“Corpse-Day” by Osbert Sitwell

Corpse-Day
July 19th, 1919

Dusk floated up from the earth beneath,
Held in the arms of the evening wind
—The evening wind that softly creeps
Along the jasper-terraces,
To bear with it
The old, sad scent
Of midsummer, of trees and flowers,
Whose bell-shaped blossoms, shaken, torn
By the rough fingers of the day
Ring out their frail and honeyed notes.

[ . . . ]

Osbert Sitwell's poem "Corpse-Day" was published in the fourth cycle of Wheels in 1919. To read this poem in full in a digitized version of this publication, follow the links below:

Archive.org

The Modernist Journals Project

Librivox audio recording hosted on Archive.org