On Sat, 30 May 1998 15:50:00 -0400 wrote...
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Chaucer's ME "dight":  appoint, furnished, dressed, prepared (Baugh's Chaucer)
Anglo Saxon OE "diht":  arrangement, "dihtan" to arrange, compose (Halls AS
dictionary)
Milton, like Pound a couple hundred years later, was using an archaism.
 
It occurs to me that the reference in this early poem is probably simpler
>and less strained than "dichten = condensare." I'd guess it could have
>originated with a poem that almost everybody used to read in high school:
>Milton's "Il Penseroso," with its church
>
>With antick Pillars massy proof,
>And storied Windows richly dight,
>Casting a dimm religious light. (158-60)
>
>In the text I'm copying from, _Samson Agonistes and Shorter Poems_ (Crofts
>Classics, 1950), A.E. Barker footnotes "dight" as "decorated."
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>--
>Jonathan Morse
>Department of English
>University of Hawaii at Manoa
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>
>
 
Robert E. Kibler
Department of English
University of Minnesota
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                fortunatus et ille, deos qui novit agrestis,
                Panaque Silvanumque senem Nymphasque sorores.