Towards the end of The Fifth Decad of Cantos (1937), resting between the historical turbulence of Cantos 48 and 50, celebrating the tranquillity of ancient Chinese order and applauding the pleasure and relaxation of pre-industrial labour, Pound's Canto 49 concludes on a note of particular quietude in its penultimate line: ‘The fourth; the dimension of stillness.’ A few years later, in a letter of June 1942 to Luigi Berti, we find a gloss on this quietude which remains one of only two open acknowledgements by Pound of the fourth dimension:

But such quietude and stillness are not achieved without a struggle – Canto 49 finishes ‘And the power over wild beasts.’ The syntax of this final couplet, compounded by the familiar disturbance of Pound's fragmentary exposition, renders uneasy any connection between its two halves. It is helpful only up to a point to refer back to Canto 47, which ends with the same line and which, in its evocation of the Eleusinian Mysteries, enables us to read this ‘power’ as that of Dionysus and his ‘gift of healing’.