At 07:38 AM 9/10/99 -1000, Richard Edwards wrote:
 
> Geoffrey Hill's strange new
>book-length poem, *The Triumph of Love* (Houghton Mifflin 1998/Penguin
>1999), contains the following lines in section (canto?) CXLVI:
>
>"Cursed be he that removeth his neighbour's mark:
>Mosaic statute, to which Ruskin was steadfast.
>(If Pound had stood so, he might not have foundered.)"
>
>Does anyone have any idea what Hill is getting at here?
 
I have little idea of anything Hill is getting at in his current work.
Everything he writes seems to be cross-referenced to something somewhere in
the British Library under "Protestant Reformation," but I can't find the
bibliography.
 
However: Ruskin understood every human activity to be religious insofar as
it was productive, and vice versa. For him, the old saying _Laborare est
orare_ was literally true. Hence his quixotic but noble attempt to conserve
ancient craftsmanly ideals in the St. George's Guild. Hence too his famous
example of the column inscribed _Adamo me fecit_ -- an example Pound
cribbed from him.
 
But Hill is Hill. I haven't yet read _The Triumph of Love_, but I suppose
it's possible he's saying, "Oh, if Mr. Pound had only adhered to the Church
of England. . . ."
 
Jonathan Morse