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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30276 ***
+
+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 Ghéon,
+Robert de Souza, André 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 coöperative 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 Lesbos 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 slopes 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 slopes 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 _étagère_. 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
+_étagère_. 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 _étagère_ 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-Coloured 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
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30276 ***