Richard Aldington

“ Light amber where the sunlight straggles through—
But yet, what colour is it if you watch the reeds
Or if you only see the trees' reflection?
Flat on the surface rest the lily leaves
(Some curled up inwards, though, like boats)
And yellow heads thrust up on fine green throats.
Two—three—a dozen—watch now—demoiselle flies
Flicker and flutter and dip and rest
Their beryl-green or blue, dark Prussian blue, frail wings
On spits and threads of water-plant.
Notice all carefully, be precise, welcome the world.
Do I miss these things? Overlook beauty? ”

“ Give your lips and breasts to the old men,
The kindly, impetuous, glowing, old men!
They who will love you indeed, indeed, dears,
Not as we do, drained of our blood, with weeping.
Sell yourselves, oh, give yourselves to the cripples,
Give yourself to the weak, the poor forgotten,
Give yourself to those who escape the torture
And buy their blood from the pools with weight of gold. ”

“ The light strong life of love that lives indeed
Through many dappled days of good Spring weather,
A pause when all the senses are bound up
Like flowers to form a garland, which her hand
Will scatter for delight upon her bed.
One waits,
And glides upon the crested surge of days
Like some sea-god, with tangled dripping beard
And smooth hard skin, who glimpses from the sea
An earth-girl named by the soft foam fringe,
And, utterly forgetting all his life,
Flings toward the shore, is caught up by a wave
And hurried toward her, glad with sudden love!
Even in that pause of speed I live ”

“ Red, mottled berries,
You are as beautiful
As the points of a girl's breasts;
You are as firm and fresh ...
Beauty of the morning sun
Among the red berries
Of early September,
You tear at my breast,
Your light crushes me
With memory of freedom lost
And warm hours blotted out.
I will throw away rifle and leather belt,
Straps, khaki and heavy nailed boots,
And run naked across the dewy grass
Among the firm red berries! ”

“ To the whine of the shells that tears one's nerves
And the crash that's only not near enough;
Back we go to struggle with mud,
To stumble and slip on the greasy boards,
Back we go to the stink of the dead,
Back we go to the sleepless days
And the unwashed weeks and the mouldy months,
Back we go to the thirst and the dust,
Back we go to the grim despair
That holds a man by the heart in France. ”

“ The day is new and fair with good smells in the air.
WALK
Over the street the white clouds meet, and sheer away without touching.
On the sidewalk boys are playing marbles. Glass marbles, with amber and blue hearts, roll together and part with a sweet clashing noise. The boys strike them with black and red striped agates. The glass marbles spit crimson when they are hit, and slip into the gutters under rushing brown water. I smell tulips and narcissus in the air, but there are no flowers anywhere, only white dust whipping up the street, and a girl with a gay spring hat and blowing skirts. ”

“ SLEEP
If but to sleep alone be fair
⁠As poets say,
How piercing sweet to lie all night
⁠Until the day
With all her flower-like body pressed
⁠Close unto mine,
To feel her moving heart, to taste
⁠Her breath like wine,
To hold her pointed, smooth, soft breast
⁠In one firm hand
And let the other lie at rest
⁠In love's own land. ”

“ TERROR
I
Those of the earth envy us,
Envy our beauty and frail strength;
Those of the wind and the moon
Envy our pain.
II
For as a doe that has never born child
We were swift to fly from terror ”

“ And for my day-long, night-long sacred hush,
(Flutter of leaves, bee-murmurs in the flowers,
Ripe seeded grass just stirring into music)
A hush wherein one seemed to hear
The invisible wheels of burning stars
Echoing upon the tiled paths of heaven—
For this they give me noise,
Harsh clangours of breaking metal,
Abrupt huge bursts of flame. ”

“ In the white mist of olives;
No more do I take the rose-crown
From the white hands of a maiden.
I, who was free, am a slave;
The Muses have forgotten me.
The gods do not hear me.
Here there are no flowers to love ”

“ Get to know, clearer than before,
What a tree means, what a pool,
Or a black, wet field in sunlight.
One gets to know,
In that shell-pierced silence
Under the unmoved, ironic stars,
How good love of the earth is. ”

“ Even you may feel that these notes on war are overstrained, morbidly self-conscious, petulant perhaps. That may be, but (taking into account all enthusiasms and devotions) I affirm that they represent to some degree the often inarticulate feelings of the ordinary civilized man thrust suddenly into these extraordinary and hellish circumstances—feelings of bewilderment, bitterness, dumb revolt and rather piteous weakness. Poor human flesh is so easily rent by the shattering of explosive and the jagged shear of metal. Those of us who have seen it will never be quite happy again. ”

“ For life, for a little life.
Lord, you know not her or love
If you let death take me,
I will speak outright:
No God, no nation, no cause,
No life of any man, no person,
Nothing created or living,
Do I love as I love her. ”

“ Diseases like snakes crawling over the earth, leaving trails of slime. Wails from people burying their dead. Through the window he can see the rocking steeple. A ball of fire falls on the lead of the roof, and the sky tears apart on a spike of flame. ”

“ As a French poet of distinction, Paul Fort, has said: “Prose and poetry are but one instrument, graduated.” It is not a question of typography; it is not even a question of rules and forms. Poetry is the vision in a man's soul which he translates as best he can with the means at his disposal.
We are young, we are experimentalists, but we ask to be judged by our own standards, not by those which have governed other men at other times. ”

“ Nor would I have her love again—
Whatever comes after I die
There will be only pain and pain.
I dare not ask for life, I dare
Only to ask for utter death
So that I may not know she breathes
Life from another's amorous breath. ”

“ And in this little glow of mortal life—
Faint as one candle in a large cold room—
We know the clearest light is fed by love,
That when we kiss with life-blood in our lips
Then we are nearest to the dreamed-of gods. ”

“ And hail you with cries of our woe,
Yet sweet and divine.
Grant us life!
If we die there is none upon earth
To feed the fierce pride of your heart;
There is none so fine and so keen,
There is none to sing at your feast. ”

“ You, who are clean and warm in the delicate leisure of a flower-scented library, strain your hearing, listen across the clamour of the age, for a whisper that comes to you so faintly, so ironically—"the poetry of winter!" ”

“ Green ivy about ruined towers,
The out-pouring of the grey sea,
And the ecstasy
Of a pale clear sky at sunset.
I have been prodigal of love
For critics and for lonely places;
I have tried not to hate mankind ”

“ Could they not endow you with a star
And fix bright youth for ever in your limbs?
Could they not give you all things that I lack?
You should have loved a god; I am but dust.
Yet no god loves as loves this poor frail dust. ”