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:
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:
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:
The Letter
Little cramped words scrawling all over the paper
Like draggled fly's legs,
What can you tell of the flaring moon
Through the oak leaves?
Or of my uncurtained window and the bare floor
Spattered with moonlight?
Your silly quirks and twists have nothing in them
Of blossoming hawthorns,
And this paper is dull, crisp, smooth, virgin of loveliness
Beneath my hand.
I am tired, Beloved, o f chafing my heart against
The want of you;
Of squeezing it into little inkdrops,
And posting it.
And I scald alone, here, under the fire
Of the great moon.
Amy Lowell's poem "The Letter" was published in the 1915 Some Imagist Poets anthology. Follow the links below to read the poem in a digitized version of this publication:
Rag-time
The lamps glow here and there, then echo down
The vast deserted vistas of the town :—
Each light the echo'd note of some refrain
Repeated in the city's fevered brain.
Yet all is still, save when there wanders past
—Finding the silence of the night too long—
Some tattered wretch who, from the night outcast,
Sings with an aching heart a comic song.
[ . . . ]
Osbert Sitwell's poem "Rag-time" was published in the 1917 Wheels anthology. To read this poem in full in a digitized version of this publication, follow the links below:
Weariness
There is a dear weariness of love . . .
Hand relaxed in hand.
Shoulder at rest upon shoulder.
[ . . . ]
Witter Bynner's poem "Weariness" 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 below:
The Fugitive
In the hush of early even
The clouds came flocking over,
Till the last wind fell from heaven
And no bird cried.
Darkly the clouds were flocking,
Shadows moved and deepened,
Then paused ; the poplar's rocking
Ceased ; the light hung still
Like a painted thing, and deadly.
Then from the cloud's side flickered
Sharp lightning, thrusting madly
At the cowering fields.
Thrice the fierce cloud lighten'd,
Down the hill slow thunder trembled
Day in her cave grew frightened,
Crept away, and died.
John Freeman's poem "The Fugitive" was published in Georgian Poetry, 1918-1919. To read this poem in a digitized version of this publication, follow the link below:
Lincoln
I
Like a gaunt, scraggly pine
Which lifts its head above the mournful sandhills;
And patiently, through dull years of bitter silence,
Untended and uncared for, starts to grow.
Ungainly, labouring, huge,
The wind of the north has twisted and gnarled its branches;
Yet in the heat of midsummer days, when thunder-clouds
ring the horizon,
A nation of men shall rest beneath its shade.
And it shall protect them all,
Hold everyone safe there, watching aloof in silence;
Until at last one mad stray bolt from the zenith
Shall strike it in an instant down to earth.
II
There was a darkness in this man; an immense and hollow
darkness,
Of which we may not speak, nor share with him, nor
enter;
A darkness through which strong roots stretched down
wards into the earth
Towards old things;
[ . . . ]
John Gould Fletcher's poem "Lincoln" was published in the 1917 Some Imagist Poets anthology. To read this poem in full in a digitized version of this publication, follow the links below:
Zeppelins: I
The startling thunder bursting from a gun :
How swift runs Fear, quicksilver that is freed !
Now every muscle weakens, every pulse
Is set at gallop-pace, and every nerve
Stretched taut with terror and a mad revolt.
The fear of death, the longing still to live,—
Live in a vain world racked with hundred pains,
[ . . . ]
Iris Tree's poem "Zeppelins: I" was published in the 1916 Wheels anthology. To read this poem in full in a digitized version of this publication, follow the link below:
The Valley Harvest
Honey in the horn! I brought my horse from the
water
And from the white grove of tall alders over the
spring,
And brought him past a row of high hollyhocks
Which flew and tore their flowers thin as his mane.
And women there watched, with hair blown over their
mouths;
Yet in watching the oat field they were quiet as the
spring.
[ . . . ]
H.L. Davis' poem "Primpara: The Valley Harvest" was published in Others for 1919. To read this poem in full in a digitized version of this publication, follow the link below: