Year: 2019

“Theatre of Varieties” by Aldous Huxley

Theatre of Varieties

Circle on circle the hanging gardens descend,
Slope from the upper darkness, each flower face
Open, turned to the light and laughter and life
Trembling heat, quicken and awake the air.
Flutes and crying of strings assail the sense—
Music, the revelation and marvellous lie;
What is, what is not, truth and falsehood,
Swim and mingle together.
On the bright trestles tumblers, tamers of beasts,
Dancers and clowns affirm their fury of life,
And in a thousand minds beget a thousand
Hallucinations, dreams of beauty, nightmares.

"The World-renowned Van Hogen Mogen in
The Master Mystery of Modern Times. . . . "
He talks, he talks; more powerfully than music
His quick words hammer on the minds of men.
"Observe this hat, Ladies and gentlemen;
Empty, observe, empty as the universe
Before the Head for which this Hat is made
Was, or could think. Empty—observe, observe. . . .'
The rabbit kicks; a bunch of paper flowers
Blossoms in the limelight; paper tape unrolls,
Endless, a clue. "Ladies and gentlemen . . . ."
Sharp, sharp on malleable minds his words
Hammer. The little Indian boy
Enters the basket. Bright, an Ethiop's sword
Transfixes it and bleeding is withdrawn.
Horror, like a magnet, draws the watching crowds
Toward the scene of massacre. The walls
Bend forward to the revealing light,
And the pale faces are a thousand gargoyles
Thrust out, spouting the ichor of their souls.
"Ladies and gentlemen," the great Van Hogen Mogen
Smiles and is kind. A puddle of dark blood
Creeps slowly out. " The irremediable
Has ceased to be."
Empty of all but blood the basket gapes.
" Arise! " he calls and blows his horn. " Arise! "

 

[ . . . ]

 

Aldous Huxley's poem "Theatre of Varieties" was published in 1920 in the fifth "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

“Keller Gegen Dom” by William Carlos Williams

Keller Gegen Dom

Witness, would you—

one more young man,

in the evening of his love

hurrying to confession,—

steps down a gutter

crosses a street,

goes in at a doorway,

 

[ . . . ]

 

William Carlos Williams' poem "Keller Gegen Dom" 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.org

“The Patchwork Bonnet” by Robert Graves

The Patchwork Bonnet

Across the room my silent love I throw
Where you sit sewing in bed by candlelight,
Your young stern profile and industrious fingers
Displayed against the blind in a shadow-show,
To Dinda's grave delight.

The needle dips and pokes, the cheerful thread
Runs after, follow-my-leader down the seam:
The patchwork pieces cry for joy together,
O soon to sit as a crown on Dinda's head,
Fulfilment of their dream.

[ . . . ]

Robert Grave's poem "The Patchwork Bonnet" was published in Georgian Poetry , 1920-1922. To read this poem in full in a digitized version of this publication, follow the link below:

Archive.org

“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