Sea Garden

The editors and publishers concerned have kindly given me permission to reprint some of the poems in this book which appeared originally in Poetry (Chicago), The Egoist (London), The Little Review (Chicago), Greenwich Village (New York), the first Imagist anthology (New York: A. and C. Boni. London: Poetry Bookshop), the second Imagist anthology ( Some Imagist Poets, London: Constable and Co. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.).
LONDON CONSTABLE AND COMPANY LTD. 1916
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN. CHISWICK PRESS: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO. TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.


Rose, harsh rose, marred and with stint of petals, meagre flower, thin, sparse of leaf,
more precious than a wet rose single on a stem— you are caught in the drift.
Stunted, with small leaf, you are flung on the sand, you are lifted in the crisp sand that drives in the wind.
Can the spice-rose drip such acrid fragrance hardened in a leaf?

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.