Have We Lost the Greatest Friend of All?

An Easter ballad and the Gospels

Ezra Pound was an American poet of some renown. I’m not actually familiar with Pound’s work, only the poem I’m going to share below (and for unrelated reasons, private correspondence he had with the Greek teacher W. H. D. Rouse on the latter’s translation of Homer).

The poem below might be Pound’s greatest. I don’t know. The reception was high and wide, and Pound himself said of the poem that “for the first time in my life I had written something that ‘everyone could understand.” (Ruthven, Guide to Ezra Pound’s Persona, 41). I once read that someone somewhere wore out the paper it was printed on—and his friends’ patience—reciting it to everyone he met.

The poem is an expression of what’s sometimes called “muscular Christianity,” and a response to what Pound thought was a “certain sort of cheap irreverence,” about the person of Jesus.

It is one of my favourite poems, and I read it every Easter.

I share it below, and then comment on some points of interest re: the New Testament. I’m no interpreter of poems, so take it for no more than what I’ve said it is.

It is from the perspective of Simon the Zealot, and is a ballad. It is written in an early modern English dialect; the line “ha’ we lost the goodliest fere o’ all” could be rendered “have we lost the greatest friend of all?” and so on.

“The Ballad of the Goodly Fere” by Ezra Pound

Simon Zelotes speaking after the Crucifixion. Fere=Mate, Companion.

Ha' we lost the goodliest fere o' all
For the priests and the gallows tree?
Aye lover he was of brawny men,
O' ships and the open sea.

When they came wi' a host to take Our Man
His smile was good to see,
"First let these go!" quo' our Goodly Fere,
"Or I'll see ye damned," says he.

Aye he sent us out through the crossed high spears
And the scorn of his laugh rang free,
"Why took ye not me when I walked about
Alone in the town?" says he.

Oh we drank his "Hale" in the good red wine
When we last made company,
No capon priest was the Goodly Fere
But a man o' men was he.

I ha' seen him drive a hundred men
Wi' a bundle o' cords swung free,
That they took the high and holy house
For their pawn and treasury.

They'll no' get him a' in a book I think
Though they write it cunningly;
No mouse of the scrolls was the Goodly Fere
But aye loved the open sea.

If they think they ha' snared our Goodly Fere
They are fools to the last degree.
"I'll go to the feast," quo' our Goodly Fere,
"Though I go to the gallows tree."

"Ye ha' seen me heal the lame and blind,
And wake the dead," says he,
"Ye shall see one thing to master all:
'Tis how a brave man dies on the tree."

A son of God was the Goodly Fere
That bade us his brothers be.
I ha' seen him cow a thousand men.
I have seen him upon the tree.

He cried no cry when they drave the nails
And the blood gushed hot and free,
The hounds of the crimson sky gave tongue
But never a cry cried he.

I ha' seen him cow a thousand men
On the hills o' Galilee,
They whined as he walked out calm between,
Wi' his eyes like the grey o' the sea,

Like the sea that brooks no voyaging
With the winds unleashed and free,
Like the sea that he cowed at Genseret
Wi' twey words spoke' suddently.

A master of men was the Goodly Fere,
A mate of the wind and sea,
If they think they ha' slain our Goodly Fere
They are fools eternally.

I ha' seen him eat o' the honey-comb
Sin' they nailed him to the tree.

And now some comments.

Who is Simon the Zealot?

Simon the Zealot (Acts 1:13, Luke 6:15) is one of the Twelve, and is Simon “the Canaanite” mentioned in Matt 10:4 and Mark 3:18 (Luke likely translates the Aramaic word קנאה as “zealot,” Mark and Matthew transliterate the word as “Cananean”). The designation “Zealot” is a bit of a challenge, since reference to the revolutionary movement proper would have technically been anachronistic at the time. It wasn’t until after 66 CE that a fairly narrowly-described group of peasant brigands, known as “Zealots” (e.g. in Josephus, Wars, 2.651), were seen to be a formal group. Simon instead could have been part of a known group who later comprised the revolutionary Zealots. He was probably a nationalist; say, opposite end of the ideological spectrum from Levi/Matthew the tax collector.

In any event, why would Pound choose this Simon? It is interesting. The ballad is a memoir of a zealot, where Jesus is seen to be strong, yes, but his greatest act is his would-be ignominious death. The zealot has found his strong leader, but rather than being taken with nationalistic (potentially violent) pride, is rather wholly taken by the person of Jesus, admiring his death above all, and remembering his resurrection from the dead.

He also of course shares the name with the most prominent of the Twelve—Simon Peter. But relative to Peter, almost nothing is known of Simon the Zealot (there is some later data, but it’s relatively slim and wholly questionable).

But there’s a quasi historiographical effect here in the poem—as if we have gone into the archives and dug up the diary of a relative unknown, rather than the memoirs of the high-ranking member of the group. The effect is that this has the ring of truth a hidden memoir would have. In other words, we come to it with different expectations than we would if the poem was prefaced “Simon Peter, speaking after the crucifixion.”

The “Gallows Tree”

When I read “gallows” I think of the noose. In Old English, however, “gallows” is used to refer to the cross of the crucifixion (“gallows”, plural, two poles). Hence they didn’t “tie the knot” but “drave the nails” and “nailed him to the tree.”

“He loved the open sea”

Jesus is often travelling in the Gospels, and at many times he is on the sea. Jews were not seafaring peoples historically and so the charming mystique of the sea in Western literature is hard to project onto the biblical narrative, where the sea is often (but not always) pictured as a domain of chaos. It is also pictured in the Bible as just the sea, the place where fishermen worked and on which one had to travel to get somewhere.

The Gospels present the sea in both ways: emblematic of the chaotic forces of nature (so Jesus calms the storm), and a place to work and travel. Jesus as lover of the open sea evokes both familiarity and a kind of power (captured in Pound’s the later lines, “mate of the wind and sea”). There’s a wistfulness to the image, as if Jesus has a special connection to the unbounded sea.

Seems to me that this is reflected in the later phrase that Jesus had “eyes like the grey of the sea.” Pound launches into a beautiful rendition of the calming of the storm:

Like the sea that brooks no voyaging
With the winds unleashed and free,
Like the sea that he cowed at Genseret
Wi' twey words spoke' suddently.

It effects the sense of a unique connection between Jesus and the sea. In another place, Pound wrote of the same event, and perhaps touched on this mysterious connection:

As once the twelve storm-tossed on Galilee
Put off their fear yet came not nigh
Unto the holier mystery

Pound, “Partenza di Vinezia,” in Ruthven, Guide, 43

That is, they experienced the “great calm” as Mark calls it, but also—still in fear , yet now of Jesus’ power—a great confusion: “who then is he—for even the wind and the sea obey him!”

[aside: Jesus’ “twey words spoke suddently” would refer to Mark’s Gospel (4:39), the only place the words of his rebuke are recorded. “Twey” means two, but in most English translations, Jesus says three: “peace, be still.” Perhaps Pound referred to the Greek “σιώπα, πεφίμωσο”—“be silent, be quiet”—but he self-admittedly did not read Greek well. Maybe he just remembered “be still.”]

““Why took ye not me . . . ?”

This cites a bit of sarcasm; I’ll come back around to the text alluded to in a moment.

First, Jesus jokes in a few places in the Gospels. My favourite is found in Luke 13:31–35. In this account, Jesus is warned by some friendly Pharisees that Herod Antipas wants to kill him. Jesus begins his reply, “Go and tell that fox. . .” and in calling Herod a fox (the animal is typical in rabbinic literature of low-cunning, unlike we expect), he cuts a sarcastic image. The joke comes next: Jesus says

Go and tell that fox, “look, I am casting out demons doing healings today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will be done. Even so, today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be making my way [to Jerusalem, where Herod wants to kill him], since it is not possible for a prophet to be killed outside Jerusalem.” Luke 13:32-33

I hate to explain the joke, I suppose it’s clear. It goes like this (paraphrase):

Pharisees: “Herod wants to kill you, leave!”

Jesus: “If Herod wants to kill me, he’d better wait until I’m in Jerusalem, because you know no prophet can die outside Jerusalem” (see the next verse, Luke 13:34—“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills prophets and stones those sent to it”).

Now, the “joke” Pound recounts.

Jesus is betrayed by Judas and the whole gang comes to get him, and he says (again, I paraphrase): you saw me in the temple every day, why didn’t you just take me then?” (Matt 26:55, Mk 14:49; Luke 22:53).

Again, he cuts a sarcastic figure, doesn’t he? Sarcasm in the face of impending trial and torture can be—and in this case is—a sign of nobility. And Jesus’ nobility is clear in the Johannine account, also alluded to by Pound: “first let these go” (cf. John 18:8). He is ready to accept what’s coming on his own.

So, “Jesus jokes,” but I’m almost loathe to say it like that. Some people seem to love to bring Jesus down to our level—but he isn’t callow or flippant like me; he doesn’t say useless or crude or crass things. He says sarcastic things, evocative and provocative things, but all with this air of detached nobility. This is humour of a kind. Almost . . . “British”? :)

How can Jesus’ humour be presented for what it is—the divine nobility in the face of human futility? Pound does a wonderful job: “and the scorn of his laugh rang free.”

“No capon priest . . . no mouse of the scrolls”

A capon is a castrated rooster. Pound expresses the masculinity of Jesus over against a “castrated priest”: Jesus is a “man of men.” As I said above, Jesus’ love for the open sea is also presented as a sign of his powerful presence, and Pound here juxtaposes this “seafaring” nature of Jesus with what he sees as another weaker form, the “mouse of the scrolls.” The frequent encounters of the scribes against Jesus come to mind. It isn’t that the scribe as such is somehow like a “capon priest,” but that Jesus is clearly disassociated from the kind of scribal sophistry exemplified in those enemies of his who tried to trip him up with legal arguments.

“One thing to master all. . .”

The apex of the ballad comes in the depiction of Jesus’ death as that of a brave man. It is his greatest act. And Pound is right, it is the great act of Jesus. But there’s more to it than an exemplary death: just before that stanza comes this confident expression that Jesus will “go to feast” though he “goes to the gallows tree.”

Jesus’ forward look towards his death, and the proclamation of his resurrection, is found in multiple places in the Gospels. One of the most poignant is in Luke 9:51, where Jesus, knowing the time was coming for him to be “received up”—i.e., to die—“set his face to go to Jerusalem.”

A confidence is exuded there, and it puts in relief what are to me the poem’s true heights:

“I ha’ seen him . . . sin’ they nailed him to the tree.”

Two verses stand out to me as summing the whole poem up:

A son of God was the Goodly Fere
That bade us his brothers be.
I ha' seen him cow a thousand men.
I have seen him upon the tree.

. . .

A master of men was the Goodly Fere,
A mate of the wind and sea,
If they think they ha' slain our Goodly Fere
They are fools eternally.

I ha' seen him eat o' the honey-comb
Sin' they nailed him to the tree.

I prefer the definite to the indefinite article in the first line above there, but I “get it.”

These lines stand out for the reason I stated earlier, that the whole poem comes with the air of a heretofore undiscovered memoir from an “obscure” person.

The effect is a common man’s awe at an unexpected Jesus he knew: he became our Greatest Friend; he was the son of God; he called us his brothers; I saw him in his life; I saw him on the tree.”

But then the poem ends by depicting a Jesus he yet knows. Like a movie where the final turn sets the beginning of a whole new tale. It’s all just about wrapped there in the death of Jesus, but no: they were wrong to think him dead—“fools eternally”—because I’ve eaten with him since they crucified him.

No empty tomb. No announcement. No dramatic appearance. No ascension. Just “I’ve seen him eat of the honeycomb, since they nailed him to the tree.” A beautiful and biblical, even Lukan depiction of Jesus’ physical, bodily resurrection.

Pound picks up, from Luke 24:42, that the resurrected Jesus ate “a piece of a broiled fish, and of an honeycomb” (the latter, a decently attested variant in Luke 24:42).

It is in the mundane nature of the telling that the sublime is affected. This is actually a unique element to the New Testament historiography. The “ring of truth,” yes, yet more than that: the elevation of normal states of affairs (and normal people) into a divine drama.

I would say more about that.

I do a little in my dissertation which I defend in a few weeks.

I suppose I should say more about it, and my other work actually focusing on the New Testament, research, etc.

All in due time.

Blessed Easter!

PS. re: the image above, in case you don't know