"Vicarious Atonement"
This is an old and very cruel god . . .
We will endure;
We will try not to wince
When he crushes and rends us.
[ . . . ]
Richard Aldington's poem "Vicarious Atonement" was published in the 1917 Some Imagist Poets anthology. To read this poem in full in a digitized version of this publication, follow the link(s) below:
HathiTrust - Digitized by the University of Virginia
"Crowds"
The sky along the street a gauzy yellow—
The narrow lights burn tall in the twilight.
The cool air sags,
Heavy with the thickness of bodies.
[ . . . ]
Evelyn Scott's poem "Crowds" was published in 1920 in the third Others anthology. To read this poem in full in a digitized version of this publication, follow the link(s) below:
"Stopping Place"
In highly-varnished noisy heat
As through a lens that does not fit—
The faces jolt in cubes and I
Perceive their odd solidity
And lack of meaning absolute:
For why should noses thus protrude
And to what purpose can relate
Each hair so queerly separate?
Anchored upon the puff of breeze
As shallow as the crude blue seas,
The coloured blocks and cubes of faces
[ . . . ]
Edith Sitwell's poem "Stopping Place" was published in the 1918 "cycle" of Wheels. To read this poem in full in a digitized version of this publication, follow the link(s) below:
"A House"
Now very quietly, and rather mournfully,
In clouds of hyacinth the sun retires,
And all the stubble-fields that were so warm to him
Keep but in memory their borrowed fires.
And I, the traveller, break, still unsatisfied,
From that faint exquisite celestial strand,
And turn and see again the only dwelling-place
In this wide wilderness of darkening land.
The house, that house, O now what change has
come to it.
Its crude red-brick facade, its roof of slate;
What imperceptible swift hand has given it
A new, a wonderful, a queenly state?
[ . . . ]
J.C. Squire's poem "A House" was published in Georgian Poetry 1916-1917. To read this poem in a digitized version of this publication, follow the link(s) below:
Project Gutenberg (HTML version)
"Venus Transiens"
Tell me,
Was Venus more beautiful
Than you are,
When she topped
The crinkled waves,
Drifting shoreward
On her plaited shell?
Was Botticelli's vision
Fairer than mine;
And were the painted rosebuds
He tossed his lady,
Of better worth
Than the words I blow about you
To cover your too great loveliness
As with a gauze
Of misted silver?
For me,
You stand poised
In the blue and buoyant air,
Cinctured by bright winds,
Treading the sunlight.
And the waves which precede you
Ripple and stir
The sands at my feet.
Amy Lowell's poem "Venus Transiens" was published in the 1915 Some Imagist Poets anthology. To read this poem in a digitized version of this publication, follow the link(s) below:
"Six Significant Landscapes"
I.
An old man sits
In the shadow of a pine tree
In China.
He sees a larkspur,
Blue and white,
At the edge of the shadow,
Move in the wind.
His beard moves in the wind.
The pine tree moves in the wind.
Thus water flows
Over weeds.
II.
The night is of the color
[ . . . ]
Wallace Stevens' sequence "Six Significant Landscapes" was published in the 1916 Others anthology. To read this poem sequence in full in a digitized version of this publication, follow the link(s) below:
"Gothic"
Sharp spires pierce upwards, and the clouds are full of
tumbling bells. Reckless, break-neck, head over heels
down an airy spiral of stairs run the bells.' Upon Paul's
steeple stands a tree.'
Up again and then once more to the bottom, two steps at
a time. 'As full of apples as can be.'
[ . . . ]
Aldous Huxley's poem "Gothic" was published in the 1918 "cycle" of Wheels. to read this poem in full in a digitized version of this publication, follow the link(s) below:
"'Ah, Koelue. . .'"
Ah, Koelue !
Had you embalmed your beauty, so
It could not backward go,
Or change in any way,
What were the use, if on my eyes
The embalming spices were not laid
To keep us fixed,
Two amorous sculptures passioned endlessly ?
What were the use, if my sight grew,
And its far branches were cloud-hung,
You small at the roots, like grass,
While the new lips my spirit would kiss
Were not red lips of flesh,
But the huge kiss of power ?
Where yesterday soft hair through my fingers fell,
A shaggy mane would entwine,
And no slim form work fire to my thighs,
But human Life's inarticulate mass
Throb the pulse of a thing
Whose mountain flanks awry
Beg my mastery mine !
Ah ! I will ride the dizzy beast of the world
My road my way
Isaac Rosenberg's poem "'Ah, Koelue. . .'" was published in Georgian Poetry, 1916-1917. To read this poem in a digitized version of this publication, follow the link(s) below"
"Childhood"
I.
The bitterness, the misery, the wretchedness of childhood
Put me out of love with God.
I can't believe in God's goodness;
I can believe
In many avenging gods.
Most of all I believe
In gods of bitter dullness,
Cruel local gods
Who seared my childhood.
II.
I've seen people put
A chrysalis in a match-box,
"To see," they told me, "what sort of moth would come."
But when it broke its shell
It slipped and stumbled and fell about its prison
And tried to climb to the light
For space to dry its wings.
[ . . . ]
Richard Aldington's poem "Childhood" was published in the 1915 Some Imagist Poets anthology. To read this poem in full in a digitized version of this publication, follow the link(s) below:
"Kaleidoscopics"
Gondolas with white freightage
Passed,
And muted barcaroles
Destroyed old houses.
The iridescent plush rope sways
With the rhythm
Of an old canzone of Genoa
He died.
Let us dance elegant fandangos
In blues and golds,
And consort
With blinder things than parchment bats
To gather dripping garlands
Of mottled toadstools
To show the hate we loved him with.
[ . . . ]
Ferdinand Reyher's poem "Kaleidoscopics" was published in the 1916 Others anthology. To read this poem in full in a digitized version of this publication, follow the link(s) below: