The Anathemata
The Lady of the Pool (continued)
May she rest in Arthur’s bosom
I said, and signed me against the General Resurrection.
After what narrating I were something put for wind.
But to what he answered nothing
but seemed shook down to more comfortable matters
which served well
for now was full dusk and
the replete moon, wore, I thought, a wry and homely smile.
But, captain, from that
most august eve I saw him no more.
They come and they go, captain.
But by what lode’s regimen
or Jacob’s staff ’ld y’r bearings be took in those waters?a
—these freestone masons
has queer runes, captain.
But he were as cunning
a tow-haired Jute as ever plumbed an’ levelled dark I-tie-wise
—and they be fairish artiers, captain, from Maidstone way1 —
as can pier a stream-bed with any pontiffb or gauge from base
to apex to satisfy a Rhodópis—entasis and all.2
David Jones notes
1 Owing, it is believed, to previous Frankish contacts, the Jutes of Kent are known to have had a higher material culture than the other Teutonic settlers in Britain, and there are reasons for thinking that a tradition of civilization was less disrupted in Kent than in other parts of the island.
2 Cf. Tennyson, The Princess, ‘The Rhodope that built the pyramid’.
Just as in ancient Greece, columns were made fuller at the middle to prevent any appearance of concavity so, in Egypt, were the pyramid-surfaces made subtly convex for the same reason; and in the middle-ages, spires were sometimes given this same entasis and again for the same reason.
additional notes
DJ note 2: Rhodopis was a celebrated 6th-century BCE Greek hetaera, of Thracian origin. There was a tale current in Greece that Rhodopis built the third pyramid of Giza with the profits from her trade (which was the same as the Lady of the Pool, but with a richer clientele). The 5th-century BCE Greek historian Herodotus takes great pains to show the absurdity of the story, but the story persisted and is related by the 1st-century CE Roman author Pliny the Elder as an unquestioned fact. It is undoubtedly false.
a an extended metaphor. lode’s regiment: the rules for navigation by the North Star; Jacob’s staff: a simple device to measure angles, later replaced by the more precise sextants; those waters: matters of love; queer runes: strange expressions and behaviour.
b pontiff: from pontifex, in its literal sense of ‘bridge-builder’.
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