any waste, between Candlemas and Midsummer, any grig, ling, heath and furze, gorse, or fern, is punishable with whipping, and confinement in the house of correction’; yet, in this forest, about March or April, according to the dryness of the season, such vast heath-fires are lighted up, that they often get to a masterless head, and, catching the hedges, have sometimes been communicated to the underwoods, woods, and coppices, where great damage has ensued.”

562.2    Let / Bee-sting hold back: apparently from Herbert Giles, A History of Chinese Literature (widely used throughout “A”-22 & -23). Giles describes the epigrammic 4-line poem perfected in the Tang dynasty (7th-10th centuries), which he calls the “‘stop-short,’ so called because of its abruptness, though, as the critics explain, ‘it is only the words which stop, the sense goes on,’ some train of thought having been suggested to the reader.” Giles then gives an example:
   The qualities rare in a bee that we meet
      In an epigram never should fail;
   The body should always be little and sweet,
      And a sting should be left in the tail.     (145-146)

562.3    the flowers / arrive she nurtures them: from Sanford Terry’s biography of J.S. Bach (1685-1750) that LZ uses frequently throughout “A” (see esp. 4.15.12-21, 14.338.3-343.9, 15.366.14-367.20, 18.405.3-33). In a surviving letter to his mother, Bach’s secretary, Johann Elias, requested some flowers for Anna Magdalena, Bach’s second wife, whom he refers to as Frau Muhme: “The flowers arrived, and (10 October 1740) he tells of the Frau Muhme’s delight on receiving six beautiful plants, ‘which have given her more pleasure even than children find in their Christmas gifts; she nurtures them as tenderly as a child lest harm befall them’” (244).

562.4    waggery, / gravity (patience upon approbation) can / creep…: through 562.7 from Christopher Smart (1721-1771), Jubilate Agno (see 562.10); LZ owned the important edition by William H. Bond (1954) and selects from various fragments (the following are not consecutive):
“For he is a mixture of gravity and waggery.”
“For he can set up with gravity which is patience upon approbation.”
“For he can creep.”
“Let Aldrich, house of Aldrich rejoice with the Tincalo or Tricolor, a leaf without a flower or the flower of a leaf.”
“Man and earth suffer together.”

562.8    cold-ridge inventoried / abreast of ‘10 years—80 flowers’: cold-ridge < Coleridge. LZ ran across a list of flowers and plants copied  into Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Notebooks (Leggott 72, 387), during a period when he lived at Keswick, which he planned to use in an autobiographical poem. LZ was already gathering materials for his next project 80 Flowers, originally intended to be worked on for ten years and completed by his 80th birthday. See 538.31.

562.10  Jubilant agony: < Jubilate Agno by Christopher Smart, see 562.4. Smart’s Latin title actually means “Rejoice in the Lamb.”

562.11  dive-dapper peering through a wave / . . another way . . pied-billed grebe: from Shakespeare, “Venus and Adonis,” lines 86 and 90. A dive-dapper or dabchick is a pied-billed grebe:
Upon this promise did he raise his chin
Like a dive-dapper peering through a wave,
Who, being look’d on, ducks as quickly in;
So offers he to give what she did crave;
   But when her lips were ready for his pay
   He winks, and turns his lips another way.

562.12  rock-nerve: from Robert Browning (1812-1889), “Aristophanes’ Apology,” line 1539 (see 562.14, as well as 550.16):
                        Yet solid stuff
Will ever and anon, obeying star,
(And what star reaches rock-nerve like an eye?)
Swim up to surface, spout or mud or flame,
And find no more to do than sink as fast.

562.13  eye against a lamp-post—eh— […] that punctual / servant of all work, th’sun: from Charles Dickens (1812-1870), The Pickwick Papers (1837), Chap. 2: “‘Here, waiter!’ shouted the stranger, ringing the bell with tremendous violence, ‘glasses round—brandy-and-water, hot and strong, and sweet, and plenty,—eye damaged, Sir? Waiter! Raw beef-steak for the gentleman’s eye—nothing like a raw beef-steak for a bruise, sir; cold lamp-post very good, but lamp-post inconvenient—damned odd standing in the open street half an hour, with your eye against a lamp-post—eh,—very good—he! Ha!’ And the stranger, without stopping to take breath, swallowed at a draught full half a pint of the reeking brandy-and-water, and flung himself into a chair with as much ease as if nothing uncommon had occurred.”
[Opening of Chap. 2] “That punctual servant of all work, the sun, had just risen, and begun to strike a light on the morning of the thirteenth of May, one thousand eight hundred and twenty-seven, when Mr. Samuel Pickwick burst like another sun from his slumbers, threw open his chamber window, and looked out upon the world beneath.”

562.14  . . in each heart . .: from Robert Browning, “Aristophanes’ Apology,” line 33 (see 562.12):
Me, Euthukles, and, hearted in each heart,
Athenai, undisgraced as Pallas’ self,
Bear to my birth-place, Helios’ island-bride,
Zeus’ darling: thither speed us, homeward-bound […]

562.15  th’sun / tones: from Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), Faust Part I, the opening of the Prologue in Heaven spoken by the Archangel Raphael: “Die Sonne tönt nach alter Weise” (The sun intones its ancient way).

562.16  Hunting! ho city stone: from Jules Laforgue (1860-1887), “L’Hiver qui vient” (Approach of Winter), although transmuted beyond recognition. LZ’s notebooks have several very free translation-improvisations on a few lines, particularly:”Tous les bancs sont mouillés, tant les bois sont rouillés, / Et tant les cors ont fait ton ton, ont fait ton taine! . . .” (All the benches are wet, the woods are so rusty and the horns have sounded tantivvy, have sounded tantara…, trans. Graham Dunstan Martin). The ton ton chimes with tönt/tones of the preceding phrase and then becomes “stone” in association with the bench and/or city.

562.17  labours clocked though it ‘strikes,’ / ale’s sorrow cheer poured…: through 562.20 primarily from Thomas Hood (1799-1845). LZ previously used a different passage from the second poem excerpted below in TP 10.
“Epigram: The Superiority of Machinery”:
A Mechanic his labor will often discard
   If the rate of his pay he dislikes:
But a clock—and its case is uncommonly hard—
   Will continue to work though it strikes.

From “Miss Kilmansegg and Her Precious Leg”:
For as ale and porter, when flat, are restored
Till a sparkling bubbling head they afford,
So sorrow is cheer’d by being pour’d
   From one vessel into another.

From “A Black Job,” first and last stanzas:
The history of human-kind to trace
   Since Eve—the first of dupes—our doom unriddled,
A certain portion of the human race
   Has certainly a taste for being diddled.
[…]
Because Humanity declares we must!
We’ve scrubb’d the Negroes till we’ve nearly killed ’em,
   And finding that we cannot wash them white,
   But still their negritude offends the sight,
      We mean to gild ’em!

562.19  ebony Images: from Charles Lamb (1775-1834), “Imperfect Sympathies,” from Essays of Elia; LZ’s source is probably English Prose, Vol. III: Walpole to Lamb, ed. William Peacock (Oxford UP, 1921): “In the Negro countenance you will often meet with strong traits of benignity. I have felt yearnings of tenderness towards some of these faces—or rather masks—that have looked out kindly upon one in casual encounters in the streets and highways. I love what Fuller beautifully calls—these ‘images of God cut in ebony.’ But I should not like to associate with them, to share my means and my good-nights with them—because they are black.” This paragraph immediately follows another expressing Lamb’s uneasiness with Jews.

562.20  50 / truths to a false conclusion: from William Hazlitt (1778-1830), “On Life in General”: “I conceived, too, that he [Edmund Burke] might be wrong in his main argument, and yet deliver fifty truths in arriving at a false conclusion.” See also below 562.26-29, 32-34.

562.22  diplomatpatriots slaveryribbons in lapel buttonholes: from Heinrich Heine (1797-1856), essay on “Don Quixote”: “Ah, well! I will not, like Ham, lift up the garment of my fatherland’s shame; but it is terrible how slavery has been made with us a matter for prating about, and how German philosophers and historians have tormented their brains to defend despotism, however silly or awkward, as reasonable and lawful. Silence is the honour of slaves, says Tacitus; these philosphers and historians maintain the contrary, and exhibit the badge of slavery in their buttonholes.”

562.23  Good thoughts in bad times: title of a 1645 volume of prayers and devotional meditations by Thomas Fuller (1608-1661). Charles Lamb edited a selection from Fuller and was instrumental in a revival of interest in his work. See quotation at 562.19.

562.24  sane genius violent undreamt judgment: from Charles Lamb (see 562.19), “Sanity of True Genius” (1826): “Let the most romantic of us, that has been entertained all night with the spectacle of some wild and magnificent vision, recombine it in the morning, and try it by his waking judgment. […] But the transitions in this episode are every whit as violent as in the most extravagant dream, and yet the waking judgment ratifies them.”

562.25  devouring ‘blades’ wilding gentle: from Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891), “Le Forgeron” (The Blacksmith), lines 33, 77: “De voir des blés, des blés, des épis pleins de grain, / De penser que cela prépare bien du pain? […] / —Mais voilà, c’est toujours la même vieille histoire! / […] Nos nous sentions si forts, nous voulions être doux!” (To see the wheat, the wheat, the ears full of grain, / to think that it promises plenty of bread? […] / we felt so strong, we wanted to be gentle).

562.25  angel / in barber’s hands: from Arthur Rimbaud, “Oraison du soir” (Evening Orison): “Je vis assis, tel qu’un ange aux mains d’un barbier” (I live sitting, like an angel in the hands of a barber).

562.26  never less / alone when alone has lit / up the hated…: through 562.29 from William Hazlitt (see 562.20, also 562.32-34), “On Going a Journey”: “I am never less alone than when alone”; and “On Familiar Style”: “I hate anything that occupies more space than it is worth.”

562.30  “politics reasons whore”: from André Chénier (1762-1794), “Iambe VIII”: “L’autre court, l’autre saute; et braillent, boivent, rient / Politiques et raisonneurs” (Another runs, another jumps, ‘politicans’ and discussers bray, drink, laugh; trans. Geoffrey Brereton).

562.30  the brain / has its weakness: from Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), Under the Greenwood Tree: “‘The brain has its weaknesses,’ murmured Mr. Spinks, waving his head ominously. Mr. Spinks was considered to be a scholar, having once kept a nightschool, and always spoke up to that level.”

562.31  comment’ll craw: from Victor Hugo (1802-1885), “Boöz Endormi,” line 49:
Une race naîtrait de moi! Comment le croire? (A race born from me! Can that be so?; trans. Geoffrey Brereton).

562.32  stolen apples spur running: from Charles Darwin (1809-1882), Autobiography (see 22.523.25 and 30): “When a very little boy I remember stealing apples from the orchard, for the sake of giving them away to some boys and young men who lived in a cottage not far off, but before I gave them the fruit I showed off how quickly I could run and it is wonderful that I did not perceive that the surprise and admiration which they expressed at my powers of running, was given for the sake of the apples. But I well remember that I was delighted at them declaring that they had never seen a boy run so fast!”

562.32  he’ll / forget his rote is his / in unbreath’d pleasure sometime: from William Hazlitt (see 562.20-21, 26-29), “On the Pleasure of Painting I”: “For a person to read his own works over with any great delight, he ought first to forget that he ever wrote them.” The “unbreath’d” is evidently suggested by Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream V.i:
Theseus: How shall we find the concord of this discord?
Philostrate: Hard-handed men that work in Athens here,
Which never labour’d in their minds till now;
And now have toil’d their unbreath’d memories
With this same play against your nuptial.

562.35  no protest . . wise . . provident . . reach: from Patricia Hutchins, Ezra Pound’s Kensington: An Exploration 1885-1913 (London: Faber, 1965); from a passage that first quotes at length from a New Age article (Jan. 1913), “Through Alien Eyes,” in which EP closely observes two street people he sees in London and then remarks, followed by Hutchins’ comment: “‘They neither asked nor gave one time to offer them alms. They made no protest…’ Pound then formulates some ideas on practical education and mentions American attempts to clear the slums and how the Jews, ‘this wise and provident people’ put their children to trades. Over there he had watched the slum children using trams to reach the parks” (150-151) (Scroggins Bio 422).

562.36  A living calendar, names inwreath’d / Bach’s innocence…: the last 26 lines of “A”-23 weave an alphabetic acrostic modeled on Chaucer’s “An A.B.C.” (see 563.8), also known as “La priere de Nostre Dame” since it is a song in praise of the Madonna. In Bottom LZ quotes from Chaucer’s poem and remarks that he uses the alphabet as a “template…to sing to her” (116). The alphabet appears in sequence with most but not all letters appearing as either capitalized and/or at the beginning a line. The phrase “living calendar” can be found in William Wordsworth, “To My Sister,” although it is hard to say whether LZ had this in mind:
No joyless forms shall regulate
Our living calendar:
We from to-day, my Friend, will date
The opening of the year.

562.37  Bach’s innocence longing Handel’s untouched: this is a bridge between the fact that “A” begins with Bach and ends with Handel in “A”-24 (already “composed” some years previous), which may be “untouched” by LZ in the sense that it was entirely arranged by CZ. Also this echoes Bach’s failure to meet his contemporary Händel alluded to at 18.405.11-13 (HRC 37.4). Cf. 18.406.9-10.

563.1    Cue in new-old quantities—’Don’t / bother me’: LZ’s notebook (HRC 37.11) indicates that this combines at least two oblique references. First, to his work on Catullus with CZ and their attempt to homophonically mimic Catullus’ quantitative verse. Also the scene of Bottom’s dream in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, IV.1: while falling asleep Bottom says to Titania: “But, I pray you, let none of your people stir me: I have an exposition of sleep come upon me”—and then later, he awakes: “When my cue comes, call me, and I will answer,” after which follows the famous passage where he expounds his dream. 

563.3    Eden garden labor: aside from the obvious biblical reference, according to Leggott (66) there is a buried allusion here to Richard Eden, History of Travaile (1577), mentioned in Bottom 101.

563.3    For / series distributes harmonies, attraction Governs / destinies: refers to Charles-Marie Fourier (1772-1837), from his epitaph which is an epigrammic condensation of his social philosophy: “The series distributes the harmonies. The Attractions are proportionate to the Destinies.” This translation by Guy Davenport as transcribed in a letter to LZ dated 23 June 1974 (HRC 23.3). Fourier’s utopian socialism was based on the principle of universal harmony that would be possible with the lifting of all conventional social restraints, but ultimately its realization would have cosmic effects. He proposed an ideal society that would consist of relatively small and independent communities, and also a law of passional attractions that should determine all relationships.
            The Fourier series, developed by the unrelated French mathematician Baron Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier (1768-1830), is an infinite series whose terms are constants multiplied by sine and cosine functions and that can, if uniformly convergent, approximate a wide variety of functions (AHD).

563.5   Histories dye the streets: LZ’s notebook indicates this is from Guillaume Apollinaire, “Un Dernier Chapitre,” an uncollected poem that he found in Philippe Soupault, Guillaume Apollinaire, ou, Reflets de l’incendie (1927); see Apollinaire 158/159. In Apollinaire LZ prints this poem as a prose block, although he also translated it and included it as the final section of his “Sequence from The Writing of Guillaume Apollinaire,” published in the Columbia Review (1934)—a collage of passages from Apollinaire’s poetry, all of which are quoted in Apollinaire. LZ’s translation of “A Final Chapter” as follows:
All the people will hurry to the square
Whites and blacks and yellow men and a few red
Workers from factories whose chimneys will not be smoking because of the strike
Masons with plaster on their clothes 
Butcher boys their hands still bloody from the meat
Journeymen bakers pale with the flour sprinkling them
And the rank and file of clerks and the shopkeepers who once employed themselves
Women terrible to look at carrying children and some with others gripping their skirts
Poor women without shame in make-up and nodding strangely
The crippled the blind the maimed the one-handed the limping
Even some priest and a few dressed with elegance
And on the outskirts of the square the city will seem dead even to its old trembling.

563.6    doubts’ / passionate Judgment, passion the task: from Henry James, the story “The Middle Years” (1893), spoken by the main character, Dencombe, a novelist: “A second chance—THAT’S the delusion. There never was to be but one. We work in the dark—we do what we can—we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art” (Leggott 66).

563.8    Kalenderes enlumined: from Geoffrey Chaucer, “An A.B.C.” (also referred to as “La priere de Nostre Dame”); although at 562.36 LZ offers the translation for this phrase as “living calendar,” more literal would be “illuminated” or “made bright” (see Bottom 116-117):
Kalenderes enlumined ben they
That in this world ben lighted with thy name,
And who so goth to you the righte wey,
Him thar not dred in soule to be lame.

563.8    21-2-3: the birthdays of CZ, PZ and LZ were on the 21st, 22nd and 23rd respectively, CZ’s and LZ’s in Jan. and PZ’s in Oct. (Leggott 67).

563.8    nigher . . fire— / Land or: < Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864). The two italicized words are from a poem by Landor that LZ found in A Day-Book of Walter Savage Landor, chosen by John Bailey (Oxford UP, 1919), which is a selection of short excerpts from throughout Landor’s prose and poetry organized under the dates of the year. The poem from which LZ picks these words, “The leaves are falling, so am I” (sometimes given the title “Late Leaves”), is that for the date Oct. 22, which is PZ’s birthday (see preceding note). The following is the latter half of the poem:
   Winter may come: he brings but nigher
   His circle (yearly narrowing) to the fire
      Where old friends meet:
   Let him: now heaven is overcast
   And spring and summer both are past,
      And all things sweet.           (from Poems and Epigrams)

563.8    fire— / Land or—sea, air—gathered: the four elements: fire, earth, water, air. Also “sea” is for LZ always potentially “C” = CZ, as well as evoking his long-time interest in seeing.

563.10  Most art: < Mozart (see next).

563.10  donn’d one: < Don Juan. LZ’s notes indicate this refers to Kierkegaard’s Don Juan (HRC 37.11), presumably from Either/Or (1843), which includes a discussion of Mozart’s Don Giovanni; Kierkegaard was passionate about Mozart and especially this particular opera.

563.11  smiles ray immaterial Nimbus: from Charles Cros (1842-1888), “Scherzo” from Le Coffret de santa (1873) in Penguin Book of French Verse, vol. 3, trans. Geoffrey Brereton:
Ce ne sont pas choses charnelles
Qui font ton attrait non pareil,
Qui conservent à tes prunelles
Ces mêmes rayons de soleil.

Car les choses charnelles meurent,
Ou se fanent à l’air réel,
Mais toujours tes beautés demeurent
Dans leur nimbe immatériel.
“It is not carnal things that make your charm unequalled, that keep those same sunbeams in your pupils.
For carnal things die or wither in fresh air. But your beauties always remain within their spiritual halo.”

563.11  Oes: an archaic form of Os, can mean circles or stars, as in the following context from Shakespeare (Leggott 224): A Midsummer Night’s Dream III.ii: “Lysander: Fair Helena! Who more engilds the night / than all yon fiery oes and eyes of light.” In Bottom, LZ quotes from Francis Bacon’s Essays, speaking of the stage setting for masques: “The colors that show best by candlelight are white, carnation, and a kind of sea-water green; and oes and spangs as they are of no great cost, so they are of most glory” (343). Obviously “Oes” echos the preceding “Nimbus” (halo) as well.

563.12  thrice-urged / posato (poised) ‘support from the / source’—horn-note out of a / string (Quest returns answer— ‘to / rethink the Caprices’): from the liner notes to PZ’s recording of Niccolò Paganini: The 24 Caprices for Solo Violin (Vanguard 1970), recorded in 1969. Pasato, It. meaning sedate, quiet (or, as PZ suggests here, poised), used to indicate the tempo of the music; PZ points out that for all their reputation for speed, three of Paganini’s Caprices (Nos. 7, 15 and 23) are marked posato. A note to No. 18 indicates it should open with a “horn-like sound.” The phrases in quotation marks come from the following remarks: “Those who know of my ‘specialization’ in ‘new music’ may be surprised that I periodically relearn ‘accepted’ repertoire (primarily for synthesis of style)—and I had gradually come to the conclusion that the emphasis on speed alone did nothing to enhance the Caprices. I was fortunate in being able to obtain a photo-copy of the original mss. (courtesy G. Ricordi, Milano) as well as a Xerox of the first edition (Library of Congress) and I found sufficient discrepancies to warrant rethinking of the Caprices. (Actually—I must have decided to rethink and then looked for moral support from the source).” PZ notes are reproduced at his Musical Observations website: www.musicalobservations.com.

563.16  sawhorses: see “A”-7.

563.16  silver / all these fruit-trees tops: from Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet II.ii:
Romeo: Lady, by yonder blessed moon I swear
That tips with silver all these fruit-tree tops—
Juliet: O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon,
That monthly changes in her circled orb,
Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.

563.17  consonances / and dissonances only of degree: from Arnold Schönberg (1874-1951), Preliminary Exercises in Counterpoint (1963): “The difference between consonances and dissonances is, as this writer has stated, only one of degree. […] A composer is, of course, directed by his inspiration. But he must not be the slave of his ideas.”

563.18  never- / Unfinished: LZ’s notebooks (HRC 37.11) also indicate that he had in mind here the remark he believed attributed to J.S. Bach: “Unfinished is against the laws of the spirit” (see 12.130.1).

563.19  hairlike water of notes: apparently suggested by Leonardo da Vinci’s sketches of swirling hair-like water (see eddies of notes in the Da Vinci section of 22.529.29). In one of his notebooks Da Vinci remarks: “Observe the motion of the surface of the water, which resembles that of hair, which has two motions, of which one depends on the weight of the hair, the other on the direction of the curls; thus the water forms eddying whirlpools, one part of which is due to the impetus of the principal current and the other to the incidental motion and return flow.”

563.20  vital free as Itself: from Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), War and Peace, 2nd Epilogue, Chap. X: “In the experimental sciences what we know we call the laws of inevitability, what is unknown to us we call vital force. Vital force is only an expression for the unknown remainder over and above what we know of the essence of life. So also in history what is known to us we call laws of inevitability, what is unknown we call free will. Free will is for history only an expression for the unknown reminder of what we know about the laws of human life” (trans. Aylmer & Louise Maud).

563.20  impossible’s / sort-of think-cramp work x: from Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics (1967). LZ evidently used a bi-lingual edition and copied out the German in his notebook: “Man kann sich auch in eine Art Denkkrampf versetzen, in welchem man tut: als versuchte man, das Unmögliche zu denken und es gelänge nicht” (One can even get oneself into a thinking-cramp, in which one does as someone trying to think the impossible and not succeeding; trans. G.E.M Anscombe). Wittgenstein uses the phrase “mental cramp” various times in his later writings, such as on the opening page of The Blue Book, for what happens attempting to solve traditional philosophical paradoxes or puzzles. Leggott suggests (319) that “work x” may allude back to an Einstein anecdote that appears at 6.23.13.

563.21  moonwort: a fern, Botrychium Lunaria; also called lunary, which as well names the herb Lunaria annua or honesty (see 14.356.12, 15.375.26)—in fact these names tend to be confused as moonwort can also refer to honesty. LZ associates both plants with CZ: the C of her name suggesting the cresent moon (the fern segments of the moonwort are cresent-shaped), as well as the moon’s traditional feminine associations. Leggott discusses the appearances and significances of moonwort and honesty throughout “A” and 80 Flowers at some length (118-140).

563.22  music, thought, drama, story, poem: the five “parts” or voices of the L.Z. Masque or “A”-24 (see 24.564), which was compiled by CZ before “A”-22 & -23 were written.

563.23  parks’ sunburst—animals, grace notes: from an article in the New York Times Magazine for 31 Dec. 1972 on the great landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903), who designed numerous parks, including both Central Park in NYC and Prospect Park in Brooklyn. The article includes a photo with a caption reading: “People and sheep in the beautifully natural setting of Brooklyn’s Prospect Park in 1914; here at least Olmsted’s art, his ability to sculpture landscape (where ‘animals might be used as grace notes’), was preserved intact during his lifetime.” The quoted phrase is from remarks of Olmsted on English parks. In music, grace notes are embellishment, whether vocal or instrumental, not essential to the harmony or melody of a piece, such as an appoggiatura, a trill, a turn, etc. (CD); see 6.21.2.

563.24  z-sited path are but us: < arbutus; see 552.6. Arbutus Path was the street where PZ lived in Belle Terre, a village just outside of Port Jefferson, NY on the north shore of Long Island where LZ and CZ lived at the time “A”-23 was written (Ahearn 191). The trailing arbutus appears a number of times in “A”-22 and “A”-23: see 22.520.34, 23.551.16 and also at least indirectly at 552.6. LZ’s notebook indicates he looked up “sited” in his Century Dictionary and found: 
sited, Having a site or position; situated; located; placed.
          A farm-house they call Spelunca, sited
       By the sea-side, among the Fundane hills.
                                                  B. Jonson, Sejanus, iv. 1.
     Nuremberg in Germany is sited in a most barren soil.
                   Burton, Anat. of Mel., To the Reader, p. 59.