The Anathemata
The Lady of the Pool (continued)
On the ste’lyard2 on the Hill
weighed against our man-geld
between March and April
when bough begins to yield3
and West-wood springs new.
Such was his counting-house
whose queen was in her silent parlour
on that same hill of dolour
about the virid month of Averil
that the poet will call cruel.3
Such was her bread and honey4
when with his darling Body (of her body)
he won Tartary.2
Then was the droughts of Marcha moisted to the root by that shower that does all fruit engender—and do constitute what
they hallow
David Jones notes
2 See the Good Friday processional hymn Vexilla regis, verse 5.
‘Blessed tree on the branches of which hung the world’s ransom. It became the stelyard (statera) on which the body was weighed. And he bore off the spoil of Tartarus.’ (Tulitque praedam tartari.)
3 Cf. anon. thirteen-fourteenth-century poem Alisoun
‘Bytuene Mershe ant Averil
When spray biginneth to spring.’
Cf. also T. S. Eliot, Waste Land, I, 1.
4 Cf. Nursery Rhyme, Sing a Song of Sixpence, last verse.
additional notes
DJ note 2: the full text may be found here.
stelyard: a simple balance for the weighing of foodstuffs etc.
Tartarus: Hell.
a as well as all the other references, do not overlook the first two lines of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales:
‘Whan that Aprille with his shoures sote
The droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote’
see also
for West-wood see also page 92.
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