"The Unquiet Street"
By day and night this street is not still:
Omnibuses with red tail-lamps,
Taxicabs with shiny eyes,
Rumble, shunning its ugliness.
[ . . . ]
John Gould Fletcher's poem "The Unquiet Street" was published in the 1916 Some Imagist Poets anthology. To read this poem in full in this publication context, follow the links below:
"The Great Adventure"
To the memory of E.W.T.
One said,—'Death is a great adventure.'
It may be so. Yet being very young
I had not pictured Death as my great quest.
On the long road which lay before me
I did not see this unsuspected turning
Which I am forced to take.
I had imagined many glowing quests,
But at the end of each Life waited,
Crowned me, sent me on,
Life the beautiful, Life the renewer.
I would not have them think I fear,
Or that I grudge this thing they ask of me;
I stood upon the threshold of the world,
I saw the radiance round time un-born,
Felt the faint stirrings of the life in it,
Knew, though I could not understand,
That all I saw and felt belonged to me.
And I was glad.
Then in my hands that trustingly advanced
To take the gifts that Time new-born might offer,
I found a sword.
In my young mind which hardly yet saw clear
To order rules of life,
They wrote the rules of death.
In my young heart which had not yet lived long enough
To know its mate,
They placed an enemy full-grown;
And where I looked for Life
Death stands—The Great Adventure.
Helen Rootham's poem "The Great Adventure" was published in the 1916 "cycle" of the Wheels anthology. To read this poem in a digitized version of this publication, follow the link(s) below:
In a Garden
There was a paved alley there,
apple trees and a lush lawn—
and over the grey wall where the plums were
stood the red brick of the chapel.
While over the long white wall
where the green apples grew
and the rusted pears
hung the grey tower of the church;
so high, you couldn't see the top
from that narrow garden.
In that narrow garden
on that lush lawn,
we found a ball left from some croquet game.
It had a blue stripe girdling it
and "ah"—I thought,
"it is your soul about me
and we are flung
between our separate desires."
[ . . . ]
John Rodker's poem "In a Garden" was published in the 1917 Others anthology. To read this poem in full in a digitized version of this publication, follow the link(s) below:
"Goldfish"
They are the angels of that watery world,
With so much knowledge that they just aspire
To move themselves on golden fins,
Or fill their paradise with fire
By darting suddenly from end to end.
Glowing a thousand centuries behind
In pools half-recollected of the mind,
Their large eyes stare and stare, but do not see
Beyond those curtains of Eternity.
When twilight flows into the room
And air becomes like water, you can feel
Their movements growing larger in the gloom,
And you are led
Backward to where they live beyond the dead.
But in the morning, when the seven rays
Of London sunlight one by one incline,
They glide to meet them, and their gulping lips
Suck the light in, so they are caught and played
Like salmon on a heavenly fishing line.
Ghosts on a twilight floor,
Moving about behind their watery door,
Breathing and yet not breathing day and night,
They give the house some gleam of faint delight.
Harold Monro's poem "Goldfish" was published in Georgian Poetry 1918-1919. To read this poem in this publication context, follow the link(s) below: