Year: 2019

“Erinnyes” by D.H. Lawrence

Erinnyes

There has been so much noise,
Bleeding and shouting and dying,
Clamour of death.

There are so many dead,
Many have died unconsenting,
Their ghosts are angry, unappeased.

So many ghosts among us,
Invisible, yet strong,
Between me and thee, so many ghosts of the slain.

They come back, over the white sea, in the mist,
Invisible, trooping home, the unassuaged ghosts
Endlessly returning on the uneasy sea.

They set foot on this land to which they have the right,
They return relentlessly, in the silence one knows their tread,
Multitudinous, endless, the ghosts coming home again.

They watch us, they press on us,
They press their claim upon us,
They are angry with us.

What do they want ?
We are driven mad,
Madly we rush hither and thither:
Shouting, "Revenge, Revenge,"
Crying, "Pour out the blood of the foe,"
Seeking to appease with blood the insistent ghosts.

Out of blood rise up new ghosts,
Grey, stern, angry, unsatisfied,
The more we slay and are slain, the more we raise up new
ghosts against us.

Till we are mad with terror, seeing the slain
Victorious, grey, grisly ghosts in our streets,
Grey, unappeased ghosts seated in the music-halls.
The dead triumphant, and the quick cast down,
The dead, unassuaged and angry, silencing us,
Making us pale and bloodless, without resistance.

What do they want, the ghosts, what is it
They demand as they stand in menace over against us?
How shall we now appease whom we have raised up?

Since from blood poured out rise only ghosts again,
What shall we do, what shall we give to them ?
What do they want, forever there on our threshold ?

Must we open the doors, and admit them, receive them home,
And in the silence, reverently, welcome them,
And give them place and honour and service meet ?

For one year's space, attend on our angry dead,
Soothe them with service and honour, and silence meet,
Strengthen, prepare them for the journey hence,
Then lead them to the gates of the unknown,
And bid farewell, oh stately travellers,
And wait till they are lost upon our sight.

Then we shall turn us home again to life
Knowing our dead are fitly housed in death,
Not roaming here disconsolate, angrily.

And we shall have new peace in this our life,
New joy to give more life, new bliss to live,
Sure of our dead in the proud halls of death.

 

D.H. Lawrence's poem "Erinnyes" was published in the 1916 Some Imagist Poets anthology. To read the poem in a digitized version of this publication, follow the links below:

The Modernist Journals Project

Project Gutenberg (text version)

“Lacquer Prints: Paper Fishes” by Amy Lowell

"Lacquer Prints: Paper Fishes"

The paper carp,

At the end of its long bamboo pole,

Takes the wind into its mouth

And emtis it at its tail.

So is man,

Forever swalling the wind.

 

Amy Lowell's poem "Paper Fishes" is part of the "Laquer Prints" series published in the 1917 Some Imagist Poets anthology. Follow the links below to read the poem in a digitized version of this publication:

Hathitrust

The Modernist Journals Project

Project Gutenberg

“The Exile” by Arnold James

The Exile

I am kept with walls of iron from the place

Where once the beechen shadow-trelissed lane

Held visions of thy presence, and I pace

The outer dust in poverty and pain.

 

[ . . . ]

Arnold James' poem "The Exile" was published in 1918 in the third "cycle" of the Wheels anthologies. To read this poem in full in a digitized version of this publication follow the links below:

Archive.org

The Modernist Journals Project

“Art” by Helen Hoyt

Art

At last we let each other go,

And I left you:

Left the demand and the desire of you,

And all our windings in and out and

love;

 

[ . . . ]

 

Helen Hoyt's poem "Art" was published in the 1917 Others anthology. To read this poem in full in a digitized version of this publication, follow the links below:

Archive.org

HathiTrust

“Miss Thompson Goes Shopping” by Martin Armstrong

Miss Thompson Goes Shopping

In her lone cottage on the downs,
With winds and blizzards and great crowns
Of shining cloud, with wheeling plover
And short grass sweet with the small white clover,
Miss Thompson lived, correct and meek,
A lonely spinster, and every week
On market-day she used to go
Into the little town below,
Tucked in the great downs' hollow bowl
Like pebbles gathered in a shoal.

So, having washed her plates and cup
And banked the kitchen-fire up,
Miss Thompson slipped upstairs and dressed,
Put on her black (her second best),
The bonnet trimmed with rusty plush,
Peeped in the glass with simpering blush,
From camphor-smelling cupboard took
Her thicker jacket off the hook
Because the day might turn to cold.
Then, ready, slipped downstairs and rolled
The hearthrug back; then searched about,
Found her basket, ventured out,
Snecked the door and paused to lock it
And plunge the key in some deep pocket.
Then as she tripped demurely down
The steep descent, the little town
Spread wider till its sprawling street
Enclosed her and her footfalls beat
On the hard stone pavement, and she felt
Those throbbing ecstasies that melt
Through heart and mind, as, happy, free
Her small, prim personality
Merged into the seething strife
Of auction-marts and city life.

 

[ . . . ]

 

Martin Armstrong's poem "Miss Thompson Goes Shopping" was published in Georgian Poetry, 1920-1922. To read this poem in full in a digitized version of this publication, follow the link below:

Archive.org

“1915” by Richard Aldington

1915

The limbs of gods,
Still, veined marble,
Rest heavily in sleep
Under a saffron twilight.

[ . . . ]

Richard Aldington's poem "1915" was published in the 1916 Some Imagist Poets anthology. To read this poem in full in a digitized version of this publication context, follow the links below:

Archive.org

The Modernist Journals Project

Project Gutenberg (text version)

“Barouches Noires” by Charles Orange

Barouches Noires

It was when I was sitting by the side of the

lake,

By the side of a lake where the great trees

come to the water's edge,

And when, beneath the glittering leaves, I

was watching the gleaming, mobile

water; the water that was like a

thousand living mirrors in the sun-

light, that I turned my head . . . .

[ . . . ]

Charles Orange's (pseudonym for Brian Howard) poem "Barouches Noires" was published in the 1921 Wheels anthology. To read this poem in full in a digitized version of this publication, follow the links below:

Archive.org

Librivox Audio Recording (Hosted on Archive.org)

The Modernist Journals Project

 

 

“The Little Tailor Meditates” by Jeanne D’Orge

The Little Tailor Meditates

. . . My idea would be to do away with the star-

manufactured

ready made garments

they never fit

like a suit cut to measure . . .

then there's too much putting on and off

too much running in and out

like a dog at a fair

in this business of birth and death . . .

 

[ . . . ]

 

Jeanne D'Orge's poem "The Little Tailor Meditates" was published in the 1917 Others anthology. To read this poem in full in a digitized version of this publication, follow the links below:

Archive.org

HathiTrust

“The Sleeper” by Walter de la Mare

The Sleeper

As Ann came in one summer's day,
She felt that she must creep,
So silent was the clear cool house,
It seemed a house of sleep.
And sure, when she pushed open the door,
Rapt in the stillness there,
Her mother sat, with stooping head,
Asleep upon a chair;

[ . . . ]

Walter de la Mare's poem "The Sleeper" was published in Georgian Poetry, 1911-1912. To read this poem in full in a digitized version of this publication, follow the link below:

Archive.org

“The Blue Symphony” by 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.

Ο 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.

[ . . . ]

John Gould Fletcher's poem "The Blue Symphony" was published in the 1915 Some Imagist Poets anthology. To read this poem in full in digitized versions of this publication, follow the links below:

Archive.org

HathiTrust

The Modernist Journals Project