Green
The sky was apple-green
The sky was green wine held up in the sun,
The moon was a golden petal between.
She opened her eyes, and green
They show, clear like flowers undone,
For the first time, now for the first time seen.
Mr. Lawrence has solved the problem of vers libre for himself, by writing in a rhymed metre which usually defies all scansion, but which gives a queer, and most satisfactory effect, of elasticity and strength. For this reason, and for its novelty, Mr. Lawrence’s manner is very interesting, but his matter is still more so. Read The Mowers, a common tragedy, but put so newly and strikingly that it comes upon one with all its original force.
Fireflies in the Corn and A Woman to Her Dead Husband are new in subject as well as in presentation, and they have a bald reality about them which I have never met in any other poem. But never once does Mr. Lawrence make the mistake of being only a realist; he never ceases to be a poet. In Fireflies in the Corn there are these lines:
And those bright fireflies wafting in between
And over the swaying cornstalks, just above
And all their dark-feathered helmets, like little green
Stars, come low and wandering here for love
Of this dark earth.
The Ballad of Another Ophelia is probably his best poem. In it we see his peculiar style at its very best.
Mr. Lawrence is the singer of truth, the lover of humanity. His inclusion into the Imagist group shows that the school is broad and real enough not to desire to shut itself up in the cupboard of precocity, as in the beginning there was some fear of its doing.
Where Mr. Lawrence gives us the broadest view of Imagism from an English standpoint that this newer, more vital group has offered us, Miss Lowell does the same service for the American side. The qualities that make her work noteworthy are first, a virtuoso command of language that fits itself to the most diverse themes, and second, a sort of fantastic, curious irony that is essentially American. This irony is perhaps at its finest in The Traveling Bear and The Letter, but these are too long to quote. I choose instead Bullion, which may be taken for a very modern type of love poem, in which love itself becomes a burden:
My thoughts
Chink against my ribs
And roll about like silver hail-stones.
I should like to spill them out,
And pour them, all shining,
Over you.
But my heart is shut upon them
And holds them straitly.
Come, You! and open my heart;
That my thoughts torment me no longer,
But glitter in your hair.
Miss Lowell always looks at things from an angle. Her mind reflects the unusual aspect and that most vividly. As she says of herself:
When night drifts along the streets of the city,
And sifts down between the uneven roofs,
My mind begins to peek and peer.
It plays at ball in old, blue Chinese gardens,
And shakes wrought dice-cups in Pagan temples,
Amid the broken flutings of white pillars.
It dances with purple and yellow crocuses in its hair,
And its feet shine as they flutter over drenched grasses.
How light and laughing my mind is,
When all the good folk have put out their bed-room candles,
And the city is still!
Miss Lowell has the ability which is rare among present-day poets of recognizing that beauty does not belong to an epoch or a period, but is always the same, under whatever strange form it may present itself.
Doubtless her most remarkable poem is that called The Bombardment. Whether the technique adopted here by Miss Lowell is destined to work a revolution in verse-writing remains for the future to settle. But here, at least, it perfectly justifies itself. No one should permit, however, a question of technique to obscure the deep tragedy, the splendid humanity, of this poem. War has only one beauty: that of its terrible destructiveness of all beauty. The Bombardment is the best statement of this aspect of war I know. It must be read in its entirety, and so I will not attempt piecemeal quotation of this most fitting conclusion to the volume.
This book is so provocative of thought, the poets in it are so suggestive, each one by him—or herself, that each really requires a separate review. But I have said enough to show what an important volume this little book is. We are told that it is to be an annual, and certainly we shall watch its succeeding appearances with great interest.
It is certainly best to separate an artist so far from his work as not to take him as seriously as his work.—Nietzsche.