The New Poetry

Richard Aldington

Reading edition

THE POPLAR

Why do you always stand there shivering

Between the white stream and the road?

The people pass through the dust

On bicycles, in carts, in motor-cars;

The wagoners go by at dawn;

The lovers walk on the grass path at night.

Stir from your roots, walk, poplar!

You are more beautiful than they are.

I know that the white wind loves you,

Is always kissing you and turning up

The white lining of your green petticoat.

The sky darts through you like blue rain,

And the grey rain drips on your flanks

And loves you.

And I have seen the moon

Slip his silver penny into your pocket

As you straightened your hair;

And the white mist curling and hesitating

Like a bashful lover about your knees.

I know you, poplar;

I have watched you since I was ten.

But if you had a little real love,

A little strength,

You would leave your nonchalant idle lovers

And go walking down the white road

Behind the wagoners.

There are beautiful beeches

Down beyond the hill.

Will you always stand there shivering?

LESBIA

Grow weary if you will, let me be sad.

Use no more speech now;

Let the silence spread gold hair above us,

Fold on delicate fold.

Use no more speech;

You had the ivory of my life to carve....

And Picus of Mirandola is dead;

And all the gods they dreamed and fabled of,

Hermes, and Thoth and Bêl are rotten now,

Rotten and dank.

And through it all I see your pale Greek face;

Tenderness

Makes me eager as a little child to love you,

You morsel left half-cold on Cæsar’s plate.

IMAGES

Like a gondola of green scented fruits

Drifting along the dank canals at Venice,

You, O exquisite one,

Have entered my desolate city.

The blue smoke leaps

Like swirling clouds of birds vanishing.

So my love leaps forth towards you,

Vanishes and is renewed.

7III

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.

As a young beech-tree on the edge of a 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.

The red deer are high on the mountain,

They are beyond the last pine trees.

And my desires have run with them.

The flower which the wind has shaken

Is soon filled again with rain;

So does my mind fill slowly with misgiving

Until you return.

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

8And the lithe pale girls,

Daughters of Okeanos.

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—

Prosperine, 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 in the end we turn to thee,

9Death,

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 long 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 colorless 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.