Canto VI

WHAT you have done, Odysseus,

We know what you have done...

And that Guillaume sold out his ground rents

(Seventh of Poitiers, Ninth of Aquitain).

5

“Tant las fotei corn auzirets

“Cen e quatre vingt et veit vetz... ”

The stone is alive in my hand, the crops

will be thick in my death-year...

Till Louis is wed with Eleanor

10

And had (He, Guillaume) a son that had to wife

The Duchess of Normandia whose daughter

Was wife to King Henrye maire del rei jove...

Went over sea till day's end (he, Louis, with Eleanor)

Coming at last to Acre.

15

“Ongla, oncle ” saith Arnaut

Her uncle commanded in Acre,

That had known her in girlhood

(Theseus, son of Aegeus)

And he, Louis, was not at case in that town,

20

And was not at ease by Jordan

As she rode out to the palm-grove

Her scarf in Saladin's cimier.

Divorced her in that year, he Louis,

divorcing thus Aquitaine.

25

And that year Plantagenet married her

(that had dodged past 17 suitors)

Et quand lo reis Lois lo entendit

mout er fasché.

Nauphal, Vexis, Harry joven

30

In pledge for all his life and life of all his heirs

Shall have Gisors, and Vexis, Neufchastel

But if no issue Gisors shall revert...

“Need not wed Alix... in the name

Trinity holy indivisible... Richard our brother

35

Need not wed Alix once his father's ward and...

But whomso he choose...for Alix, etc...

Eleanor, domna jauzionda, mother of Richard,

Turning on thirty years (wd. have been years before this)

By river-marsh, by galleried church-porch,

40

Malemorte, Correze, to whom:

“My Lady of Ventadour

“Is shut by Eblis in

“And will not hawk nor hunt

nor get her free in the air

45

“Nor watch fish rise to bait

“Nor the glare-wing’d flies alight in the creek’s edge

“Save in my absence, Madame.

‘Que la lauzeta mover’

"Send word I ask you to Eblis

50

you have seen that maker

“And finder of songs so far afield as this

“That he may free her,

who sheds such light in the air.”

E lo Sordels si fo di Mantovana,

55

Son of a poor knight, Sier Escort,

And he delighted himself in chançons

And mixed with the men of the court

And went to the court of Richard Saint Boniface

And was there taken with love for his wife

60

Cunizza, da Romano,

That freed her slaves on a Wednesday

Masnatas et servos, witness

Picus de Farinatis

and Don Elinus and Don Lipus

65

sons of Farinato de’ Farinati

“free of person, free of will

“free to buy, witness, sell, testate.”

A marito subtraxit ipsam...

dictum Sordellum concubuisse:

70

“Winter and Summer I sing of her grace,

As the rose is fair, so fair is her face,

Both Summer and Winter I sing of her,

The snow makyth me to remember her.”

And Cairels was of Sarlat...

75

Theseus from Troezene

And they wd. have given him poison

But for the shape of his sword-hilt.

—
Ezra Pound

A Draft of XXX Cantos, 1930