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SOME IMAGIST POETS



  SOME IMAGIST
  POETS

  AN ANTHOLOGY


  BOSTON AND NEW YORK
  HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
  The Riverside Press Cambridge
  1915



  COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  _Published April 1915_




PREFACE


In March, 1914, a volume appeared entitled "Des Imagistes." It was a
collection of the work of various young poets, presented together as a
school. This school has been widely discussed by those interested in new
movements in the arts, and has already become a household word.
Differences of taste and judgment, however, have arisen among the
contributors to that book; growing tendencies are forcing them along
different paths. Those of us whose work appears in this volume have
therefore decided to publish our collection under a new title, and we have
been joined by two or three poets who did not contribute to the first
volume, our wider scope making this possible.

In this new book we have followed a slightly different arrangement to that
of the former Anthology. Instead of an arbitrary selection by an editor,
each poet has been permitted to represent himself by the work he considers
his best, the only stipulation being that it should not yet have appeared
in book form. A sort of informal committee--consisting of more than half
the authors here represented--have arranged the book and decided what
should be printed and what omitted, but, as a general rule, the poets
have been allowed absolute freedom in this direction, limitations of space
only being imposed upon them. Also, to avoid any appearance of precedence,
they have been put in alphabetical order.

As it has been suggested that much of the misunderstanding of the former
volume was due to the fact that we did not explain ourselves in a preface,
we have thought it wise to tell the public what our aims are, and why we
are banded together between one set of covers.

The poets in this volume do not represent a clique. Several of them are
personally unknown to the others, but they are united by certain common
principles, arrived at independently. These principles are not new; they
have fallen into desuetude. They are the essentials of all great poetry,
indeed of all great literature, and they are simply these:--

1. To use the language of common speech, but to employ always the _exact_
word, not the nearly-exact, nor the merely decorative word.

2. To create new rhythms--as the expression of new moods--and not to copy
old rhythms, which merely echo old moods. We do not insist upon
"free-verse" as the only method of writing poetry. We fight for it as for
a principle of liberty. We believe that the individuality of a poet may
often be better expressed in free-verse than in conventional forms. In
poetry, a new cadence means a new idea.

3. To allow absolute freedom in the choice of subject. It is not good art
to write badly about aeroplanes and automobiles; nor is it necessarily bad
art to write well about the past. We believe passionately in the artistic
value of modern life, but we wish to point out that there is nothing so
uninspiring nor so old-fashioned as an aeroplane of the year 1911.

4. To present an image (hence the name: "Imagist"). We are not a school of
painters, but we believe that poetry should render particulars exactly and
not deal in vague generalities, however magnificent and sonorous. It is
for this reason that we oppose the cosmic poet, who seems to us to shirk
the real difficulties of his art.

5. To produce poetry that is hard and clear, never blurred nor indefinite.

6. Finally, most of us believe that concentration is of the very essence
of poetry.

The subject of free-verse is too complicated to be discussed here. We may
say briefly, that we attach the term to all that increasing amount of
writing whose cadence is more marked, more definite, and closer knit than
that of prose, but which is not so violently nor so obviously accented as
the so-called "regular verse." We refer those interested in the question
to the Greek Melic poets, and to the many excellent French studies on the
subject by such distinguished and well-equipped authors as Remy de
Gourmont, Gustave Kahn, Georges Duhamel, Charles Vildrac, Henri Gheon,
Robert de Souza, Andre Spire, etc.

We wish it to be clearly understood that we do not represent an exclusive
artistic sect; we publish our work together because of mutual artistic
sympathy, and we propose to bring out our cooeperative volume each year for
a short term of years, until we have made a place for ourselves and our
principles such as we desire.




CONTENTS

  RICHARD ALDINGTON
    Childhood                                                   3
    The Poplar                                                 10
    Round-Pond                                                 12
    Daisy                                                      13
    Epigrams                                                   15
    The Faun sees Snow for the First Time                      16
    Lemures                                                    17

  H. D.
    The Pool                                                   21
    The Garden                                                 22
    Sea Lily                                                   24
    Sea Iris                                                   25
    Sea Rose                                                   27
    Oread                                                      28
    Orion Dead                                                 29

  JOHN GOULD FLETCHER
    The Blue Symphony                                          33
    London Excursion                                           39

  F. S. FLINT
    Trees                                                      53
    Lunch                                                      55
    Malady                                                     56
    Accident                                                   58
    Fragment                                                   60
    Houses                                                     62
    Eau-Forte                                                  63

  D. H. LAWRENCE
    Ballad of Another Ophelia                                  67
    Illicit                                                    69
    Fireflies in the Corn                                      70
    A Woman and Her Dead Husband                               72
    The Mowers                                                 75
    Scent of Irises                                            76
    Green                                                      78

  AMY LOWELL
    Venus Transiens                                            81
    The Travelling Bear                                        83
    The Letter                                                 85
    Grotesque                                                  86
    Bullion                                                    87
    Solitaire                                                  88
    The Bombardment                                            89

  BIBLIOGRAPHY                                                 93


     Thanks are due to the editors of _Poetry_, _The Smart Set_,
     _Poetry and Drama_, and _The Egoist_ for their courteous
     permission to reprint certain of these poems which have been
     copyrighted to them.




RICHARD ALDINGTON



RICHARD ALDINGTON


CHILDHOOD

                          I

  The bitterness, the misery, the wretchedness of childhood
  Put me out of love with God.
  I can't believe in God's goodness;
  I can believe
  In many avenging gods.
  Most of all I believe
  In gods of bitter dullness,
  Cruel local gods
  Who seared my childhood.

                          II

  I've seen people put
  A chrysalis in a match-box,
  "To see," they told me, "what sort of moth would come."
  But when it broke its shell
  It slipped and stumbled and fell about its prison
  And tried to climb to the light
  For space to dry its wings.

  That's how I was.
  Somebody found my chrysalis
  And shut it in a match-box.
  My shrivelled wings were beaten,
  Shed their colours in dusty scales
  Before the box was opened
  For the moth to fly.

  And then it was too late,
  Because the beauty a child has,
  And the beautiful things it learns before its birth,
  Were shed, like moth-scales, from me.

                          III

  I hate that town;
  I hate the town I lived in when I was little;
  I hate to think of it.
  There were always clouds, smoke, rain
  In that dingy little valley.
  It rained; it always rained.
  I think I never saw the sun until I was nine--
  And then it was too late;
  Everything's too late after the first seven years.

  That long street we lived in
  Was duller than a drain
  And nearly as dingy.
  There were the big College
  And the pseudo-Gothic town-hall.
  There were the sordid provincial shops--
  The grocer's, and the shops for women,
  The shop where I bought transfers,
  And the piano and gramaphone shop
  Where I used to stand
  Staring at the huge shiny pianos and at the pictures
  Of a white dog looking into a gramaphone.

  How dull and greasy and grey and sordid it was!
  On wet days--it was always wet--
  I used to kneel on a chair
  And look at it from the window.

  The dirty yellow trams
  Dragged noisily along
  With a clatter of wheels and bells
  And a humming of wires overhead.
  They threw up the filthy rain-water from the hollow lines
  And then the water ran back
  Full of brownish foam bubbles.

  There was nothing else to see--
  It was all so dull--
  Except a few grey legs under shiny black umbrellas
  Running along the grey shiny pavements;
  Sometimes there was a waggon
  Whose horses made a strange loud hollow sound
  With their hoofs
  Through the silent rain.

  And there was a grey museum
  Full of dead birds and dead insects and dead animals
  And a few relics of the Romans--dead also.
  There was the sea-front,
  A long asphalt walk with a bleak road beside it,
  Three piers, a row of houses,
  And a salt dirty smell from the little harbour.

  I was like a moth---
  Like one of those grey Emperor moths
  Which flutter through the vines at Capri.
  And that damned little town was my match-box,
  Against whose sides I beat and beat
  Until my wings were torn and faded, and dingy
  As that damned little town.

                          IV

  At school it was just dull as that dull High Street.
  They taught me pothooks--
  I wanted to be alone, although I was so little,
  Alone, away from the rain, the dingyness, the dullness,
  Away somewhere else--

  The town was dull;
  The front was dull;
  The High Street and the other street were dull--
  And there was a public park, I remember,
  And that was damned dull too,
  With its beds of geraniums no one was allowed to pick,
  And its clipped lawns you weren't allowed to walk on,
  And the gold-fish pond you mustn't paddle in,
  And the gate made out of a whale's jaw-bones,
  And the swings, which were for "Board-School children,"
  And its gravel paths.

  And on Sundays they rang the bells,
  From Baptist and Evangelical and Catholic churches.
  They had the Salvation Army.
  I was taken to a High Church;
  The parson's name was Mowbray,
  "Which is a good name but he thinks too much of it--"
  That's what I heard people say.

  I took a little black book
  To that cold, grey, damp, smelling church,
  And I had to sit on a hard bench,
  Wriggle off it to kneel down when they sang psalms,
  And wriggle off it to kneel down when they prayed--
  And then there was nothing to do
  Except to play trains with the hymn-books.

  There was nothing to see,
  Nothing to do,
  Nothing to play with,
  Except that in an empty room upstairs
  There was a large tin box
  Containing reproductions of the Magna Charta,
  Of the Declaration of Independence
  And of a letter from Raleigh after the Armada.
  There were also several packets of stamps,
  Yellow and blue Guatemala parrots,
  Blue stags and red baboons and birds from Sarawak,
  Indians and Men-of-war
  From the United States,
  And the green and red portraits
  Of King Francobollo
  Of Italy.

                          V

  I don't believe in God.
  I do believe in avenging gods
  Who plague us for sins we never sinned
  But who avenge us.

  That's why I'll never have a child,
  Never shut up a chrysalis in a match-box
  For the moth to spoil and crush its bright colours,
  Beating its wings against the dingy prison-wall.


THE POPLAR

  Why do you always stand there shivering
  Between the white stream and the road?

  The people pass through the dust
  On bicycles, in carts, in motor-cars;
  The waggoners go by at dawn;
  The lovers walk on the grass path at night.

  Stir from your roots, walk, poplar!
  You are more beautiful than they are.

  I know that the white wind loves you,
  Is always kissing you and turning up
  The white lining of your green petticoat.
  The sky darts through you like blue rain,
  And the grey rain drips on your flanks
  And loves you.
  And I have seen the moon
  Slip his silver penny into your pocket
  As you straightened your hair;
  And the white mist curling and hesitating
  Like a bashful lover about your knees.

  I know you, poplar;
  I have watched you since I was ten.
  But if you had a little real love,
  A little strength,
  You would leave your nonchalant idle lovers
  And go walking down the white road
  Behind the waggoners.

  There are beautiful beeches down beyond the hill.
  Will you always stand there shivering?


ROUND-POND

  Water ruffled and speckled by galloping wind
  Which puffs and spurts it into tiny pashing breakers
  Dashed with lemon-yellow afternoon sunlight.
  The shining of the sun upon the water
  Is like a scattering of gold crocus-petals
  In a long wavering irregular flight.

  The water is cold to the eye
  As the wind to the cheek.

  In the budding chestnuts
  Whose sticky buds glimmer and are half-burst open
  The starlings make their clitter-clatter;
  And the blackbirds in the grass
  Are getting as fat as the pigeons.

  Too-hoo, this is brave;
  Even the cold wind is seeking a new mistress.


DAISY

  "_Plus quam se atque suos amavit omnes,
  Nunc_..."

                                CATULLUS.

  You were my playmate by the sea.
  We swam together.
  Your girl's body had no breasts.

  We found prawns among the rocks;
  We liked to feel the sun and to do nothing;
  In the evening we played games with the others.

  It made me glad to be by you.

  Sometimes I kissed you,
  And you were always glad to kiss me;
  But I was afraid--I was only fourteen.

  And I had quite forgotten you,
  You and your name.

  To-day I pass through the streets.
  She who touches my arm and talks with me
  Is--who knows?--Helen of Sparta,
  Dryope, Laodamia....

  And there are you
  A whore in Oxford Street.


EPIGRAMS

            A GIRL

  You were that clear Sicilian fluting
  That pains our thought even now.
  You were the notes
  Of cold fantastic grief
  Some few found beautiful.

            NEW LOVE

  She has new leaves
  After her dead flowers,
  Like the little almond-tree
  Which the frost hurt.

            OCTOBER

  The beech-leaves are silver
  For lack of the tree's blood.

  At your kiss my lips
  Become like the autumn beech-leaves.


THE FAUN SEES SNOW FOR THE FIRST TIME

  Zeus,
  Brazen-thunder-hurler,
  Cloud-whirler, son-of-Kronos,
  Send vengeance on these Oreads
  Who strew
  White frozen flecks of mist and cloud
  Over the brown trees and the tufted grass
  Of the meadows, where the stream
  Runs black through shining banks
  Of bluish white.

  Zeus,
  Are the halls of heaven broken up
  That you flake down upon me
  Feather-strips of marble?

  Dis and Styx!
  When I stamp my hoof
  The frozen-cloud-specks jam into the cleft
  So that I reel upon two slippery points....

  Fool, to stand here cursing
  When I might be running!


LEMURES

  In Nineveh
  And beyond Nineveh
  In the dusk
  They were afraid.

  In Thebes of Egypt
  In the dusk
  They chanted of them to the dead.

  In my <DW26>s and Achaia
  Where the God dwelt
  We knew them.

  Now men say "They are not":
  But in the dusk
  Ere the white sun comes--
  A gay child that bears a white candle--
  I am afraid of their rustling,
  Of their terrible silence,
  The menace of their secrecy.




H. D.



H. D.


THE POOL

  Are you alive?
  I touch you.
  You quiver like a sea-fish.
  I cover you with my net.
  What are you--banded one?


THE GARDEN

            I

  You are clear,
  O rose, cut in rock,
  hard as the descent of hail.

  I could scrape the colour
  from the petal,
  like spilt dye from a rock.

  If I could break you
  I could break a tree.

  If I could stir
  I could break a tree,
  I could break you.

            II

  O wind,
  rend open the heat,
  cut apart the heat,
  rend it sideways.

  Fruit can not drop
  through this thick air:
  fruit can not fall into heat
  that presses up and blunts
  the points of pears
  and rounds the grapes.

  Cut the heat,
  plough through it,
  turning it on either side
  of your path.


SEA LILY

  Reed,
  slashed and torn,
  but doubly rich--
  such great heads as yours
  drift upon temple-steps,
  but you are shattered
  in the wind.

  Myrtle-bark
  is flecked from you,
  scales are dashed
  from your stem,
  sand cuts your petal,
  furrows it with hard edge,
  like flint
  on a bright stone.

  Yet though the whole wind
  slash at your bark,
  you are lifted up,
  aye--though it hiss
  to cover you with froth.


SEA IRIS

            I

  Weed, moss-weed,
  root tangled in sand,
  sea-iris, brittle flower,
  one petal like a shell
  is broken,
  and you print a shadow
  like a thin twig.

  Fortunate one,
  scented and stinging,
  rigid myrrh-bud,
  camphor-flower,
  sweet and salt--you are wind
  in our nostrils.

            II

  Do the murex-fishers
  drench you as they pass?
  Do your roots drag up colour
  from the sand?
  Have they slipped gold under you;
  rivets of gold?

  Band of iris-flowers
  above the waves,
  You are painted blue,
  painted like a fresh prow
  stained among the salt weeds.


SEA ROSE

  Rose, harsh rose,
  marred and with stint of petals,
  meagre flower, thin,
  sparse of leaf.

  more precious
  than a wet rose,
  single on a stem--
  you are caught in the drift.

  Stunted, with small leaf,
  you are flung on the sands,
  you are lifted
  in the crisp sand
  that drives in the wind.

  Can the spice-rose
  drip such acrid fragrance
  hardened in a leaf?


OREAD

  Whirl up, sea--
  Whirl your pointed pines,
  Splash your great pines
  On our rocks,
  Hurl your green over us,
  Cover us with your pools of fir.


ORION DEAD

  [_Artemis speaks_]
    The cornel-trees
    uplift from the furrows,
    the roots at their bases
    strike lower through the barley-sprays.

    So arise and face me.
    I am poisoned with the rage of song.

        _I once pierced the flesh
        of the wild-deer,
        now am I afraid to touch
        the blue and the gold-veined hyacinths?_

        _I will tear the full flowers
        and the little heads
        of the grape-hyacinths.
        I will strip the life from the bulb
        until the ivory layers
        lie like narcissus petals
        on the black earth._

        _Arise,
        lest I bend an ash-tree
        into a taut bow,
        and slay--and tear
        all the roots from the earth._

    The cornel-wood blazes
    and strikes through the barley-sprays,
    but I have lost heart for this.

    I break a staff.
    I break the tough branch.
    I know no light in the woods.
    I have lost pace with the winds.




JOHN GOULD FLETCHER



JOHN GOULD FLETCHER


THE BLUE SYMPHONY

              I

  The darkness rolls upward.
  The thick darkness carries with it
  Rain and a ravel of cloud.
  The sun comes forth upon earth.

  Palely the dawn
  Leaves me facing timidly
  Old gardens sunken:
  And in the gardens is water.

  Sombre wreck--autumnal leaves;
  Shadowy roofs
  In the blue mist,
  And a willow-branch that is broken.

  O old pagodas of my soul, how you glittered across green trees!

  Blue and cool:
  Blue, tremulously,
  Blow faint puffs of smoke
  Across sombre pools.
  The damp green smell of rotted wood;
  And a heron that cries from out the water.

              II

  Through the upland meadows
  I go alone.
  For I dreamed of someone last night
  Who is waiting for me.

  Flower and blossom, tell me do you know of her?

  Have the rocks hidden her voice?
  They are very blue and still.

  Long upward road that is leading me,
  Light hearted I quit you,
  For the long loose ripples of the meadow-grass
  Invite me to dance upon them.

  Quivering grass
  Daintily poised
  For her foot's tripping.

  O blown clouds, could I only race up like you,
  Oh, the last <DW72>s that are sun-drenched and steep!

  Look, the sky!
  Across black valleys
  Rise blue-white aloft
  Jagged, unwrinkled mountains, ranges of death.

  Solitude. Silence.

              III

  One chuckles by the brook for me:
  One rages under the stone.
  One makes a spout of his mouth,
  One whispers--one is gone.

  One over there on the water
  Spreads cold ripples
  For me
  Enticingly.

  The vast dark trees
  Flow like blue veils
  Of tears
  Into the water.

  Sour sprites,
  Moaning and chuckling,
  What have you hidden from me?

  "In the palace of the blue stone she lies forever
  Bound hand and foot."

  Was it the wind
  That rattled the reeds together?

  Dry reeds,
  A faint shiver in the grasses.

              IV

  On the left hand there is a temple:
  And a palace on the right-hand side.
  Foot-passengers in scarlet
  Pass over the glittering tide.

  Under the bridge
  The old river flows
  Low and monotonous
  Day after day.

  I have heard and have seen
  All the news that has been:
  Autumn's gold and Spring's green!

  Now in my palace
  I see foot-passengers
  Crossing the river:
  Pilgrims of Autumn
  In the afternoons.

  Lotus pools:
  Petals in the water.
  Such are my dreams.

  For me silks are outspread.
  I take my ease, unthinking.

              V

  And now the lowest pine-branch
  Is drawn across the disk of the sun.
  Old friends who will forget me soon
  I must go on,
  Towards those blue death-mountains
  I have forgot so long.

  In the marsh grasses
  There lies forever
  My last treasure,
  With the hope of my heart.

  The ice is glazing over,
  Torn lanterns flutter,
  On the leaves is snow.

  In the frosty evening
  Toll the old bell for me
  Once, in the sleepy temple.

  Perhaps my soul will hear.

  Afterglow:
  Before the stars peep
  I shall creep out into darkness.


LONDON EXCURSION

            'BUS

  Great walls of green,
  City that is afar.

  We gallop along
  Alert and penetrating,
  Roads open about us,
  Housetops keep at a distance.

  Soft-curling tendrils,
  Swim backwards from our image:
  We are a red bulk,
  Projecting the angular city, in shadows, at our feet.

  Black coarse-squared shapes,
  Hump and growl and assemble.
  It is the city that takes us to itself,
  Vast thunder riding down strange skies.

  An arch under which we slide
  Divides our lives for us:
  After we have passed it
  We know we have left something behind
  We shall not see again.

  Passivity,
  Gravity,
  Are changed into hesitating, clanking pistons and wheels.
  The trams come whooping up one by one,
  Yellow pulse-beats spreading through darkness.

  Music-hall posters squall out:
  The passengers shrink together,
  I enter indelicately into all their souls.

  It is a glossy skating rink,
  On which winged spirals clasp and bend each other:
  And suddenly slide backwards towards the centre,
  After a too-brief release.

  A second arch is a wall
  To separate our souls from rotted cables
  Of stale greenness.

  A shadow cutting off the country from us,
  Out of it rise red walls.

  Yet I revolt: I bend, I twist myself
  I curl into a million convolutions:
  Pink shapes without angle,
  Anything to be soft and woolly,
  Anything to escape.

  Sudden lurch of clamours,
  Two more viaducts
  Stretch out red yokes of steel,
  Crushing my rebellion.

  My soul
  Shrieking
  Is jolted forwards by a long hot bar--
  Into direct distances.
  It pierces the small of my back.

            APPROACH

  Only this morning I sang of roses;
  Now I see with a swift stare,
  The city forcing up through the air
  Black cubes close piled and some half-crumbling over.

  My roses are battered into pulp:
  And there swells up in me
  Sudden desire for something changeless,
  Thrusts of sunless rock
  Unmelted by hissing wheels.

            ARRIVAL

  Here is too swift a movement,
  The rest is too still.

  It is a red sea
  Licking
  The housefronts.

  They quiver gently
  From base to summit.
  Ripples of impulse run through them,
  Flattering resistance.

  Soon they will fall;
  Already smoke yearns upward.
  Clouds of dust,
  Crash of collapsing cubes.

  I prefer deeper patience,
  Monotony of stalled beasts.
  O angle-builders,
  Vainly have you prolonged your effort,
  For I descend amid you,
  Past rungs and <DW72>s of curving slippery steel.

            WALK

  Sudden struggle for foothold on the pavement,
  Familiar ascension.

  I do not heed the city any more,
  It has given me a duty to perform.
  I pass along nonchalantly,
  Insinuating myself into self-baffling movements.
  Impalpable charm of back streets
  In which I find myself:
  Cool spaces filled with shadow.
  Passers-by, white hammocks in the sunlight.

  Bulging outcrush into old tumult;
  Attainment, as of a narrow harbour,
  Of some shop forgotten by traffic
  With cool-corridored walls.

            'BUS-TOP

  Black shapes bending,
  Taxicabs crush in the crowd.
  The tops are each a shining square
  Shuttles that steadily press through woolly fabric.

  Drooping blossom,
  Gas-standards over
  Spray out jingling tumult
  Of white-hot rays.

  Monotonous domes of bowler-hats
  Vibrate in the heat.

  Silently, easily we sway through braying traffic,
  Down the crowded street.
  The tumult crouches over us,
  Or suddenly drifts to one side.

            TRANSPOSITION

  I am blown like a leaf
  Hither and thither.
  The city about me
  Resolves itself into sound of many voices,
  Rustling and fluttering,
  Leaves shaken by the breeze.

  A million forces ignore me, I know not why,
  I am drunken with it all.
  Suddenly I feel an immense will
  Stored up hitherto and unconscious till this instant.
  Projecting my body
  Across a street, in the face of all its traffic.

  I dart and dash:
  I do not know why I go.
  These people watch me,
  I yield them my adventure.

  Lazily I lounge through labyrinthine corridors,
  And with eyes suddenly altered,
  I peer into an office I do not know,
  And wonder at a startled face that penetrates my own.

  Roses--pavement--
  I will take all this city away with me--
  People--uproar--the pavement jostling and flickering--
  Women with incredible eyelids:
  Dandies in spats:
  Hard-faced throng discussing me--I know them all.
  I will take them away with me,
  I insistently rob them of their essence,
  I must have it all before night,
  To sing amid my green.

  I glide out unobservant
  In the midst of the traffic
  Blown like a leaf
  Hither and thither,
  Till the city resolves itself into a clamour of voices,
  Crying hollowly, like the wind rustling through the forest,
  Against the frozen housefronts:
  Lost in the glitter of a million movements.

            PERIPETEIA

  I can no longer find a place for myself:
  I go.

  There are too many things to detain me,
  But the force behind is reckless.

  Noise, uproar, movement
  Slide me outwards,
  Black sleet shivering
  Down red walls.

  In thick jungles of green, this gyration,
  My centrifugal folly,
  Through roaring dust and futility spattered,
  Will find its own repose.

  Golden lights will gleam out sullenly into silence,
  Before I return.

            MID-FLIGHT

  We rush, a black throng,
  Straight upon darkness:
  Motes scattered
  By the arc's rays.

  Over the bridge fluttering,
  It is theatre-time,
  No one heeds.

  Lost amid greenness
  We will sleep all night;
  And in the morning
  Coming forth, we will shake wet wings
  Over the settled dust of to-day.

  The city hurls its cobbled streets after us,
  To drive us faster.

  We must attain the night
  Before endless processions
  Of lamps
  Push us back.
  A clock with quivering hands
  Leaps to the trajectory-angle of our departure.

  We leave behind pale traces of achievement:
  Fires that we kindled but were too tired to put out,
  Broad gold fans brushing softly over dark walls,
  Stifled uproar of night.

  We are already cast forth:
  The signal of our departure
  Jerks down before we have learned we are to go.

            STATION

  We descend
  Into a wall of green.
  Straggling shapes:
  Afterwards none are seen.

  I find myself
  Alone.
  I look back:
  The city has grown.

  One grey wall
  Windowed, unlit.
  Heavily, night
  Crushes the face of it.

  I go on.
  My memories freeze
  Like birds' cry
  In hollow trees.

  I go on.
  Up and outright
  To the hostility
  Of night.




F. S. FLINT



F. S. FLINT


TREES

  Elm trees
  and the leaf the boy in me hated
  long ago--
  rough and sandy.

  Poplars
  and their leaves,
  tender, smooth to the fingers,
  and a secret in their smell
  I have forgotten.

  Oaks
  and forest glades,
  heart aching with wonder, fear:
  their bitter mast.

  Willows
  and the scented beetle
  we put in our handkerchiefs;
  and the roots of one
  that spread into a river:
  nakedness, water and joy.

  Hawthorn,
  white and odorous with blossom,
  framing the quiet fields,
  and swaying flowers and grasses,
  and the hum of bees.

  Oh, these are the things that are with me now,
  in the town;
  and I am grateful
  for this minute of my manhood.


LUNCH

  Frail beauty,
  green, gold and incandescent whiteness,
  narcissi, daffodils,
  you have brought me Spring and longing,
  wistfulness,
  in your irradiance.

  Therefore, I sit here
  among the people,
  dreaming,
  and my heart aches
  with all the hawthorn blossom,
  the bees humming,
  the light wind upon the poplars,
  and your warmth and your love
  and your eyes ...
  they smile and know me.


MALADY

  I move;
  perhaps I have wakened;
  this is a bed;
  this is a room;
  and there is light....

  Darkness!

  Have I performed
  the dozen acts or so
  that make me the man
  men see?

  The door opens,
  and on the landing--
  quiet!
  I can see nothing: the pain, the weariness!

  Stairs, banisters, a handrail:
  all indistinguishable.
  One step farther down or up,
  and why?
  But up is harder. Down!
  Down to this white blur;
  it gives before me.

  Me?

  I extend all ways:
  I fit into the walls and they pull me.

  Light?

  Light! I know it is light.

  Stillness, and then,
  something moves:
  green, oh green, dazzling lightning!
  And joy! this is my room;
  there are my books, there the piano,
  there the last bar I wrote,
  there the last line,
  and oh the sunlight!

  A parrot screeches.


ACCIDENT

  Dear one!
  you sit there
  in the corner of the carriage;
  and you do not know me;
  and your eyes forbid.

  Is it the dirt, the squalor,
  the wear of human bodies,
  and the dead faces of our neighbours?
  These are but symbols.

  You are proud; I praise you;
  your mouth is set; you see beyond us;
  and you see nothing.

  I have the vision of your calm, cold face,
  and of the black hair that waves above it;
  I watch you; I love you;
  I desire you.

  There is a quiet here
  within the thud-thud of the wheels
  upon the railway.

  There is a quiet here
  within my heart,
  but tense and tender....

  This is my station....


FRAGMENT

  ... That night I loved you
  in the candlelight.
  Your golden hair
  strewed the sweet whiteness of the pillows
  and the counterpane.
  O the darkness of the corners,
  the warm air, and the stars
  framed in the casement of the ships' lights!
  The waves lapped into the harbour;
  the boats creaked;
  a man's voice sang out on the quay;
  and you loved me.
  In your love were the tall tree fuchsias,
  the blue of the hortensias, the scarlet nasturtiums,
  the trees on the hills,
  the roads we had covered,
  and the sea that had borne your body
  before the rocks of Hartland.
  You loved me with these
  and with the kindness of people,
  country folk, sailors and fishermen,
  and the old lady who had lodged us and supped us.
  You loved me with yourself
  that was these and more,
  changed as the earth is changed
  into the bloom of flowers.


HOUSES

  Evening and quiet:
  a bird trills in the poplar trees
  behind the house with the dark green door
  across the road.

  Into the sky,
  the red earthenware and the galvanised iron chimneys
  thrust their cowls.
  The hoot of the steamers on the Thames is plain.

  No wind;
  the trees merge, green with green;
  a car whirs by;
  footsteps and voices take their pitch
  in the key of dusk,
  far-off and near, subdued.

  Solid and square to the world
  the houses stand,
  their windows blocked with venetian blinds.

  Nothing will move them.


EAU-FORTE

  On black bare trees a stale cream moon
  hangs dead, and sours the unborn buds.

  Two gaunt old hacks, knees bent, heads low,
  tug, tired and spent, an old horse tram.

  Damp smoke, rank mist fill the dark square;
  and round the bend six bullocks come.

  A hobbling, dirt-grimed drover guides
  their clattering feet to death and shame.




D. H. LAWRENCE



D. H. LAWRENCE


BALLAD OF ANOTHER OPHELIA

  Oh, the green glimmer of apples in the orchard,
  Lamps in a wash of rain,
  Oh, the wet walk of my brown hen through the stackyard,
  Oh, tears on the window pane!

  Nothing now will ripen the bright green apples,
  Full of disappointment and of rain,
  Brackish they will taste, of tears, when the yellow dapples
  Of Autumn tell the withered tale again.

  All round the yard it is cluck, my brown hen,
  Cluck, and the rain-wet wings,
  Cluck, my marigold bird, and again
  Cluck for your yellow darlings.

  For the grey rat found the gold thirteen
  Huddled away in the dark,
  Flutter for a moment, oh the beast is quick and keen,
  Extinct one yellow-fluffy spark.

  *     *     *     *     *     *

  Once I had a lover bright like running water,
  Once his face was laughing like the sky;
  Open like the sky looking down in all its laughter
  On the buttercups--and buttercups was I.

  What then is there hidden in the skirts of all the blossom,
  What is peeping from your wings, oh mother hen?
  'T is the sun who asks the question, in a lovely haste for wisdom--
  What a lovely haste for wisdom is in men?

  Yea, but it is cruel when undressed is all the blossom,
  And her shift is lying white upon the floor,
  That a grey one, like a shadow, like a rat, a thief, a rain-storm
  Creeps upon her then and gathers in his store.

  Oh, the grey garner that is full of half-grown apples,
  Oh, the golden sparkles laid extinct--!
  And oh, behind the cloud sheaves, like yellow autumn dapples,
  Did you see the wicked sun that winked?


ILLICIT

  In front of the sombre mountains, a faint, lost ribbon of rainbow,
  And between us and it, the thunder;
  And down below, in the green wheat, the labourers
  Stand like dark stumps, still in the green wheat.

  You are near to me, and your naked feet in their sandals,
  And through the scent of the balcony's naked timber
  I distinguish the scent of your hair; so now the limber
  Lightning falls from heaven.

  Adown the pale-green, glacier-river floats
  A dark boat through the gloom--and whither?
  The thunder roars. But still we have each other.
  The naked lightnings in the heaven dither
  And disappear. What have we but each other?
  The boat has gone.


FIREFLIES IN THE CORN

  _A Woman taunts her Lover_
    Look at the little darlings in the corn!
    The rye is taller than you, who think yourself
    So high and mighty: look how its heads are borne
    Dark and proud in the sky, like a number of knights
    Passing with spears and pennants and manly scorn.

    And always likely!--Oh, if I could ride
    With my head held high-serene against the sky
    Do you think I'd have a creature like you at my side
    With your gloom and your doubt that you love me? O darling rye,
    How I adore you for your simple pride!

    And those bright fireflies wafting in between
    And over the swaying cornstalks, just above
    All their dark-feathered helmets, like little green
    Stars come low and wandering here for love
    Of this dark earth, and wandering all serene--!

    How I adore you, you happy things, you dears
    Riding the air and carrying all the time
    Your little lanterns behind you: it cheers
    My heart to see you settling and trying to climb
    The cornstalks, tipping with fire their spears.

    All over the corn's dim motion, against the blue
    Dark sky of night, the wandering glitter, the swarm
    Of questing brilliant things:--you joy, you true
    Spirit of careless joy: ah, how I warm
    My poor and perished soul at the joy of you!

  _The Man answers and she mocks_
    You're a fool, woman. I love you and you know I do!
      --Lord, take his love away, it makes him whine.
    And I give you everything that you want me to.
      --Lord, dear Lord, do you think he ever _can_ shine?


A WOMAN AND HER DEAD HUSBAND

  Ah, stern cold man,
  How can you lie so relentless hard
  While I wash you with weeping water!
  Ah, face, carved hard and cold,
  You have been like this, on your guard
  Against me, since death began.

  You masquerader!
  How can you shame to act this part
  Of unswerving indifference to me?
  It is not you; why disguise yourself
  Against me, to break my heart,
  You evader?

  You've a warm mouth,
  A good warm mouth always sooner to soften
  Even than your sudden eyes.
  Ah cruel, to keep your mouth
  Relentless, however often
  I kiss it in drouth.

  You are not he.
  Who are you, lying in his place on the bed
  And rigid and indifferent to me?
  His mouth, though he laughed or sulked
  Was always warm and red
  And good to me.

  And his eyes could see
  The white moon hang like a breast revealed
  By the slipping shawl of stars,
  Could see the small stars tremble
  As the heart beneath did wield
  Systole, diastole.

  And he showed it me
  So, when he made his love to me;
  And his brows like rocks on the sea jut out,
  And his eyes were deep like the sea
  With shadow, and he looked at me,
  Till I sank in him like the sea,
  Awfully.

  Oh, he was multiform--
  Which then was he among the manifold?
  The gay, the sorrowful, the seer?
  I have loved a rich race of men in one--
  --But not this, this never-warm
  Metal-cold--!

  Ah, masquerader!
  With your steel face white-enamelled
  Were you he, after all, and I never
  Saw you or felt you in kissing?
  --Yet sometimes my heart was trammelled
  With fear, evader!

  You will not stir,
  Nor hear me, not a sound.
  --Then it was you--
  And all this time you were
  Like this when I lived with you.
        It is not true,
        I am frightened, I am frightened of you
        And of everything.
        O God!--God too
        Has deceived me in everything,
        In everything.


THE MOWERS

  There's four men mowing down by the river;
    I can hear the sound of the scythe strokes, four
  Sharp breaths swishing:--yea, but I
    Am sorry for what's i' store.

  The first man out o' the four that's mowin'
    Is mine: I mun claim him once for all:
  --But I'm sorry for him, on his young feet, knowin'
    None o' the trouble he's led to stall.

  As he sees me bringin' the dinner, he lifts
    His head as proud as a deer that looks
  Shoulder-deep out o' th' corn: and wipes
    His scythe blade bright, unhooks

  His scythe stone, an' over the grass to me!
    --Lad, tha 's gotten a chilt in me,
  An' a man an' a father tha 'lt ha'e to be,
    My young slim lad, an' I'm sorry for thee.


SCENT OF IRISES

  A faint, sickening scent of irises
  Persists all morning. Here in a jar on the table
  A fine proud spike of purple irises
  Rising above the class-room litter, makes me unable
  To see the class's lifted and bended faces
  Save in a broken pattern, amid purple and gold and sable.

  I can smell the gorgeous bog-end, in its breathless
  Dazzle of may-blobs, when the marigold glare overcast
  You with fire on your brow and your cheeks and your chin as you dipped
  Your face in your marigold bunch, to touch and contrast
  Your own dark mouth with the bridal faint lady-smocks
  Dissolved in the golden sorcery you should not outlast.

  You amid the bog-end's yellow incantation,
  You sitting in the cowslips of the meadows above,
  --Me, your shadow on the bog-flame, flowery may-blobs,
  Me full length in the cowslips, muttering you love--
  You, your soul like a lady-smock, lost, evanescent,
  You, with your face all rich, like the sheen on a dove--!

  You are always asking, do I remember, remember
  The buttercup bog-end where the flowers rose up
  And kindled you over deep with a coat of gold?
  You ask again, do the healing days close up
  The open darkness which then drew us in,
  The dark that swallows all, and nought throws up.

  You upon the dry, dead beech-leaves, in the fire of night
  Burnt like a sacrifice;--you invisible--
  Only the fire of darkness, and the scent of you!
  --And yes, thank God, it still is possible
  The healing days shall close the darkness up
  Wherein I breathed you like a smoke or dew.

  Like vapour, dew, or poison. Now, thank God,
  The golden fire has gone, and your face is ash
  Indistinguishable in the grey, chill day,
  The night has burnt you out, at last the good
  Dark fire burns on untroubled without clash
  Of you upon the dead leaves saying me yea.


GREEN

  The sky was apple-green,
  The sky was green wine held up in the sun,
  The moon was a golden petal between.

  She opened her eyes, and green
  They shone, clear like flowers undone,
  For the first time, now for the first time seen.




AMY LOWELL



AMY LOWELL


VENUS TRANSIENS

  Tell me,
  Was Venus more beautiful
  Than you are,
  When she topped
  The crinkled waves,
  Drifting shoreward
  On her plaited shell?
  Was Botticelli's vision
  Fairer than mine;
  And were the painted rosebuds
  He tossed his lady,
  Of better worth
  Than the words I blow about you
  To cover your too great loveliness
  As with a gauze
  Of misted silver?

  For me,
  You stand poised
  In the blue and buoyant air,
  Cinctured by bright winds,
  Treading the sunlight.
  And the waves which precede you
  Ripple and stir
  The sands at my feet.


THE TRAVELLING BEAR

  Grass-blades push up between the cobblestones
  And catch the sun on their flat sides
  Shooting it back,
  Gold and emerald,
  Into the eyes of passers-by.

  And over the cobblestones,
  Square-footed and heavy,
  Dances the trained bear.
  Tho cobbles cut his feet,
  And he has a ring in his nose
  Which hurts him;
  But still he dances,
  For the keeper pricks him with a sharp stick,
  Under his fur.

  Now the crowd gapes and chuckles,
  And boys and young women shuffle their feet in time to the dancing bear.
  They see him wobbling
  Against a dust of emerald and gold,
  And they are greatly delighted.

  The legs of the bear shake with fatigue
  And his back aches,
  And the shining grass-blades dazzle and confuse him.
  But still he dances,
  Because of the little, pointed stick.


THE LETTER

  Little cramped words scrawling all over the paper
  Like draggled fly's legs,
  What can you tell of the flaring moon
  Through the oak leaves?
  Or of my uncurtained window and the bare floor
  Spattered with moonlight?
  Your silly quirks and twists have nothing in them
  Of blossoming hawthorns,
  And this paper is dull, crisp, smooth, virgin of loveliness
  Beneath my hand.

  I am tired, Beloved, of chafing my heart against
  The want of you;
  Of squeezing it into little inkdrops,
  And posting it.
  And I scald alone, here, under the fire
  Of the great moon.


GROTESQUE

  Why do the lilies goggle their tongues at me
  When I pluck them;
  And writhe, and twist,
  And strangle themselves against my fingers,
  So that I can hardly weave the garland
  For your hair?
  Why do they shriek your name
  And spit at me
  When I would cluster them?
  Must I kill them
  To make them lie still,
  And send you a wreath of lolling corpses
  To turn putrid and soft
  On your forehead
  While you dance?


BULLION

  My thoughts
  Chink against my ribs
  And roll about like silver hail-stones.
  I should like to spill them out,
  And pour them, all shining,
  Over you.
  But my heart is shut upon them
  And holds them straitly.

  Come, You! and open my heart;
  That my thoughts torment me no longer,
  But glitter in your hair.


SOLITAIRE

  When night drifts along the streets of the city,
  And sifts down between the uneven roofs,
  My mind begins to peek and peer.
  It plays at ball in old, blue Chinese gardens,
  And shakes wrought dice-cups in Pagan temples,
  Amid the broken flutings of white pillars.
  It dances with purple and yellow crocuses in its hair,
  And its feet shine as they flutter over drenched grasses.
  How light and laughing my mind is,
  When all the good folk have put out their bed-room candles,
  And the city is still!


THE BOMBARDMENT

Slowly, without force, the rain drops into the city. It stops a moment on
the carved head of Saint John, then slides on again, slipping and
trickling over his stone cloak. It splashes from the lead conduit of a
gargoyle, and falls from it in turmoil on the stones in the Cathedral
square. Where are the people, and why does the fretted steeple sweep about
in the sky? Boom! The sound swings against the rain. Boom, again! After
it, only water rushing in the gutters, and the turmoil from the spout of
the gargoyle. Silence. Ripples and mutters. Boom!

The room is damp, but warm. Little flashes swarm about from the firelight.
The lustres of the chandelier are bright, and clusters of rubies leap in
the bohemian glasses on the _etagere_. Her hands are restless, but the
white masses of her hair are quite still. Boom! Will it never cease to
torture, this iteration! Boom! The vibration shatters a glass on the
_etagere_. It lies there formless and glowing, with all its crimson gleams
shot out of pattern, spilled, flowing red, blood-red. A thin bell-note
pricks through the silence. A door creaks. The old lady speaks: "Victor,
clear away that broken glass." "Alas! Madame, the bohemian glass!" "Yes,
Victor, one hundred years ago my father brought it--" Boom! The room
shakes, the servitor quakes. Another goblet shivers and breaks. Boom!

It rustles at the window-pane, the smooth, streaming rain, and he is shut
within its clash and murmur. Inside is his candle, his table, his ink, his
pen, and his dreams. He is thinking, and the walls are pierced with beams
of sunshine, slipping through young green. A fountain tosses itself up at
the blue sky, and through the spattered water in the basin he can see
copper carp, lazily floating among cold leaves. A wind-harp in a
cedar-tree grieves and whispers, and words blow into his brain, bubbled,
iridescent, shooting up like flowers of fire, higher and higher. Boom! The
flame-flowers snap on their slender stems. The fountain rears up in long
broken spears of disheveled water and flattens into the earth. Boom! And
there is only the room, the table, the candle, and the sliding rain.
Again, Boom!--Boom!--Boom! He stuffs his fingers into his ears. He sees
corpses, and cries out in fright. Boom! It is night, and they are shelling
the city! Boom! Boom!

A child wakes and is afraid, and weeps in the darkness. What has made the
bed shake? "Mother, where are you? I am awake." "Hush, my Darling, I am
here." "But, Mother, something so queer happened, the room shook." Boom!
"Oh! What is it? What is the matter?" Boom! "Where is Father? I am so
afraid." Boom! The child sobs and shrieks. The house trembles and creaks.
Boom!

Retorts, globes, tubes, and phials lie shattered. All his trials oozing
across the floor. The life that was his choosing, lonely, urgent, goaded
by a hope, all gone. A weary man in a ruined laboratory, that was his
story. Boom! Gloom and ignorance, and the jig of drunken brutes. Diseases
like snakes crawling over the earth, leaving trails of slime. Wails from
people burying their dead. Through the window he can see the rocking
steeple. A ball of fire falls on the lead of the roof, and the sky tears
apart on a spike of flame. Up the spire, behind the lacings of stone,
zig-zagging in and out of the carved tracings, squirms the fire. It spouts
like yellow wheat from the gargoyles, coils round the head of Saint John,
and aureoles him in light. It leaps into the night and hisses against the
rain. The Cathedral is a burning stain on the white, wet night.

Boom! The Cathedral is a torch, and the houses next to it begin to scorch.
Boom! The bohemian glass on the _etagere_ is no longer there. Boom! A
stalk of flame sways against the red damask curtains. The old lady cannot
walk. She watches the creeping stalk and counts. Boom!--Boom!--Boom!

The poet rushes into the street, and the rain wraps him in a sheet of
silver. But it is threaded with gold and powdered with scarlet beads. The
city burns. Quivering, spearing, thrusting, lapping, streaming, run the
flames. Over roofs, and walls, and shops, and stalls. Smearing its gold on
the sky the fire dances, lances itself through the doors, and lisps and
chuckles along the floors.

The child wakes again and screams at the yellow petalled flower flickering
at the window. The little red lips of flame creep along the ceiling beams.

The old man sits among his broken experiments and looks at the burning
Cathedral. Now the streets are swarming with people. They seek shelter and
crowd into the cellars. They shout and call, and over all, slowly and
without force, the rain drops into the city. Boom! And the steeple crashes
down among the people. Boom! Boom, again! The water rushes along the
gutters. The fire roars and mutters. Boom!


THE END




BIBLIOGRAPHY



BIBLIOGRAPHY


  JOHN GOULD FLETCHER
    _Fire and Wine._ Grant Richards, Ltd., London, 1913.
    _Fool's Gold._ Max Goschen, London, 1913.
    _The Dominant City._ Max Goschen, London, 1913.
    _The Book of Nature._ Constable & Co., London, 1913.
    _Visions of the Evening._ Erskine McDonald, London, 1913.
    _Irradiations: Sand and Spray._ Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1914.


  F. S. FLINT
    _The Net of Stars._ Elkin Mathews, London, 1909.


  D. H. LAWRENCE
    _Love Poems and Others._ Duckworth & Co., London, 1913.
    Prose: _The White Peacock._ William Heinemann, London, 1911.
           _The Trespasser._ Duckworth & Co., London, 1912.
           _Sons and Lovers._ Duckworth & Co., London, 1913.
    Drama: _The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd._ Mitchell Kennerley, New York,
      1914.


  AMY LOWELL
    _A Dome of Many- Glass._ Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston,
      1912. The Macmillan Company, New York, 1914.
    _Sword Blades and Poppy Seed._ The Macmillan Company, New York; and
      Macmillan & Co., London, 1914.



The Riverside Press

CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS

U . S . A





End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Some Imagist Poets, by
Richard Aldington and H.D. and John Gould Fletcher and F.S. Flint and D.H. Lawrence and Amy Lowell

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