This is Eliot's "The Dry Salvages," from the Four Quartets (the poem Hazel was reading in Canto 2) and it's clear that Eliot is using rote here to evoke the sound of the sea. I have no idea how this might connect to the rest of PF, but it surely must be the most likely literary source for VN's
use of the word. I wish I better understood VN's feelings about Eliot; he is openly hostile towards him, but he draws on Eliot's work in significant ways. Odd.

This is well noticed. And where is Shade supposed to be getting the word from? Is VN attributing to Shade an affectation of distance from, and near-ignorance of, a poem from which he has actually stolen (like the sea, moon and sun) a word for a title?

 

Anthony Stadlen