The Seventeenth Canto is a beautiful poem. It opens with the wonderfully evocative line, “So that the vines burst from my fingers.” For the first time thus far, Pound has almost written a pastoral poem (not strictly speaking, “pastoral” as being about shepherds, but more like Wordsworth’s The Excursion or Virgil’s Eclogues). He even manages to write about man-made structures in the loving terms usually reserved for nature.

”                    There, in the forest of marble,
”                    the stone trees — out of water —
”                    the arbours of stone —
”                    marble leaf, over leaf,
”                    silver, steel over steel,
”                    silver beaks rising and crossing,
”                    prow set against prow,
”                    stone, ply over ply,
”                    the gilt beams flare of an evening”