Carroll,
The "a tree amid the wood" is a metaphor for the archetypal. The "I stood
still" on the other hand is not mere metaphor but to be taken literally.
The event might well have taken place on a bustling city streetcorner for
all I know--but there's no mistaking the epiphanic nature of the archetypal
experience alluded to in this poem and in others from this period.

For the unfolding of the theme of the archetypal experience in Pound's early
poetry, see also "De Aegypto": "I have beheld the Lady of Life" and
"Francesca": "I who have seen you amid the primal things." and "Speech for
Psyche in the Golden Book of Apuleius": "And music flowing through me seemed
to open /Mine eyes upon new colours." and "Erat Hora":

    One hour was sunlit and the most high gods
    May not make boast of any better thing
    Than to have watched that hour as it passed.

And "Praise of Ysolt":

    And I: "I have no song,"
    Till my soul sent a woman as the sun:
    Yea as the sun calleth to the seed,
    As the spring upon the bough
    So is she that cometh, the mother of songs,
    She that holdeth the wonder words within her eyes

Notice how light, the gods, myth, and other "primal things" come together.

Tim Romano





----- Original Message -----
From: "Carrol Cox" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, June 13, 2000 8:03 PM
Subject: Re: Pound myth and religion


> Tim Romano wrote:
>
> > Carroll,
> >
> > "... had its origins _in the events_ recounted in this poem".
>
> Yup -- I didn't read your post carefully enough. But now I have
> a question. Are you saying that in some sense the events of the
> poem *happened*? That on some particular day Pound stood
> in the woods and had certain experiences which he then tried
> to enact in the poem? I'm interested.
>
> My own first reaction on just now reading "The Tree" is that I
> don't believe Pound. That is, from about *Lustra* (1915) on
> when I read a poem of Pound's or a line in the *Cantos* I
> "Believe" it in the sense that I believe that the poem's *persona*
> really did believe or in some sense experience what he is
> saying. When I read "The Tree" it seems to me that the poet
> thinks he *ought* to think or feel that way -- but I think he's
> lying. The rhythms are too flat -- and the tree created in the
> poem doesn't seem to have much connection, in the poet's
> own feeling, either to Baucis and Philemon or to Daphne.
>
> I'm willing to be convinced otherwise.
>
> Carrol Cox
>
>