George Sterling

 

George Sterling, Mary Austin, Jack London, 

Jimmy Hooper, Carmel.

THE APOTHECARY'S

TS red and emerald beacons from the night

Draw human moths in melancholy flight,

With beams whose gaudy glories point the way

To safety or destruction--choose who may!

Crystal and powder, oils or tincture clear,

Such the dim sight of man beholds, but here

Await, indisputable in their pow'r,

Great Presences, abiding each his hour;

And for a little price rash man attains

This council of the perils and the pains--

This parliament of death, and brotherhood

Omnipotent for evil and for good.

 

Venoms of vision, myrrh of splendid swoons,

They wait us past the green and scarlet moons.

Here prisoned rest the tender hands of Peace,

And there an angel at whose bidding cease

The clamors of the tortured sense, the strife

Of nerves confounded in the war of life.

Within this vial pallid Sleep is caught,

In that, the sleep eternal. Here are sought

Such webs as in their agonizing mesh

Draw back from doom the half-reluctant flesh.

There beck the traitor joys to him who buys,

And Death sits panoplied in gorgeous guise.

 

The dusts of hell, the dews of heavenly sods,

Water of Lethe or the wine of gods,

Purchase who will, but, ere his task begin,

Beware the service that you set the djinn!

Each hath his mercy, each his certain law,

And each his Lord behind the veil of awe;

But ponder well the ministry you crave,

Lest he be final master, you the slave.

Each hath a price, and each a tribute gives

To him who turns from life and him who lives.

If so you win from Pain a swift release,

His face shall haunt you in the house of Peace;

If so from Pain you scorn an anodyne,

Peace shall repay you with a draft divine.

Tho' toil and time be now by them surpast,

Exact the recompense they take at last--

These genii of the vials, wreaking still

Their sorceries on human sense and will.

"The Apothecary's" is reprinted from The House of Orchids and Other Poems. George Sterling. San Fran

Witter Bynner

photograph by Arnold Genthe

Wistaria

Clouds dream and disappear;
Waters dream in a rainbow and are gone;
Fire-dreams change with the sun
Or when a poppy closes;
But now is the time of year
For the dark earth, one by one,
To show her slower dreams. And nothing she has ever done
Has given more ease
To her perplexities
Than the dreaming of dreams like these:
Not irises,
Not any spear
Of lilies or cup of roses,
But these pale, purple images,
As if, from willows or from pepper trees,
Shadows were glimmering on Buddha's knees.

Witter Bynner

Painter

I cannot paint
The growth of the spirit,
But I can paint an old man
Watching the smoke of incense
Join the sky.

Amy Lowell

The Weather-Cock Points South

I put your leaves aside.

 One by one:
 The still broad outer leaves;
 The smaller ones,
 Pleasant to touch, veined with purple;
 The glazed inner leaves
 One by one
 I parted you from your leaves
 Until you stood up like a white flower
 Swaying slightly in the evening wind. [...]

 Where in all the garden is there such a flower?

 The bud is more than the calyx.
 There is nothing to equal a white bud,
 Of no color and of all,
 Burnished by moonlight,
 Thrust upon by a softly-swinging wind.

Amy Lowell

 

The Traveling Bear

 

GRASS-BLADES push up between the cobblestones
And catch the sun on their flat sides
Shooting it back,
Gold and emerald,
Into the eyes of passers-by.
And over the cobblestones,
Square-footed and heavy,
Dances the trained bear.
The cobbles cut his feet,
And he has a ring in his nose
But still he dances,
For the keeper pricks him with a sharp stick,
Under his fur.
Now the crowd gapes and chuckles,
And boys and young women shuffle their feet in time to the dancing bear,
They see him wobbling
Against a dust of emerald and gold,
And they are greatly delighted.
The legs of the bear shake with fatigue
And his back aches,
And the shining grass-blades dazzle and confuse him.
But still he dances,
Because of the little, pointed stick.

Amy Lowell

 

A Coloured Print by Shokei

 

It winds along the face of a cliff
This path which I long to explore,
And over it dashes a waterfall,
And the air is full of the roar
And the thunderous voice of waters which sweep
In a silver torrent over some steep.
It clears the path with a mighty bound
And tumbles below and away,
And the trees and the bushes which grow in the rocks
Are wet with its jewelled spray;
The air is misty and heavy with sound,
And small, wet wildflowers star the ground.
Oh! The dampness is very good to smell,
And the path is soft to tread,
And beyond the fall it winds up and on,
While little streamlets thread
Their own meandering way down the hill
Each singing its own little song, until
I forget that 't is only a pictured path,
And I hear the water and wind,
And look through the mist, and strain my eyes
To see what there is behind;
For it must lead to a happy land,
This little path by a waterfall spanned.

Thomas Edward Hulme

 

Prose is a Museum Where all 

the old weapons of poetry are kept

*****

Above the Dock

"Above the quiet dock in midnight,

Tangled in the tall mast's corded height,

Hangs the moon. What seemed so far away

Is but a child's balloon, forgotten after play."

Thomas Edward Hulme

Autumn

A touch of cold in the Autumn night —
   I walked abroad,
   And saw the ruddy moon lean over a hedge
   Like a red-faced farmer.
   I did not stop to speak, but nodded, 
   And round about were the wistful stars
   With white faces like town children.

*****

[The flounced edge of a skirt]

The flounced edge of a skirt
                              recoiling like waves off a cliff.

*****

Town Sky-line

On a summer day, in Town,
Where chimneys fret the cumuli,
Flora passing in disdain
Lifts her flounced blue gown, the sky.
So I see her white cloud petticoat,
Clear Valenciennes, meshed by twisted cowls,
Rent by chimneys, torn lace, frayed and fissured. 

Thomas Edward Hulme

 

from A Lecture on Modern Poetry (1908)

I want to begin by a statement of the attitude I take towards verse. I do that in order to anticipate criticism. I shall speak of verse from a certain rather low but quite definite level, and I think that criticism ought to be confined to that level. The point of view is that verse is simply and solely the means of expression. I will give you an example of the position exactly opposite to the one I take up. A reviewer writing in The Saturday Review last week spoke of poetry as the means by which the soul soared into higher regions, and as a means of expression by which it became merged into a higher kind of reality. Well, that is the kind of statement that I utterly detest. I want to speak of verse in a plain way as I would of pigs: that is the only honest way. The President told us last week that poetry was akin to religion. It is nothing of the sort. It is a means of expression just as prose is, and if you can't justify it from that point of view it's not worth preserving.

I always suspect the word soul when it is brought into discussion. It reminds me of the way that the medieval scientists spoke of God. When entirely ignorant of the cause of anything they said God did it. If I use the word soul, or speak of higher realities, in the course of my speech, you will know that at that precise point I didn't [259] know of any real reason and was trying to bluff you. There is a tremendous amount of hocus-pocus about most discussions of poetry. Critics attempting to explain technique make mysterious passes and mumble of the infinite and the human heart, for all the world as though they were selling a patent medicine in the market-place.

There are two ways in which one can consider this. The first as a difficulty to be conquered, the second as a tool for use. In the first case, we look upon poets as we look upon pianists, and speak of them as masters of verse. The other way is to consider it merely as a tool which we want to use ourselves for definite purposes. One daily paper compared us to the Mermaid Club, but we are not. We are a number of modern people, and verse must be justified as a means of expression for us. I have not a catholic taste but a violently personal and prejudiced one. I have no reverence for tradition. I came to the subject of verse from the inside rather than from the outside. There were certain impressions which I wanted to fix. I read verse to find models, but I could not find any that seemed exactly suitable to express that kind of impression, except perhaps a few jerky rhythms of Henley, until I came to read the French vers-libre which seemed to exactly fit the case.

So that I don't want any literary criticism, that would be talking on another level. I don't want to be killed with a bludgeon, and references to Dante, Milton and the rest of them.

Amy Lowell

 

A black cat among roses, 

Phlox, lilac-misted under a first-quarter moon, 
The sweet smells of heliotrope and night-scented stock. 
The garden is very still, 
It is dazed with moonlight, 
Contented with perfume, 
Dreaming the opium dreams of its folded poppies. 
Firefly lights open and vanish 
High as the tip buds of the golden glow 
Low as the sweet alyssum flowers at my feet. 
Moon-shimmer on leaves and trellises, 
Moon-spikes shafting through the snowball bush. 
Only the little faces of the ladies' delight are alert and staring, 
Only the cat, padding between the roses, 
Shakes a branch and breaks the chequered pattern 
As water is broken by the falling of a leaf. 
Then you come, 
And you are quiet like the garden, 
And white like the alyssum flowers, 
And beautiful as the silent sparks of the fireflies. 
Ah, Beloved, do you see those orange lilies? 
They knew my mother, 
But who belonging to me will they know 
When I am gone.

Richard Aldington

At the British Museum

 I turn the page and read: 

"I dream of silent verses where the rhyme 
Glides noiseless as an oar." 
The heavy musty air, the black desks, 
The bent heads and the rustling noises 
In the great dome 
Vanish ...
And 
The sun hangs in the cobalt-blue sky, 
The boat drifts over the lake shallows, 
The fishes skim like umber shades through the undulatingweeds, 
The oleanders drop their rosy petals on the lawns, 
And the swallows dive and swirl and whistle 
About the cleft battlements of Can Grande's castle... 

Richard Aldington

    with Richard Rumbold

Four days the earth was rent and torn

By bursting steel,
The houses fell about us;
Three nights we dared not sleep,
Sweating, and listening for the imminent crash
Which meant our death. 

The fourth night every man,
Nerve-tortured, racked to exhaustion,
Slept, muttering and twitching,
While the shells crashed overhead.

The fifth day there came a hush;
We left our holes
And looked above the wreckage of the earth
To where the white clouds moved in silent lines
Across the untroubled blue. 

Richard Aldington

 

Images

I

Like a gondola of green scented fruits
Drifting along the dark canals of Venice,
You, O exquisite one,
Have entered into my desolate city.

II

The blue smoke leaps
Like swirling clouds of birds vanishing.
So my love leaps forth toward you,
Vanishes and is renewed.

III

A rose-yellow moon in a pale sky
When the sunset is faint vermilion
In the mist among the tree-boughs
Art thou to me, my beloved.

IV

A young beech tree on the edge of the forest
Stands still in the evening,
Yet shudders through all its leaves in the light air
And seems to fear the stars –
So are you still and so tremble.

V

The red deer are high on the mountain,
They are beyond the last pine trees.
And my desires have run with them.

VI

The flower which the wind has shaken
Is soon filled again with rain;
So does my heart fill slowly with tears,
Until you return.

Dorothy Richardson

with husband Alan Odile

from Pointed Roofs (1915)

She thought of her lonely pilgrimage to the West End agency, of her humiliating interview, of her heart-sinking acceptance of the post, the excitements and misgivings she had had, of her sudden challenge of them all that evening at dinner […] of her fear and determination in insisting and carrying her point and making them begin to be interested in her plan. But she shared her father’s satisfaction in impressing the Dutchman. She knew that she was at one with him in that. She glanced at him. There could be no doubt that he was playing the role of an English gentleman. […] Well, after all, it was true in a way […] she was going to finish her education abroad … in Germany…[3]

Dorothy Richardson

HONEYCOMB

BY
DOROTHY M. RICHARDSON
AUTHOR OF “POINTED ROOFS” AND “BACKWATER”

LONDON
DUCKWORTH & CO.
3 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN

from CHAPTER I Honeycomb (1917)

Gently propelled towards the staircase Miriam went mechanically up the wide shallow stairs towards the parlourmaid waiting at the top. Behind her she heard the swift fuffle of Mrs. Corrie’s dress, the swish of a bead curtain and the thin tuneless voice inaccurately humming in some large near room, “Jack’s the boy for work; Jack’s the boy for play.” She followed the maid across the landing, walking swiftly, as Mrs. Corrie had done—the same greeny carpet, but white walls up here and again strange pictures hung low, on a level with your eyes, strange soft tones ... crayons? ... pastels?—what was the word—she was going to live with them, she would be able to look at them—and everything 

up here, in the soft pink light. There were large lamps with rose-pink shades. The maid held back a pink silk curtain hanging across an alcove, and Miriam went through to the open door of her room. “Harris will bring up your trunk later, miss—if you like to leave your keys with me,” said the maid behind her. “Oh yes,” said Miriam carelessly, going on into the room. “Oh, I don’t know where they are. Oh, it doesn’t matter, I’ll manage.”

“Very good, miss,” said Wiggerson politely, and came forward to close the bedroom door.

Miriam flung off her outer things and faced herself in the mirror in her plain black hopsack dress with the apple green velveteen pipings about the tight bodice and the square box sleeves which filled the square mirror from side to side as she stood. “This dress is a nightmare in this room,” she thought, puffing up her hair under her fringe-net with a hat-pin. “Never mind, I mustn’t think about it,” she added hurriedly, disconcerted for a moment by the frightened look in her eyes. The distant soft flat silvery swell of a little gong sent her hurrying to the mound of soft bath towel in the wide pale blue wash-hand basin. She found a bulging copper hot-water jug, brilliantly polished, with a wicker-covered handle. The water hissed gently into the wide shallow basin, sending up a great cloud of comforting steam. Dare’s soap ... extraordinary. People like this being taken in by advertisements ... awful stuff, full of free soda, any transparent soap is bad for the skin, must be, in the nature of things ... makes your skin feel tight. Perhaps they only use it for their hands.... Advertisement will do anything, Pater said.... Perhaps in houses like this—plonk, it certainly made a lovely hard ring falling into the basin—where everything was warm and clean and fragrant even Dare’s soap could not hurt you. The room behind her seemed to encourage the idea. But surely it couldn’t be her room. It was a spare room. They had put her into it for her month on trial. Could it possibly be hers, just her room, if she stayed ... the strange, beautiful, beautiful long wide hang of the faintly patterny faintly blue curtains covering the whole of the window space; the firelight on them as she came into the room with Wiggerson, the table with a blotter, there had been a table by the door with a blotter, as Wiggerson spoke. She looked round, there it was ... the blue covered bed, the frilled pillows, high silky-looking bed curtains with some sort of little pattern on them, the huge clear fire, the big wicker chair.

H. D. (Hilda Doolittle)

 

The Helmsman

The Helmsman

O be swift—
we have always known you wanted us.

We fled inland with our flocks.
we pastured them in hollows,
cut off from the wind
and the salt track of the marsh.

We worshipped inland—
we stepped past wood-flowers,
we forgot your tang,
we brushed wood-grass.

We wandered from pine-hills
through oak and scrub-oak tangles,
we broke hyssop and bramble,
we caught flower and new bramble-fruit
in our hair: we laughed
as each branch whipped back,
we tore our feet in half-buried rocks
and knotted roots and acorn-cups.

We forgot—we worshipped,
we parted green from green,
we sought further thickets,
we dipped our ankles
through leaf-mould and earth,
and wood and wood-bank enchanted us—

and the feel of the clefts in the bark,
and the slope between tree and tree—
and a slender path strung field to field
and wood to wood
and hill to hill
and the forest after it.

We forgot—for a moment
tree-resin, tree-bark,
sweat of a torn branch
were sweet to taste.

We were enchanted with the fields,
the tufts of coarse grass—
in the shorter grass—
we loved all this.

But now, our boat climbs—hesitates—drops—
climbs—hesitates—crawls back—
climbs—hesitates—
O, be swift—
we have always known you wanted us.

H. D. (Hilda Doolittle)

 

Sea Lily

REED, 
slashed and torn, 
but doubly rich -- 
such great heads as yours 
drift upon temple-steps, 
but you are shattered 
in the wind. 
Myrtle-bark 
is flecked from you, 
scales are dashed from your stem 
sand cuts your petal, 
furrows it with hard edge, 
like flint 
on a bright stone. 
Yet though the whole wind 
slash as your bark, 
you are lifted up, 
aye -- though it hiss 
to cover you with froth.

H. D. (Hilda Doolittle)

Bryher, in 1930 experimental film Boderlands

At Baia

I should have thought
in a dream you would have brought
some lovely, perilous thing,
orchids piled in a great sheath,
as who would say (in a dream),
"I send you this,
who left the blue veins
of your throat unkissed."

Why was it that your hands
(that never took mine),
your hands that I could see
drift over the orchid-heads
so carefully,
your hands, so fragile, sure to lift
so gently, the fragile flower-stuff—
ah, ah, how was it

You never sent (in a dream)
the very form, the very scent,
not heavy, not sensuous,
but perilous—perilous—
of orchids, piled in a great sheath,
and folded underneath on a bright scroll,
some word:

"Flower sent to flower;
for white hands, the lesser white,
less lovely of flower-leaf,"

or

"Lover to lover, no kiss,
no touch, but forever and ever this."

Ezra Pound

 

 Pound wrote his wife, Dorothy, “The chinese things . . . are worth the price of admission.”

On the way I saw the parrots of dusty crimson feathers wrangling over a piece of flesh, but on account of the perfume of thy scented billet I was unable to hear their screams.

A potter, who was creating the world, threw from him what seemed to him a useless lump of clay, and found that he had thrown away his left hand.

When the delicious verses of Li Po were praised in the Court of Heaven an envious mandarin complained of the poet’s scandalous life. The Divine Emperor, who was walking in his garden, held out a rose and asked him, “Do you smell the gardener’s manure?”

(1915?)

Ezra Pound

 

R. B. Kitaj. Color serigraph on paper

Song in the Manner of Housman

O woe, woe, 
People are born and die, 
We also shall be dead pretty soon 
Therefore let us act as if we were 
dead already.

The bird sits on the hawthorn tree 
But he dies also, presently. 
Some lads get hung, and some get shot. 
Woeful is this human lot. 
Woe! woe, etcetera . . . .

London is a woeful place, 
Shropshire is much pleasanter. 
Then let us smile a little space 
Upon fond nature's morbid grace. 
Oh, Woe, woe, woe, etcetera . . .

Ezra Pound

 

Song in the Manner of Housman

O woe, woe, 
People are born and die, 
We also shall be dead pretty soon 
Therefore let us act as if we were 
dead already.

The bird sits on the hawthorn tree 
But he dies also, presently. 
Some lads get hung, and some get shot. 
Woeful is this human lot. 
Woe! woe, etcetera . . . .

London is a woeful place, 
Shropshire is much pleasanter. 
Then let us smile a little space 
Upon fond nature's morbid grace. 
Oh, Woe, woe, woe, etcetera . . .