Category: Digital Anthology

“Nocturnes” by Skipwith Cannell

Nocturnes

I
Thy feet,
That are like little, silver birds,
Thou hast set upon pleasant ways;
Therefore I will follow thee,
Thou Dove of the Golden Eyes,
Upon any path will I follow thee,
For the light of thy beauty
Shines before me like a torch.

II
Thy feet are white
Upon the foam of the sea;
Hold me fast, thou bright Swan,
Lest I stumble,
And into deep waters.

[ . . . ]

Skipwith Cannell's poem sequence "Nocturnes" was published in the 1914 Des Imagistes anthology. To read the sequence in full in digitized versions of this publication, follow the links below: 

Archive.org

The Blue Mountain Project (The Glebe)

The Modernist Journals Project (The Glebe)

The Modernist Journals Project (Publisher: Albert and Charles Boni, NY)

The Modernist Journals Project (Publisher: The Poetry Bookshop, London)

“Apricot Jam” by Edith Sitwell

Apricot Jam

Beneath the dancing glancing green

The tea is spread, amid the sheen

of pinceneze (glints of thought); thus seen

In sharp reflections only, brain

Perceives the world all flat and plain

In rounded segments, joy and pain.

 

[ . . . ]

 

Edith Sitwell's poem "Apricot Jam" 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

“Chanson Triste” by Edward Ramos

Chanson Triste

My heart is sorrowful and my dreams are broken,

The light of the sun shines not upon my house.

 

I went into the forest

Treading the dry leaves

And I saw two gleaming black eyes.

 

[ . . . ]

 

Edward Ramos' poem "Chanson Triste" was published in the 1916 Others anthology. To read this poem in full in a digitized version of this publication, follow the link below:

Archive.org

“Biography” by John Masefield

Biography

When I am buried, all my thoughts and adts
Will be reduced to lists of dates and facts,
And long before this wandering flesh is rotten
The dates which made me will be all forgotten;
And none will know the gleam there used to be
About the feast days freshly kept by me,
But men will call the golden hour of bliss
'About this time,' or 'shortly after this.'

Men do not heed the rungs by which men climb
Those glittering steps, those milestones upon time,
Those tombstones of dead selves, those hours of birth,
Those moments of the soul in years of earth.
They mark the height achieved, the main result,
The power of freedom in the perished cult,
The power of boredom in the dead man's deeds
Not the bright moments of the sprinkled seeds.

By many waters and on many ways
I have known golden instants and bright days;
The day on which, beneath an arching sail,
I saw the Cordilleras and gave hail;
The summer day on which in heart's delight
I saw the Swansea Mumbles bursting white,
The glittering day when all the waves wore flags
And the ship Wanderer came with sails in rags;
That curlew-calling time in Irish dusk
When life became more splendid than its husk,
When the rent chapel on the brae at Slains
Shone with a doorway opening beyond brains;
The dawn when, with a brace-block's creaking cry,
Out of the mist a little barque slipped by,
Spilling the mist with changing gleams of red,

Then gone, with one raised hand and one turned head;
The howling evening when the spindrift's mists
Broke to display the four Evangelists,
Snow-capped, divinely granite, lashed by breakers,
Wind-beaten bones of long-since-buried acres;
The night alone near water when I heard
All the sea's spirit spoken by a bird;
The English dusk when I beheld once more
(With eyes so changed) the ship, the citied shore,
The lines of masts, the streets so cheerly trod
In happier seasons, and gave thanks to God.
All had their beauty, their bright moments' gift,
Their something caught from Time, the ever-swift.

[ . . . ]

John Masefield's poem "Biography" 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

“Confessional” by Iris Tree

Confessional

I could explain

The complicated lore that drags the soul

From what shall profit him

To gild damnation with his choicest gold.

But you

Are poring over precious books and do not hear

Our plaintive, frivolous songs;

 

[ . . . ]

 

Iris Tree's poem "Confessional" was published in 1917 in the third "cycle" of the Wheels anthology. To read this poem in full in a digitized version of this publication, follow the links below:

Archive.org

The Modernist Journals Project

“French Peacock” by Marianne Moore

French Peacock

 

In "taking charge of your possessions when you saw

them," you became a golden jay.

Whatever you admired you charmed away —

The color, habit, ornament or attitude.

Of chiseled setting and black-opalescent dye,

You were the jewelry of sense.

[ . . . ]

Marianne Moore's poem "French Peacock" 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 (scans provided by the University of Michigan)

“Rupert Brooke” by Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

Rupert Brooke

Your face was lifted to the golden sky
Ablaze beyond the black roofs of the square,
As flame on flame leapt, flourishing in air
Its tumult of red stars exultantly,
To the cold constellations dim and high;

[ . . . ]

 

Wilfrid Wilson Gibson's poem "Rupert Brooke" was published in Georgian Poetry, 1916-1917. To read this poem in full in a digitized version of this publication, follow the links below:

Archive.org

Project Gutenberg

“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