“H. D.”

Hilda Doolittle was born September 10, 1886, at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. When she was still a child, her father became Director of the Flower Observatory and the family moved to a suburb in the outskirts of Philadelphia. Hilda Doolittle attended a private school in West Philadelphia; entered Bryn Mawr College in 1904; and went abroad, for what was intended to be a short sojourn, in 1911. After a visit to Italy and France, she came to London, joining Ezra Pound and helping to organize the Imagists. Her work (signed “H. D.”) began to appear in a few magazines and its unusual quality was recognized at once. She married one of the most talented of the English members of this group (Richard Aldington) in 1913 and remained in London, creating, through a chiseled verse, her pure and flawless reproductions of Greek poetry and 328sculpture. In 1920, she made her long-deferred visit to America, settling on the Californian coast, returning, the following year, to England.

“H. D.” is, by all odds, the most important of her group. She is the only one who has steadfastly held to the letter as well as the spirit of its credo. She is, in fact, the only true Imagist. Her poems, capturing the firm delicacy of the Greek models, are like a set of Tanagra figurines. Here, at first glance, the effect is chilling—beauty seems held in a frozen gesture. But it is in this very fixation of light, color and emotion that she achieves intensity. What, at first, seemed static becomes fluent; the arrested moment glows with brimming energy.

Observe the poem entitled “Heat.” Here, in the fewest possible words, is something beyond the description of heat—here is the effect of it. In these lines one feels the very weight and solidity of a midsummer afternoon.

Her efforts to draw the contemporary world are less happy. She is best in her reflections of clear-cut loveliness in a quietly pagan world. Her art, in its precision and polish, is curiously Hellenic; “H. D.,” in most of her moods, seems less of a contemporary than an inspired anachronism.

OREAD

Whirl up, sea—

Whirl your pointed pines.

Splash your great pines

On our rocks.

Hurl your green over us—

Cover us with your pools of fir.

329

PEAR TREE

Silver dust

lifted from the earth,

higher than my arms reach,

you have mounted.

O silver,

higher than my arms reach

you front us with great mass;

no flower ever opened

so staunch a white leaf,

no flower ever parted silver

from such rare silver;

O white pear,

your flower-tufts,

thick on the branch,

bring summer and ripe fruits

in their purple hearts.

HEAT

O wind, rend open the heat,

cut apart the heat,

rend it to tatters.

Fruit cannot drop

through this thick air—

fruit cannot fall into heat

that presses up and blunts

330the points of pears

and rounds the grapes.

Cut through the heat—

plough through it,

turning it on either side

of your path.

LETHE

Nor skin nor hide nor fleece

Shall cover you,

Nor curtain of crimson nor fine

Shelter of cedar-wood be over you,

Nor the fir-tree

Nor the pine.

Nor sight of whin nor gorse

Nor river-yew,

Nor fragrance of flowering bush,

Nor wailing of reed-bird to waken you.

Nor of linnet

Nor of thrush.

Nor word nor touch nor sight

Of lover, you

Shall long through the night but for this:

The roll of the full tide to cover you

Without question,

Without kiss.

331