DES IMAGISTES

«Καὶ κείνα Σικελά, καὶ ἐν Αἰτναίαισιν ἔπαιζεν

ἀόσι, καὶ μέλος ᾖδε τὸ Δώριον.»

Επιτάφιος Βίωνος

“And she also was of Sikilia and was gay in

the valleys of Ætna, and knew the Doric

singing.”

DES IMAGISTES

AN ANTHOLOGY

NEW YORK

ALBERT AND CHARLES BONI

96 FIFTH AVENUE

1914

Copyright, 1914

By

Albert and Charles Boni

CONTENTS

Richard Aldington

Choricos [7]

To a Greek Marble [10]

Au Vieux Jardin [11]

Lesbia [12]

Beauty Thou Hast Hurt Me Overmuch [13]

Argyria [14]

In the Via Sestina [15]

The River [16]

Bromios [17]

To Atthis [19]

H. D.

Sitalkas [20]

Hermes of the Ways I [21]

Hermes of the Ways II [22]

Priapus [24]

Acon [26]

Hermonax [28]

Epigram [30]

F. S. Flint

I [31]

II Hallucination [32]

III [33]

IV [34]

V The Swan [35]

Skipwith Cannéll

Nocturnes [36]

Amy Lowell

In a Garden [38]

William Carlos Williams

Postlude [39]

James Joyce

I Hear an Army [40]

Ezra Pound

Δώρια [41]

The Return [42]

After Ch’u Yuan [43]

Liu Ch’e [44]

Fan-Piece for Her Imperial Lord [45]

Ts’ai Chi’h [46]

Ford Madox Hueffer

In the Little Old Market-Place [47]

Allen Upward

Scented Leaves from a Chinese Jar [51]

John Cournos after K. Tetmaier

The Rose [54]

Documents

To Hulme (T. E.) and Fitzgerald [57]

Vates, the Social Reformer [59]

Fragments Addressed by Clearchus H. to Aldi [62]

Bibliography [63]

CHORICOS

The ancient songs

Pass deathward mournfully.

Cold lips that sing no more, and withered wreaths,

Regretful eyes, and drooping breasts and wings—

Symbols of ancient songs

Mournfully passing

Down to the great white surges,

Watched of none

Save the frail sea-birds

And the lithe pale girls,

Daughters of Okeanus.

And the songs pass

From the green land

Which lies upon the waves as a leaf

On the flowers of hyacinth;

And they pass from the waters,

The manifold winds and the dim moon,

And they come,

Silently winging through soft Kimmerian dusk,

To the quiet level lands

That she keeps for us all,

That she wrought for us all for sleep

In the silver days of the earth’s dawning—

Proserpina, daughter of Zeus.

And we turn from the Kuprian’s breasts,

And we turn from thee,

Phoibos Apollon,

And we turn from the music of old

And the hills that we loved and the meads,

And we turn from the fiery day,

And the lips that were over sweet;

For silently

Brushing the fields with red-shod feet,

With purple robe

Searing the flowers as with a sudden flame,

Death,

Thou hast come upon us.

And of all the ancient songs

Passing to the swallow-blue halls

By the dark streams of Persephone,

This only remains:

That we turn to thee,

Death,

That we turn to thee, singing

One last song.

O Death,

Thou art an healing wind

That blowest over white flowers

A-tremble with dew;

Thou art a wind flowing

Over dark leagues of lonely sea;

Thou art the dusk and the fragrance;

Thou art the lips of love mournfully smiling;

Thou art the pale peace of one

Satiate with old desires;

Thou art the silence of beauty,

And we look no more for the morning

We yearn no more for the sun,

Since with thy white hands,

Death,

Thou crownest us with the pallid chaplets,

The slim colourless poppies

Which in thy garden alone

Softly thou gatherest.

And silently,

And with slow feet approaching,

And with bowed head and unlit eyes,

We kneel before thee:

And thou, leaning towards us,

Caressingly layest upon us

Flowers from thy thin cold hands,

And, smiling as a chaste woman

Knowing love in her heart,

Thou sealest our eyes

And the illimitable quietude

Comes gently upon us.

Richard Aldington

TO A GREEK MARBLE

Πότνια, πότνια

White grave goddess,

Pity my sadness,

O silence of Paros.

I am not of these about thy feet,

These garments and decorum;

I am thy brother,

Thy lover of aforetime crying to thee,

And thou hearest me not.

I have whispered thee in thy solitudes

Of our loves in Phrygia,

The far ecstasy of burning noons

When the fragile pipes

Ceased in the cypress shade,

And the brown fingers of the shepherd

Moved over slim shoulders;

And only the cicada sang.

I have told thee of the hills

And the lisp of reeds

And the sun upon thy breasts,

And thou hearest me not,

Πότνια, πότνια,

Thou hearest me not.

Richard Aldington

AU VIEUX JARDIN

I have sat here happy in the gardens,

Watching the still pool and the reeds

And the dark clouds

Which the wind of the upper air

Tore like the green leafy boughs

Of the divers-hued trees of late summer;

But though I greatly delight

In these and the water lilies,

That which sets me nighest to weeping

Is the rose and white colour of the smooth flag-stones,

And the pale yellow grasses

Among them.

Richard Aldington

LESBIA

Use no more speech now;

Let the silence spread gold hair above us

Fold on delicate fold;

You had the ivory of my life to carve.

Use no more speech.

. . . .

And Picus of Mirandola is dead;

And all the gods they dreamed and fabled of,

Hermes, and Thoth, and Christ, are rotten now,

Rotten and dank.

. . . .

And through it all I see your pale Greek face;

Tenderness makes me as eager as a little child

To love you

You morsel left half cold on Caesar’s plate.

Richard Aldington

BEAUTY THOU HAST HURT ME OVERMUCH

The light is a wound to me.

The soft notes

Feed upon the wound.

Where wert thou born

O thou woe

That consumest my life?

Whither comest thou?

Toothed wind of the seas,

No man knows thy beginning.

As a bird with strong claws

Thou woundest me,

O beautiful sorrow.

Richard Aldington

ARGYRIA

O you,

O you most fair,

Swayer of reeds, whisperer

Among the flowering rushes,

You have hidden your hands

Beneath the poplar leaves,

You have given them to the white waters.

Swallow-fleet,

Sea-child cold from waves,

Slight reed that sang so blithely in the wind,

White cloud the white sun kissed into the air;

Pan mourns for you.

White limbs, white song,

Pan mourns for you.

Richard Aldington

IN THE VIA SESTINA

O daughter of Isis,

Thou standest beside the wet highway

Of this decayed Rome,

A manifest harlot.

Straight and slim art thou

As a marble phallus;

Thy face is the face of Isis

Carven

As she is carven in basalt.

And my heart stops with awe

At the presence of the gods,

There beside thee on the stall of images

Is the head of Osiris

Thy lord.

Richard Aldington

THE RIVER

I

I drifted along the river

Until I moored my boat

By these crossed trunks.

Here the mist moves

Over fragile leaves and rushes,

Colourless waters and brown fading hills.

She has come from beneath the trees,

Moving within the mist,

A floating leaf.

II

O blue flower of the evening,

You have touched my face

With your leaves of silver.

Love me for I must depart.

Richard Aldington

BROMIOS

The withered bonds are broken.

The waxed reeds and the double pipe

Clamour about me;

The hot wind swirls

Through the red pine trunks.

Io! the fauns and the satyrs.

The touch of their shagged curled fur

And blunt horns!

They have wine in heavy craters

Painted black and red;

Wine to splash on her white body.

Io!

She shrinks from the cold shower—

Afraid, afraid!

Let the Maenads break through the myrtles

And the boughs of the rohododaphnai.

Let them tear the quick deers’ flesh.

Ah, the cruel, exquisite fingers!

Io!

I have brought you the brown clusters,

The ivy-boughs and pine-cones.

Your breasts are cold sea-ripples,

But they smell of the warm grasses.

Throw wide the chiton and the peplum,

Maidens of the Dew.

Beautiful are your bodies, O Maenads,

Beautiful the sudden folds,

The vanishing curves of the white linen