“The Complex Life” by Iris Tree

"The Complex Life"

I know it to be true that those who live

As do the grasses and the lilies of the field

Receiving joy from Heaven, sweetly yield

Their joy to Earth, and taking Beauty, give.

 

But we are gathered for the looms of Fate

That Time with ever-turning multiplying wheels

Spins into complex patterns and conceals

His huge invention with forms intricate.

 

Each generation blindly fills the plan,

A sorry muddle or an inspiration of God ;

With many processes from out the sod,

The Earth and Heaven are mingled and made man.

[ . . . ]

Iris Tree's poem "The Complex Life" was published in the 1919 Wheels anthology (p. 42). To read this poem in full in a digitized version of this publication, follow the link(s) below:

Archive.org

The Modernist Journals Project

Librivox audio recording hosted on Archive.org

“Dust” by Rupert Brooke

"Dust"

When the white flame in us is gone,

And we that lost the world's delight

Stiffen in darkness, left alone

To crumble in our separate night;

 

When your swift hair is quiet in death,

And through the lips corruption thrust

Has stilled the labour of my breath

When we are dust, when we are dust!

 

Not dead, not undesirous yet,

Still sentient, still unsatisfied,

We'll ride the air, and shine, and flit,

Around the places where we died,

 

And dance as dust before the sun,

And light of foot, and unconfined,

Hurry from road to road, and run

About the errands of the wind.

 

And every mote, on earth or air,

Will speed and gleam, down later days,

And like a secret pilgrim fare

By eager and invisible ways,

 

Nor ever rest, nor ever lie,

Till, beyond thinking, out of view,

One mote of all the dust that's I

Shall meet one atom that was you.

 

Then in some garden hushed from wind,

Warm in a sunset's afterglow,

The lovers in the flowers will find

A sweet and strange unquiet grow

 

Upon the peace; and, past desiring,

So high a beauty in the air,

And such a light, and such a quiring,

And such a radiant ecstasy there,

 

They'll know not if it's fire, or dew,

Or out of earth, or in the height,

Singing, or flame, or scent, or hue,

Or two that pass, in light, to light,

 

Out of the garden, higher, higher . . .

But in that instant they shall learn

The shattering fury of our fire,

And the weak passionless hearts will burn

 

And faint in that amazing glow,

Until the darkness close above;

And they will know poor fools, they'll know!

One moment, what it is to love.

 

Rupert Brooke's poem "Dust" was published in Georgian Poetry, 1911-1912. To read this poem in a digitized version of this publication, follow the link(s) below:

Archive.org

“Beauty Thou Hast Hurt Me Overmuch” by Richard Aldington

Beauty Thou Hast Hurt Me Overmuch

The light is a wound to me.

The soft notes

Feed upon the wound.

 

[ . . . ]

 

Richard Aldington's poem "Beauty Thou Hast Hurt Me Overmuch" was published in the 1914 imagist anthology, Des Imagistes. To read this poem in full in a digitized version of this publication, follow the links below:

Archive.org

The Blue Mountain Project (The Glebe)

The Modernist Journals Project (Charles and Albert Boni edition)

“Preludes” by T.S. Eliot

"Preludes"

1.

The winter evening settles down

With smells of steaks in passage ways.

Six o'clock.

The burnt-out ends of smoky days.

And now a gusty shower wraps

The grimy scraps

Of withered leaves about our feet

And newspapers from vacant lots;

 

[ . . . ]

 

T.S. Eliot's poem sequence "Preludes" was published in the 1917 Others anthology. To read this sequence in full in a digitized version of this publication, follow the link(s) below:

Archive.org

HathiTrust.org