End to Torment: A Memoir of Ezra Pound

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“Hilda’s Book” is a small (13.7 cm. × 10.5 cm.) book, hand-bound and sewn in vellum, of 57 leaves (first leaf handwritten on vellum), with vellum closures. Due to heat or water damage, the first (vellum) leaf has fused to the paper leaf behind it (partially obscuring the poem beginning, “I strove a little book,” which has been deciphered with the help of another manuscript in the Pound Archive of the C.A.L., Beinecke Library, Yale University). The last paper leaf has also fused to the back vellum. The title, “Hilda’s Book,” is handwritten in black ink, in ornamental script, on the front cover. It has partially faded with time.

All but two of the poems are typed, with a blue ribbon; the first poem (“Child of the grass”) is handwritten in black ink in ornamental script on the opening vellum leaf, and some of the final words have worn away with age. Another poem (“Sancta Patrona”) is handwritten on the verso of leaf 55 (following the second page of “The Wind”), perhaps as an afterthought.

Pound’s corrections to the poems are handwritten in black ink or red pencil, often obscure because of smudging or fading. Where possible I have followed Pound’s notations in establishing the texts of the poems, although some readings are uncertain because of multiple corrections or illegibility of the notes due to age. A few of the poems show extensive handwritten revision, but most are typed fair copies.

The poems in “Hilda’s Book” were composed during the first years of Pound’s friendship with Hilda Doolittle, 1905-07, the period recalled in her memoir, End to Torment. Four of the poems were later published, with some changes, in Pound’s early volumes: “La Donzella Beata,” “Li Bel Chasteus,” “Era Venuta” (as “Comraderie”), and “The Tree.” The poem entitled “To draw back into the soul of things. Pax” is included in another version (“Sonnet of the August Calm”) in the San Trovaso Notebook of 1908, as is “The Banners” (“Fratello Mio Zephyrus”). The poems from the San Trovaso Notebook are published in the Collected Early Poems of Ezra Pound (New York, 1976). Variant readings and publication histories of the early poems are given in the notes to that book. The poems of “Hilda’s Book,” and others in the San Trovaso Notebook, are among many other early poems addressed to Hilda (as “Is-hilda” or “Ysolt”) which remain unpublished, and are now in the Pound Archive at Yale.

M.K.

Child of the grass

The years pass Above us

Shadows of air All these shall Love us

Winds for our fellows

The browns and the yellows

Of autumn our colors

Now at our life’s morn. Be we well sworn

Ne’er to grow older

Our spirits be bolder At meeting

Than e’er before All the old lore

Of the forests & woodways

Shall aid us: Keep we the bond & seal

Ne’er shall we feel

Aught of sorrow

[…]

Let light [?] flow about thee

As […?] a cloak of air [?]

I strove a little book to make for her,

Quaint bound, as ’twere in parchment very old,

That all my dearest words of her should hold,

Wherein I speak of mystic wings that whirr

Above me when within my soul do stir

Strange holy longings

That may not be told

Wherein all autumn’s crimson and fine gold

And wold smells subtle as far-wandered myrrh

Should be as burden to my heart’s own song.

I pray thee love these wildered words of mine:

Tho I be weak, is beauty alway strong,

So be they cup-kiss to the mingled wine

That life shall pour for us life’s ways among.

Ecco il libro: for the book is thine.

Being alone where the way was full of dust, I said

“Era mea

In qua terra

Dulce myrrtii floribus

Rosa amoris

Via erroris

Ad te coram veniam”

And afterwards being come to a woodland place where the sun was warm amid the autumn, my lips, striving to speak for my heart, formed those words which here follow.

La Donzella Beata

Soul

Caught in the rose hued mesh

Of o’er fair earthly flesh

Stooped you again to bear

This thing for me

And be rare light

For me, gold white

In the shadowy path I tread?

Surely a bolder maid art thou

Than one in tearful fearful longing

That would wait Lily-cinctured

Star-diademed at the gate

Of high heaven crying that I should come

To thee.

The Wings

A wondrous holiness hath touched me

And I have felt the whirring of its wings

Above me, Lifting me above all terrene things

As her fingers fluttered into mine

Its wings whirring above me as it passed

I know no thing therelike, lest it be

A lapping wind among the pines

Half shadowed of a hidden moon

A wind that presseth close

and kisseth not

But whirreth, soft as light

Of twilit streams in hidden ways

This is base thereto and unhallowed …

Her fingers layed on mine in fluttering benediction

And above the whirring of all-holy wings.

Ver Novum

Thou that art sweeter than all orchards’ breath

And clearer than the sun gleam after rain

Thou that savest my soul’s self from death

As scorpion’s is, of self-inflicted pain

Thou that dost ever make demand for the best I have to give

Gentle to utmost courteousy bidding only my pure-purged spirits live:

Thou that spellest ever gold from out my dross

Mage powerful and subtly sweet

Gathering fragments that there be no loss

Behold the brighter gains lie at thy feet.

If any flower mortescent lay in sun-withering dust

If any old forgotten sweetness of a former drink

Naught but stilt fragrance of autumnal flowers

Mnemonic of spring’s bloom and parody of powers

That make the spring the mistress of our earth—

If such a perfume of a dulled rebirth

Lingered, obliviate with o’er mistrust,

Marcescent, fading on the dolorous brink

That border is to that marasmic sea

Where all desire’s harmony

Tendeth and endeth in sea monotone

Blendeth wave and wind and rocks most drear

Into dull sub-harmonies of light; out grown

From man’s compass of intelligence,

Where love and fear meet

Having ceased to be:

All this, and such disconsolate finery

As doth remain in this gaunt castle of my heart

Thou gatherest of thy clemency

Sifting the fair and foul apart,

Thou weavest for thy self a sun-gold bower

By subtily incanted raed

Every unfavorable and ill-happed hour

Turneth blind and potently is stayed

Before the threshold of thy dwelling place

Holy, as beneath all-holy wings

Some sacred covenant had passed thereby

Wondrous as wind murmurings

That night thy fingers laid on mine their benediction

When thru the interfoliate strings

Joy sang among God’s earthly trees

Yea in this house of thine that I have found at last

Meseemeth a high heaven’s antepast

And thou thyself art unto me

Both as the glory head and sun

Casting thine own anthelion

Thru this dull mist

My soul was wont to be.

To One That Journeyeth with Me

“Naethless, whither thou goest I will go”

Let, Dear, this sweet thing be, if be it may

But hear this truth for truth,

Let hence and alway whither soe’er I wander there I know

Thy presence, if the waning wind move slow

Thru woodlands where the sun’s last vassals stray

Or if the dawn with shimmering array

Doth spy the land where eastward peaks bend low.

Yea all day long as one not wholly seen

Nor ever wholly lost unto my sight

Thou mak’st me company for love’s sweet sake

Wherefor this praising from my heart I make

To one that brav’st the way with me for night

Or day, and drinks with me the soft wind and the keen.

Domina

My Lady is tall and fair to see

She swayeth as a poplar tree

When the wind bloweth merrily

Her eyes are grey as the grey of the sea

Not clouded much to trouble me

When the wind bloweth merrily

My Lady’s glance is fair and straight

My Lady’s smile is changed of late

Tho the wind bloweth merrily

Some new soul in her eyes I see

Not as year-syne she greeteth me

When the wind bloweth merrily

Some strange new thing she can not tell

Some mystic danaan spell

When the wind bloweth merrily

Maketh her long hands tremble some

Her lips part, tho no words come

When the wind bloweth merrily

Her hair is brown as the leaves that fall

She hath no villeiny at all

When the wind bloweth merrily

When the wind bloweth my Lady’s hair

I bow with a murmured prayer

For the wind that bloweth merrily

With my lady far, the days be long

For her homing I’d clasp the song

That the wind bloweth merrily

Wind song: this is my Lady’s praise

What be lipped words of all men’s lays

When the wind bloweth merrily

To my Lady needs I send the best

Only the wind’s song serves that behest.

For the wind bloweth merrily.

The Lees

There is a mellow twilight ’neath the trees

Soft and hallowed as is a thought of thee,

Low soundeth a murmurous minstrelsy

A mingled evensong beneath the breeze

Each creeping, leaping chorister hath ease

To sing, to whirr his heart out, joyously;

Wherefor take thou my laboured litany

Halting, slow pulsed it is, being the lees

Of song wine that the master bards of old

Have left for me to drink thy glory in.

Yet so these crimson cloudy lees shall hold

Some faint fragrance of that former wine

O Love, my White-flower-o-the-Jasamin

Grant that the kiss upon the cup be thine.

Per Saecula

Where have I met thee? Oh Love tell me where

In the aisles of the past were thy lips known

To me, as where your breath as roses blown

Across my cheek? Where through your tangled hair

Have I seen the eyes of my desire bear

Hearts crimson unto my heart’s heart? As mown

Grain of the gold brown harvest from seed sown

Bountifully amid spring’s emeralds fair

So is our reaping now: But speak that spring

Whisper in the murmurous twilight where

I met thee mid the roses of the past

Where you gave your first kiss in the last,

Whisper the name thine eyes were wont to bear

The mystic name whereof my heart shall sing.

Shadow

Darkness hath descended upon the earth

And there are no stars

The sun from zenith to nadir is fallen

And the thick air stifleth me.

Sodden go the hours

Yea the minutes are molten lead, stinging and heavy

I saw her yesterday.

And lo, there is no time

Each second being eternity.

Peace! trouble me no more.

Yes, I know your eyes clear pools

Holding the summer sky within their depth

But trouble me not

I saw HER yesterday.

Peace! your hair is spun gold fine wrought and wondrous

But trouble me not

I saw her yester e’en.

Darkness hath filled the earth at her going

And the wind is listless and heavy

When will the day come: when will the sun

Be royal in bounty

From nadir to zenith up-leaping?

For lo! his steeds are weary, not having beheld her

Since sun set.

Oh that the sun steeds were wise

Arising to seek her!

The sun sleepeth in Orcus.

From zenith to nadir is fallen his glory

Is fallen, is fallen his wonder

I saw her yesterday

Since when there is no sun.

ONE WHOSE SOUL WAS

SO FULL OF ROSE

LEAVES STEEPED IN

GOLDEN WINE THAT THERE

WAS NO ROOM THEREIN

FOR ANY VILLEINY—

The Banners

My wandring brother wind wild bloweth now

October whirleth leaves in dusty air

September’s yellow gold that mingled fair

With green and rose tint on each maple bough

Sulks into deeper browns and doth endow

The wood-way with a tapis broidered rare — And where

King oak tree his brave panoply did wear

Of quaint device and colored

The dawn doth show him but a shorn stave now.

If where the wood stood in its pageantry

A castle holyday’d to greet its queen

Now but the barren banner poles be seen

Yea that the ruined walls stand ruefully

I make no grief, nor do I feel this teen

Sith thou mak’st autumn as spring’s noon to me.

“To draw back into the soul of things.” PAX

Meseemeth that ’tis sweet this wise to lie

Somewhile quite parted from the stream of things

Watching alone the clouds’ high wanderings

As free as they are in some wind-free sky

While naught but thoughts of thee as clouds glide by

Or come as faint blown wind across the strings

Of this odd lute of mine imaginings

And make it whisper me quaint things and high

Such peace as this would make death’s self most sweet

Could I but know, Thou maiden of the sun,

That thus thy presence would go forth with me

Unto that shadow land where ages’ feet

Have wandered, and where life’s dreaming done

Love may dream on unto eternity.

Green Harping

Thou that wearest the doeskins’ hue

“Hallew!” “Hallew!”

Tho the elfin horn shall call to you

’true be true

By the violets in thy leaf brown hair

’ware be ware

Tho the elfin knights shall find thee fair

’ware too fair

Tho hosts of night shall hail thee queen

In the Eringreen

The elf old queen hath sorrow seen

and teen much teen

Tho the shadow lords shall marshall their might

afore thy sight

Hold thou thy heart for my heart’s right

in their despite

Tho night shall dwell in thy child eyes

’wise be wise

That thy child heart to mine emprise

’plies replies

For night shall flee from the fore-sun’s flame

’shame in shame

Tho my heart to thee embeggared came

’same ’tis the same

That lordship o’er the light doth hold

’bold quite bold

And thee to my kingdom I enfold

By spell of old.

From another sonnet.

THY FINGERS MOVE AGAIN ACROSS

MY FACE

AS LITTLE WINDS THAT DREAM

BUT DARE IN NO WISE TELL THEIR

DREAM ALOUD-

Li Bel Chasteus

That castle stands the highest in the Land

Far seen and mighty

— Of the great hewn stones

What shall I say?

And deep foss-way

That far beneath us bore of old

A swelling turbid sea

Hill-born and torrent-wise

Unto the fields below, where

Staunch villein and wandered

Burgher held the land and tilled

Long labouring for gold of wheat grain

And to see the beards come forth

For barley’s even-tide.

But circle arched above the hum of life

We dwelt, amid the

Ancient boulders

Gods had hewn

And druids runed

Unto the birth most wondrous

That had grown

A mighty fortress while the world had slept

And we awaited in the shadows there

While mighty hands had laboured sightlessly

And shaped this wonder ’bove the ways of men.

Meseems we could not see the great green waves

Nor rocky shore by Tintagoel

From this our hold

But came faint murmuring as undersong

E’en as the burgher’s hum arose

And died as faint wind melody

Beneath our gates.

The Arches

That wind-swept castle hight with thee alone

Above the dust and rumble of the earth:

It seemeth to mine heart another birth

To date the mystic time, whence I have grown

Unto new mastery of dreams and thrown

Old shadows from me as of lesser worth.

For ‘neath the arches where the winds make mirth

We two may drink a lordship all our own.

Yea alway had I longed to hold real dreams

Not laboured things we make beneath the sun

But such as come unsummoned in our sleep,

And this above thine other gifts, meseems

Thou’st given me. So when the day is done

Thou meet me ’bove the world in this our keep.

Era Venuta

Some times I feel thy cheek against my face

Close pressing, soft as is the South’s first breath

That all the soft small earth things summoneth

To spring in woodland and in meadow space

Yea sometimes in a dusty man-filled place

Meseemeth somewise thy hair wandereth

Across my eyes as mist that halloweth

My sight and shutteth out the world’s disgrace

That is apostasy of them that fail

Denying that God doth God’s self disclose

In every beauty that they will not see.

Naethless when this sweetness comes to me

I know thy thought doth pass as elfin “Hail”

That beareth thee, as doth the wind a rose.

The Tree

I stood still and was a tree amid the wood

Knowing the truth of things unseen before

Of Daphne and the laurel bow

And that god-feasting couple old

That grew elm-oak amid the wold

‘Twas not until the gods had been

Kindly entreated and been brought within

Unto the hearth of their hearts’ home

That they might do this wonder thing.

Naethless I have been a tree amid the wood

And many new things understood

That were rank folly to my head before.

Being before the vision of Li Bel Chasteus

“E’en as lang syne from shadowy castle towers

“Thy striving eyes did wander to discern

“Which compass point my homeward way should be.”

For you meseem some strange strong soul of wine …

Hair some hesitating wind shall blow backward as some brown haze

That drifteth from thy face as fog that shifteth from fore some

Hidden light and slow discloseth that the light is fair—

Thu Ides Til

O thou of Maydes all most wonder sweet

That art my comfort eke and my solace

Whan thee I find in any wolde or place

I doon thee reverence as is most meet.

To cry thy prayse I nill nat be discreet

Thou hast swich debonairite and grace

Swich gentyl smile thy alderfayrest face

To run thy prayse I ne hold not my feet.

My Lady, tho I ne me hold thee fro

Nor streyve with thee by any game to play

But offer only thee myn own herte reede

I prey by love that thou wilt kindness do

And that thou keep my song by night and day

As shadow blood from myn own herte y-blede.

L’Envoi

Full oft in musty, quaint lined book of old

Have I found rhyming for some maiden quaint

In fashioned chançonnette and teen’s compleynt

The sweet-scent loves of chivalry be told

With fair conceit and flower manifold

Right subtle tongued in complex verse restraint

Against their lyric might my skill’s but faint.

My flower’s outworn, the later rhyme runs cold

Naethless, I loving cease me not to sing

Love song was blossom to the searching breeze

E’er Paris’ rhyming had availed to bring

Helen and Greece for towered Troy’s disease

Wherefor, these petals to the winds I fling

’Vail they or fail they as the winds shall please.

The Wind

“I would go forth into the night” she saith.

The night is very cold beneath the moon

’Twere meet, my Love that thou went forth at noon

For now the sky is cold as very death.

And then she drew a little sobbing breath

“Without a little lonely wind doth crune

And calleth me with wandered elfin rune

That all true wind-born children summoneth

Dear, hold me closer! so, till it is past

Nay I am gone the while. Await!”

And I await her here for I have understood.

Yet held I not this very wind — bound fast

Within the castle of my soul I would

For very faintness at her parting, die.

Sancta Patrona

Domina Caelae

Out of thy purity

Saint Hilda pray for me.

Lay on my forehead

The hands of thy blessing.

Saint Hilda pray for me

Lay on my forehead

Cool hands of thy blessing

Out of thy purity

Lay on my forehead

White hands of thy blessing.

Virgo caelicola

Ora pro nobis.

Rendez-vous

She hath some tree-born spirit of the wood

About her, and the wind is in her hair

Meseems he whisp’reth and awaiteth there

As if somewise he also understood.

The moss-grown kindly trees, meseems, she could

As kindred claim, for tho to some they wear

A harsh dumb semblance, unto us that care

They guard a marvelous sweet brotherhood

And thus she dreams unto the soul of things

Forgetting me, and that she hath it not

Of dull man-wrought philosophies I wot,

She dreameth thus, so when the woodland sings

I challenge her to meet my dream at Astalot

And give him greeting for the song he brings.