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+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
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Some Imagist Poets
+ An Anthology
+
+Author: Richard Aldington
+ H.D.
+ John Gould Fletcher
+ F.S. Flint
+ D.H. Lawrence
+ Amy Lowell
+
+Release Date: October 17, 2009 [EBook #30276]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOME IMAGIST POETS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Meredith Bach, Stephanie Eason, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net. (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+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 THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOME IMAGIST POETS ***
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