CHW wrote: "What a wonderful discovery by Matthew!  Immediately (to me) it becomes clear that Shade was shadowing Edsel Ford, not Frost. And thereby Wordsworth [ie The Prelude] at a further remove; but covering up his indebtedness. This is not dissimilar to the charlatan Ezra's concealment of his moonlight theft from poor, melancholy Lolita Iddings in 1911." 

 

Transatlantic distances are even wider bt us than those which separate his abode and MR's. In my case, cultural and language differences add mileage to our remove. 

Even so I'll try and cross these barriers to complain about the use of  "personalized" aims to direct CHW's clever and ironic observations.

I take it he was not seriously considering Edself Ford's lines as meriting enthusiastic exclamations of the sort "and what poetry!"Which wasn't interrupted even to ask/The time;" ..Astonishing!",  nor establishing any actual comparison bt. Shade's and Ezra Pound's shadowing, nor with Wordsworth's The Prelude --  and so on.

 

And yet, I think there is a hint of Wordsworth in the poem. 

Shade's: "There was a time in my demented youth" ( Canto Two) seems closer to certain verses in "Tintern Abbey"  than to Eliot's: "there will be time to murder and create".. 

Not shadows, but an atmosphere, like the one we may feel in: "I love you when you're standing in the lawn...I love you when you call me to admire... I love you when you're humming as you pack" (Browning?) or in the bard's in "Now shall I spy on beauty as none has... ("Spied on it yet" spoils a bit).

Although I lack the necessary instrumentation to pursue such vague resonances even a little further, whatever their source their emergence, in my mind, adds to my pleasure while reading PF.  

MR's find recreates the "image of desire" in us for his success gives us hope towards the discovery of other new literary (or very "factual") treasures in PF.   

Jansy