Month: March 2020

“Perfidy” by D.H. Lawrence

Perfidy

Hollow rang the house when I knocked at the door,

And I lingered on the threshold with my hand

Upraised to knock and knock once more :

Listening for the sound of her feet across the floor,

Hollow re-echoed my heart.

 

The low-hung lamps stretched down the road

With shadows drifting underneath,

With a music of soft, melodious feet

Quickening my hope as I hastened to meet

The lowhung light of her eyes.

 

The golden lamps down the street went out,

The last car trailed the night behind,

And I in the darkness wandered about

With a flutter of hope and of dark-shut doubt

In the dying lamp of my love.

 

Two brown ponies trotting slowly

Stopped at the dim-lit trough to drink.

The dark van drummed down the distance slowly,

And city stars so high and holy

Drew nearer to look in the streets.

 

A hasting car swept shameful past.

I saw her hid in the shadow,

I saw her step to the curb, and fast

Run to the silent door, where last

I had stood with my hand uplifted.

She clung to the door in her haste to enter,

Entered, and quickly cast

It shut behind her, leaving the street aghast.

 

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

The Modernist Journals Project

Project Gutenberg (text version)

“Aberrantry” by H.R. Barbor

Aberrantry

Go forth, my song's antithesis,

Make a loud claim, acclaim your claim

Beyond the Word's periphrasis.

Perchance unwisdom, sensing this,

Shall turn again Whittington-wise

And, with indefinite surmise

Born of impertinence, find tame

Toys modelled of logic and of sense—

Mechanic toys that toy with sense

As with a painted cocoanut

Carved to the feature of its butt.

Pay her no homage. She'd reject

Homage, homage came of age

And struts and fawns and apes a rage

That simian prototypes affect.

 

Nor ask what you would have. She turns

Grief to a grin and grins to growls,

Twirling the whirligig bright prism,

And while Sir Malkin throatily howls :

" Mi-aw, Mi-aw, my own adored,"

Trolling his pussy-catechism,

He far outleaps the solecism

 

[ . . . ]

 

H.R. Barbor's poem "Aberrantry" was published in 1921 in the sixth cycle of the Wheels anthology. To read the poem in full in a digitized version of this publication, follow the link(s) below:

Archive.org

Librivox Audio Recording (Hosted on Archive.org)

The Modernist Journals Project

“Sullen Moods” by Robert Graves

Sullen Moods

Love, do not count your labour lost

Though I turn sullen, grim, retired

Even at your side; my thought is crossed

With fancies by old longings fired.

 

And when I answer you, some days

Vaguely and wildly, do not fear

That my love walks forbidden ways,

Breaking the ties that hold it here

 

[ . . . ]

 

Robert Graves' poem "Sullen Moods" was published in Georgian Poetry 1920-1922. To read this poem in full in a digitized version of this publicaiton, follow the link(s) below:

Archive.org

“Perché” by Frances Gregg

Perché

I am the possessor and the possessed

I am of the unborn.

My kind have not yet come up on the earth.

Or—are they gone?

Am I then left, a memory of the dead?

Am I dream-wraith, a ghost of beauty fled?

I who possess and am possessed,

Am I born and dead?

 

Strange madness beset me.

Passing pageant-wise across my web of thought.

The red circlet of Narcissus gems my blood,—

And I brood on a golden reed.

Who doth possess me—I possess.

Yea, I am dead!

 

In the pale light from the grave

The Sisters weave:

Crimson—and green and golden thread

Upon Time's robe.

 

Frances Gregg's poem "Perché" was published in the 1916 Others anthology. To read this poem in a digitized version of this publication, follow the link(s) below:

Archive.org

“The God” by H.D.

The God

I.

I asked of your face:

is it dark,

set beneath heavy locks,

circled with stiff ivy-fruit,

clear,

cut wiht great hammer-stroke,

brow, nose and mouth,

mysteirous and far distant

from my sense.

 

I asked:

can he from his portals of ebony

carved with grapes,

turn toward the earth?

 

[. . . ]

 

H.D.'s poem "The God" was published in the 1917 Some Imagist Poets anthology. To read this poem in full in a digitized version of this publication, follows the link(s) below:

Hathitrust

The Modernist Journals Project

Project Gutenberg