"Sick Leave"
When I'm asleep, dreaming and lulled and warm,—
They come, the homeless ones, the noiseless dead.
While the dim charging breakers of the storm
Bellow and drone and rumble overhead,
[ . . . ]
Siegfried Sassoon's poem "Sick Leave" was published in Georgian Poetry 1918-1919. To read this poem in full in a digitized version of this publication, follow the link(s) below:
"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:
"After Ch'u Yuan"
I will get me to the wood
Where the gods walked garlanded in wisteria,
By the silver-blue flood move others with ivory cars.
[ . . . ]
Ezra Pound's poem "After Ch'u Yuan" was published in the 1914 imagist anthology, Des Imagistes. To read this poem in full in digitized versions of this publication, follow the links below:
Archive.org (Des Imagistes, published by Albert and Charles Boni, New York, 1914)
Blue Mountain Project (The Glebe)
Modernist Journals Project (The Glebe)
Modernist Journals Project (Des Imagistes, published by Albert and Charles Boni, New York, 1914)
Modernist Journals Project (Des Imagistes, published by The Poetry Bookshop, London, 1914)
Sonnet
I am numb through with the coldness of
thwart men;
Not angry men, unconcerned or shy,
Scant of love, scared of loving, when
Most kind most cabinned—apart in
marriage tie.
[ . . . ]
Alan Porter's sonnet was published in 1921 in the sixth cycle of the Wheels anthology. To read this sonnet in full in a digitized version of this publication, follow the links below:
The Coming of Night
(In the city)
The sun is near set
And the tall buildings
Become teeth
Tearing bloodily at the sky's throat;
The blank wall by my window
Becomes night sky over the marshes
When there is no moon, and no wind,
And little fishes splash in the pools.
I had lit my candle to make a song for you,
But I have forgotten it for I am very tired;
And the candle . . . a yellow moth . . .
Flutters, flutters,
Deep in my brain.
I had lit my candle to make a song for you,
But I have forgotten it for I am very tired;
And the candle . . . a yellow moth . . .
Flutters, flutters,
Deep in my brain.
My song was about, 'a foreign lady
Who was beautiful and sad,
Who was forsaken, and who died
A thousand years ago.'
But the cracked cup at my elbow,
With dregs of tea in it,
Fixes my tired thought more surely
Than the song I made for you and forgot . . .
That I might give you this.
I am tired.
I am so tired
That my soul is a great plain
Made desolate,
[ . . . ]
Skipwith Cannell's poem "The Coming of Night" 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:
"Driftwood"
Black spars of driftwood burn to peacock falmes,
Sea-emeralds and sea-purples and sea-blues,
And all the innumerable ever-changing hues
That haunt the changeless deeps but have no names,
[ . . . ]
Wilfrid Wilson Gibson's poem "Driftwood" was published in Georgian Poetry 1918-1919. To read this poem in full in a digitized version of this publication, follow the link(s) below:
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: