Month: August 2018

“The Death-Bed” by Siegfried Sassoon

The Death-Bed

He drowsed and was aware of silence heaped
Round him, unshaken as the steadfast walls;
Aqueous like floating rays of amber light,
Soaring and quivering in the wings of sleep,
Silence and safety; and his mortal shore
Lipped by the inward, moonless waves of death.

Some one was holding water to his mouth.
He swallowed, unresisting; moaned and dropped
Through crimson gloom to darkness; and forgot
The opiate throb and ache that was his wound.
Water calm, sliding green above the weir;
Water a sky-lit alley for his boat,
Bird-voiced, and bordered with reflected flowers
And shaken hues of summer: drifting down,
He dipped contented oars, and sighed, and slept.

Night, with a gust of wind, was in the ward,
Blowing the curtain to a glimmering curve.
Night. He was blind; he could not see the stars
Glinting among the wraiths of wandering cloud;
Queer blots of colour, purple, scarlet, green,
Flickered and faded in his drowning eyes.

[...]

Siegfried Sassoon's poem "The Death-Bed" was published in Georgian Poetry 1916-1917. To read this poem in full in this publication context follow the link(s) below:

Archive.org

Project Gutenberg

“Eurydice” by H.D.

Eurydice

                       I
So you have swept me back —
I who could have walked with the live souls
above the earth,
I who could have slept among the live flowers
at last.

So for your arrogance
and your ruthlessness
I am swept back
where dead lichens drip
dead cinders upon moss of ash.

So for your arrogance
I am broken at last,
I who had lived unconscious,
who was almost forgot.

If you had let me wait
I had grown from listlessness
into peace —
if you had let me rest with the dead,
I had forgot you
and the past.

                       II

Here only flame upon flame
and black among the red sparks,
streaks of black and light
grown colourless.

Why did you turn back,
that hell should be reinhabited
of myself thus
swept into nothingness?

Why did you turn,
why did you glance back —
why did you hesitate for that moment,
why did you bend your face
caught with the flame of the upper earth
above my face?

What was it that crossed my face
with the light from yours
and your glance?

What was it you saw in my face —
the light of your own face,
the fire of your own presence?

What had my face to offer
but reflex of the earth —
hyacinth colour
caught from the raw fissure in the rock
where the light struck,
and the colour of azure crocuses
and the bright surface of gold crocuses
and of the wind-flower,
swift in its veins as lightning
and as white.

                         III

Saffron from the fringe of the earth,
wild saffron that has bent
over the sharp edge of earth,
all the flowers that cut through the earth,
all, all the flowers are lost.
Everything is lost,
everything is crossed with black,
black upon black
and worse than black —
this colourless light.

[...]

"Eurydice" by Hilda Doolittle (H.D.) was published in the 1917 Some Imagist Poets anthology. To read the poem in full in digitized versions of this publication, follow the links below:

Hathitrust

The Modernist Journals Project

Project Gutenberg

“Trumpets” by Sacheverell Sitwell

Trumpets

Woven from the tangled hair of comets
On the never-ceasing shuttles of the wind,
Night, thick Tabernacle for the sun, is pitched;
And from the deepening gloom
Ring out the trumpets
Red and quick as sparks
Before the vivifying camp-fire of the Gods.

        *       *       *       *
The blare of a Trumpet is brazen, fierce
As the culminate charge that decides a battle.—
Great plumes like clouds wind-riven
Float behind each fighter,
And their armour glints and gleams in the Sun.—
The horses hooves beat loud, insistent,—
As ominous and dire as kettledrums;
The whole Earth's expectant.

[...]

Sacheverell Sitwell's poem "Trumpets" was published in the second "cycle" of the Wheels anthology in 1917. To read this poem in full in this publication context, follow the link(s) below:

Archive.org

Librivox audio recording hosted on Archive.org

The Modernist Journals Project

“My Lady Is Compared to a Young Tree” by Vachel Lindsay

My Lady Is Compared to a Young Tree

When I see a young tree
In its white beginning.
With white leaves
And white buds
Barely tipped with green,
In the April weather,
In the weeping sunshine —
Then I see my lady,
My democratic queen,
Standing free and equal
With the youngest woodland sapling
Swaying, singing in the wind,
Delicate and white:
Soul so near to blossom.
Fragile, strong as death;
A kiss from far-off Eden,
A flash of Judgment's trumpet —
April's breath.

Vachel Lindsay's poem "My Lady Is Compared to a Young Tree" was published in the 1919 Others anthology (published in 1920). To read this poem in this publication context, follow the link below:

Archive.org