A book sent to a fellow singer
With a Copy of A House of Pomegranates
"May find that golden maidens dance through thee."
Poem
Go, little book,To him who, on a lute with horns of pearl,Sang of the white feet of the Golden Girl:And bid him lookInto thy pages: it may hap that heMay find that golden maidens dance through thee.
In brief
SummaryThe speaker sends a book on its way to another singer. He addresses the book itself, 'Go, little book', and tells it to go to the man who, 'on a lute with horns of pearl', sang 'of the white feet of the Golden Girl'. The book is to bid him look into its pages, where he may find 'that golden maidens dance through thee'. In six lines the poem pays a compliment to the reader and makes a modest claim for the book: it hopes to hold something of his golden music.
Key themes
"Go, little book"
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The poem opens with an old formula for sending a book into the world: 'Go, little book'. The speaker sends it 'To him who, on a lute with horns of pearl, / Sang of the white feet of the Golden Girl'. The recipient is not named. He is known only by his song and his instrument, a lute adorned with pearl, which marks him as a maker of rare and delicate music, and by the subject of his song, a golden girl dancing on white feet.
In the last three lines the book is told to 'bid him look / Into thy pages'. The speaker hopes, without insisting, 'it may hap that he / May find that golden maidens dance through thee'. The phrase answers the singer's own 'Golden Girl', so the gift is also a compliment: the book offers back to him something like his own art. The whole poem is a single sentence, moving from a command to the book to a quiet hope about its reader.
Characters
The singer of the Golden Girl
The book's recipient
The unnamed man to whom the book is sent, who once 'Sang of the white feet of the Golden Girl' on 'a lute with horns of pearl'. The speaker hopes that, looking into its pages, he will find 'golden maidens' dancing there.
Themes
Poet to poet
The poem speaks from one artist to another. The recipient is known only by what he has made: he 'Sang of the white feet of the Golden Girl' on 'a lute with horns of pearl'. The book goes to him in the hope that he will recognise his own world in it, finding 'golden maidens' dancing through its pages. Praise and gift are the same gesture.
The book as messenger
The speaker addresses the book, not its reader: 'Go, little book', 'bid him look / Into thy pages'. Treating the volume as a messenger with its own errand lets the speaker stay modest. He claims only that 'it may hap', that it may happen by chance, that the reader finds something golden there.
Quotes
Context
The title presents the poem as an inscription sent with a copy of A House of Pomegranates. It is a single sentence of six lines, rhyming ABBACC, and it addresses the book with 'Go, little book', an old formula poets have used to send their work into the world. The recipient is not named in the text; he appears only as the singer of 'the Golden Girl'.
About this edition
- Text: the complete work from Standard Ebooks, released into the public domain (CC0 1.0). We change only the layout.
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