 The two had met in 1901–02, and Smith—an avid reader—introduced Pound to the works of English decadents such as Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley.The title of the work is an allusion to the third canto of Dante's "Purgatory", where it occurs in the speech of Manfred, King of Sicily, as he describes the treatment his excommunicated corpse has endured, exhumed and discarded without light along the banks of the river Verde.The procession of priests with unlit tapers is similar to the imagery in the practice of "bell, book, and candle", but Manfred remains optimistic that "by their curse we are not so destroy'd, / But that the eternal love may turn, while hope / Retains her verdant blossom...".