“The Unquiet Street” by John Gould Fletcher

"The Unquiet Street"

By day and night this street is not still:

Omnibuses with red tail-lamps,

Taxicabs with shiny eyes,

Rumble, shunning its ugliness.

[ . . . ]

 

John Gould Fletcher's poem "The Unquiet Street" was published in the 1916 Some Imagist Poets anthology. To read this poem in full in this publication context, follow the links below:

Archive.org

The Modernist Journals Project

Project Gutenberg (text version)

“The Great Adventure” by Helen Rootham

"The Great Adventure"

To the memory of E.W.T.

 

One said,—'Death is a great adventure.'

It may be so. Yet being very young

I had not pictured Death as my great quest.

On the long road which lay before me

I did not see this unsuspected turning

Which I am forced to take.

I had imagined many glowing quests,

But at the end of each Life waited,

Crowned me, sent me on,

Life the beautiful, Life the renewer.

I would not have them think I fear,

Or that I grudge this thing they ask of me;

I stood upon the threshold of the world,

I saw the radiance round time un-born,

Felt the faint stirrings of the life in it,

Knew, though I could not understand,

That all I saw and felt belonged to me.

And I was glad.

Then in my hands that trustingly advanced

To take the gifts that Time new-born might offer,

I found a sword.

In my young mind which hardly yet saw clear

To order rules of life,

They wrote the rules of death.

In my young heart which had not yet lived long enough

To know its mate,

They placed an enemy full-grown;

And where I looked for Life

Death stands—The Great Adventure.

 

Helen Rootham's poem "The Great Adventure" was published in the 1916 "cycle" of the Wheels anthology. To read this poem in a digitized version of this publication, follow the link(s) below:

Archive.org

Modernist Journals Project

“In a Garden” by John Rodker

In a Garden

There was a paved alley there,

apple trees and a lush lawn—

and over the grey wall where the plums were

stood the red brick of the chapel.

While over the long white wall

where the green apples grew

and the rusted pears

hung the grey tower of the church;

so high, you couldn't see the top

from that narrow garden.

 

In that narrow garden

on that lush lawn,

we found a ball left from some croquet game.

It had a blue stripe girdling it

and "ah"—I thought,

"it is your soul about me

and we are flung

between our separate desires."

 

[ . . . ]

 

John Rodker's poem "In a Garden" was published in the 1917 Others anthology. To read this poem in full in a digitized version of this publication, follow the link(s) below:

Archive.org

HathiTrust.org

“Goldfish” by Harold Monro

"Goldfish"

They are the angels of that watery world,

With so much knowledge that they just aspire

To move themselves on golden fins,

Or fill their paradise with fire

By darting suddenly from end to end.

 

Glowing a thousand centuries behind

In pools half-recollected of the mind,

Their large eyes stare and stare, but do not see

Beyond those curtains of Eternity.

 

When twilight flows into the room

And air becomes like water, you can feel

Their movements growing larger in the gloom,

And you are led

Backward to where they live beyond the dead.

 

But in the morning, when the seven rays

Of London sunlight one by one incline,

They glide to meet them, and their gulping lips

Suck the light in, so they are caught and played

Like salmon on a heavenly fishing line.

 

Ghosts on a twilight floor,

Moving about behind their watery door,

Breathing and yet not breathing day and night,

They give the house some gleam of faint delight.

 

Harold Monro's poem "Goldfish" was published in Georgian Poetry 1918-1919. To read this poem in this publication context, follow the link(s) below:

Archive.org