At the end of this poem the author appends the note:
The form and measure are those of Piere Vidal's "Ab
l'alen tir vas me l'aire." The song is fit only to be
sung, and is not to be spoken.
There are, here and there, deliberate archaisms or oddities (e.g., "herward"); there are deliberately arbitrary images, having their place in the total effect of the poem:
Red leaf that art blown upward and out and over
The green sheaf of the world ...
The lotos that pours
Her fragrance into the purple cup ...
Black lightning ... (in a more recent poem)
but no word is ever chosen merely for the tinkle; each has always its part in producing an impression which is produced always through language. Words are perhaps the hardest of all material of art: for they must be used to express both visual beauty and beauty of sound, as well as communicating a grammatical statement. It would be interesting to compare Pound's use of images with Mallarmé's; I think it will be found that the former's, by the contrast, will appear always sharp in outline, even if arbitrary and not photographic. Such images as those quoted above are as precise in their way as
Sur le Noel, morte saison,
Lorsque les loups vivent de vent ...
and the rest of that memorable Testament.
So much for the imagery. As to the "freedom" of his verse, Pound has made several statements in his articles on Dolmetsch which are to the point:
Any work of art is a compound of freedom and order. It is
perfectly obvious that art hangs between chaos on the one
side and mechanics on the other. A pedantic insistence upon
detail tends to drive out "major form." A firm hold on major
form makes for a freedom of detail. In painting men intent
on minutiae gradually lost the sense of form and form-
combination. An attempt to restore this sense is branded as
"revolution." It is revolution in the philological sense of
the term....
Art is a departure from fixed positions; felicitous
departure from a norm....
The freedom of Pound's verse is rather a state of tension due to constant opposition between free and strict. There are not, as a matter of fact, two kinds of verse, the strict and the free; there is only a mastery which comes of being so well trained that form is an instinct and can be adapted to the particular purpose in hand.