To have, with decency, knocked
        That a Blunt should open

How about an allusion to _non dulce non et decor_  ?
Tim Romano


> P.S. 2. "Decency" and "Decorum" -- decent from L. decens, pres. part. of
decere,
> to be fitting, suit.
> Roy Pearce in *Historicism Once More* (I'm working from memory of the
title) in an
> essay on Barlow, Whitman, and Pound suggests that Pound believed that an
absolute
> decorum maintained by force of will could replace plot. (That's a
paraphrase from
> memory -- don't trust it.) Canto 81 seems almost to be a sort of
summarizing
> Canto. One could hypthetically imagine the Cantos as ending with the line
>                                 all in the diffidence that faltered . . .
> Regardless of what one thinks of its politics or its anti-materialist
metaphysics,
> the poem is a fantastic exercise of the will which seems to merit the
epithet
> "heroic."
>
>