Dolmetsch

Yet
Ere the season died a-cold
Borne upon a zephyr's shoulder
I rose through the aureate sky
Lawes and Jenkins guard thy rest
Dolmetsch ever be thy guest,
Has he tempered the viol's wood
To enforce both the grave and the acute?
Has he curved us the bowl of the lute?
Lawes and Jenkins guard thy rest
Dolmetsch ever be thy guest,
Hast 'ou fashioned so airy a mood
To draw up leaf from the root?
Hast 'ou found a cloud so light
As seemed neither mist nor shade?


Then resolve me, tell me aright
If Waller sang or Dowland played.


Your eyen two wol sleye me sodenly
I may the beauté of hem nat susteyene


And for 180 years almost nothing.

[Ezra Pound, Canto LXXXI]