Category: Digital Anthology

“Synthesized Perfumes and Essences” by Marsden Hartley

Synthesized Perfumes and Essences

Morning comes with such rapidity, purple plum

hanging on sensuous boughs over my head,

sweeping my shoulders, grazing my cheek, that

I wonder one ever thinks of the going of even-

ing.

I never talk of evening save to say of, it, it is another

kind of light.

Dark holes called doorways are for me only as places

to go into where one watches the light of night

from them.

[ . . . ]

Marsden Hartley's poem "Synthesized Perfumes and Essences" 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:

Archive.org 

“The Villain” by William H. Davies

The Villain

While joy gave clouds the light of stars,

That beamed where'er they looked;

And calves and lambs had tottering knees,

Excited, while they sucked;

While every bird enjoyed his song,

Without one thought of harm or wrong—

I turned my head and saw the wind,

Not far from where I stood,

Dragging the corn by her golden hair

Into a dark and lonely wood.

 

William H. Davies' poem "The Villain" was published in Georgian Poetry 1921-1922. To read this poem in a digitized version of this publication, follow the link below:

Archive.org

“Argyria” by Richard Aldington

“Clerk’s Song” by Sherard Vines

Clerk's Song

After the office hours chime away
And hurrying souls drift homeward, one by one
The long shadows that follow the dead sun
Wake, and become coherent, just as a
Sequence of words is strung into a lay;

Their cool blue fingers recreate my thought,
They slant in curious shapes across the bricks
A cube, a hippogriff, a crucifix,
A grape cluster that drips its crimson draught
Of Anaesthesia, as I have long sought.

[ . . . ]

 

Sherard Vines' poem "Clerk's Song" was published in the 1918 "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

“Portrait of Nancy Trevors” by Donald Evans

Portrait of Nancy Trevors

They sat in her drawing-room amid easeful silence in

tolerant enmity.

The men were three, and her husband was the third.

This in its way amplified his urbanity.

His suavities were of ivory.

He was more irreproachable than her virginal tea

cups.

 

She gave her lips to the moment, and her fingers

nestled in a bowl of apricots.

The tea was amber, and the pungent lemon and the

blanched sugar

Seized and caressed the eyes as each man took a prof-

fered cup.

 

It loosed the tongues, and the four were free.

As four portraits on a wall come to life they stirred

the silence with a babbling that gleamed.

The drawing-room was draped in a wistaria mist,

And the flutter of the phrases patted the cheek with

an alien charm.

In but a short while she had become dominant.

And then she wrapped herself in the soothing nerves

of excitement.

 

The three were lost in the pursuit of fragrance.

Their chairs were their kingdoms, and there were no

other empires.

Archly then her voice dared:

"Will you have another cup, my beloved?"

 

It was three cups that rang to her, and her hus

band's, it chanced, was the third.

She smiled over her adroit and ample confession, and

it was enough.

She had done with the hour,

And she let the uneasy hush turn to a hodden-grey.

Donald Evans' poem "Portrait of Nancy Trevors" was published in 1920 in the third Others anthology. To read this poem in a digitized version of this publication, follow the link below:

Archive.org

“Moonlit Apples” by John Drinkwater

Moonlit Apples

At the top of the house the apples are laid in rows,

And the skylight lets the moonlight in, and those

Apples are deep-sea apples of green. There goes

A cloud on the moon in the autumn night.

 

A mouse in the wainscot scratches, and scratches, and

then

There is no sound at the top of the house of men

Or mice ; and the cloud is blown, and the moon again

Dapples the apples with deep-sea light.

 

They are lying in rows there, under the gloomy beams ;

On the sagging floor ; they gather the silver streams

Out of the moon, those moonlit apples of dreams,

And quiet is the steep stair under.

 

In the corridors under there is nothing but sleep.

And stiller than ever on orchard boughs they keep

Tryst with the moon, and deep is the silence, deep

On moon-washed apples of wonder.

"Moonlit Apples" by John Drinkwater was published in Georgian Poetry 1918-1919. To read this poem in a digitzed version of this publication, follow the link below:

Archive.org

“Gloom” by F.S. Flint

Gloom

I sat there in the dark

of the room and of my mind

thinking of men's treasons and bad faith,

sinking into the pit of my own weakness

before their strength of cunning.

Out over the gardens came the sound of some one

playing five-finger exercises on the piano.

 

Then

I gathered up within me all my powers

until outside of me was nothing:

I was all —

all stubborn, fighting sadness and revulsion.

 

[ . . . ]

F.S. Flint's poem "Gloom" was published in the 1916 Some Imagist Poets anthology. To read this poem in full in this publication context, follow the links below:

The Modernist Journals Project

Project Gutenberg (text version)

“From the Balcony: Multitudes” by Edith Sitwell

From the Balcony: Multitudes

Beneath the midnight skies, grown copper-cold,

On titan-stairways like the world's great cause

Unmeaning endlessness,—processions pause

In Babel-labyrinths, where huge cascades

Of diamond fall between vast colonnades

And diaper the floors with moons of gold.

[ . . . ]

Edith Sitwell's poem "From the Balcony: Multitudes" was published in the 1917 Wheels anthology. To read this poem in full in a digitized version of this publication, follow the links below:

Archive.org

Librivox audio recording hosted on Archive.org

The Modernist Journals Project

“Lalla Ram” by Marguerite Zorach

Lalla Ram

The garden was warm, languid,

The tiny shadows of nime trees softly fingered white

balconies,

The palms fell limply back from the heavy sun,

Everything was old, beautifully old,

Everything was old, with the energy of life for-

gotten

[ . . . ]

Margeurite Zorach's poem "Lalla Ram" 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

 

 

 

“Seven Seals” by D.H. Lawrence

Seven Seals

Since this is the last night I keep you home,

Come, I will consecrate you for the journey.

 

Rather I had you would not go. Nay come,

I will not again reproach you. Lie back

And let me love you a long time ere you go.

For you are sullen-hearted still, and lack

The will to love me. But even so

I will set a seal upon you from my lip,

Will set a guard of honour at each door,

Seal up each channel out of which might slip

Your love for me.

 

I kiss your mouth. Ah, love,

Could I but seal its ruddy, shining spring

Of passion, parch it up, destroy, remove

Its softly-stirring, crimson welling-up

Of kisses ! Oh, help me, God ! Here at the source

I'd lie for ever drinking and drawing in

Your fountains, as heaven drinks from out their course

The floods.

 

I close your ears with kisses

And seal your nostrils ; and round your neck you'll

wear—

Nay, let me work—a delicate chain of kisses.

Like beads they go around, and not one misses

To touch its fellow on either side.

 

And there

Full mid-between the champaign of your breast

I place a great and burning seal of love

Like a dark rose, a mystery of rest

Lawrence On the slow bubbling of your rhythmic heart.

Nay, I persist, and very faith shall keep

You integral to me. Each door, each mystic port

Of egress from you I will seal and steep

In perfect chrism.

Now it is done. The mort

Will sound in heaven before it is undone.

 

But let me finish what I have begun

And shirt you now invulnerable in the mail

Of iron kisses, kisses linked like steel.

Put greaves upon your thighs and knees, and frail

Webbing of steel on your feet. So you shall feel

Ensheathed invulnerable with me, with seven

Great seals upon your outgoings, and woven

Chain of my mystic will wrapped perfectly

Upon you, wrapped in indomitable me.

 

D.H. Lawrence's poem "Seven Seals" was published in Georgian Poetry, 1918-1919. To read this poem in a digitized version of this publication, follow the link below:

Archive.org