Il miglior fabbro

Italian for "the better craftsman," which Pound certainly was. There were few poets in Eliot's day with such expert knowledge of the craft as Ezra Pound, who studied in depth the manifestations of poetry in different and often exotic languages, such as Provencal and Chinese, besides French, German, Greek, Latin, and English. The line is a quote from Dante's Divine Comedy (Purgatory 26.117), where Dante pays the tribute to the poet Arnaut Daniel.

reference topics