No More Learning

The subject of free-verse is too complicated to be discussed here. We may
say briefly, that we attach the term to all that increasing amount of
writing whose cadence is more marked, more definite, and closer knit than
that of prose, but which is not so violently nor so obviously accented as
the so-called "regular verse. " We refer those interested in the question
to the Greek Melic poets, and to the many excellent French studies on the
subject by such distinguished and well-equipped authors as Remy de
Gourmont, Gustave Kahn, Georges Duhamel, Charles Vildrac, Henri Ghéon,
Robert de Souza, André Spire, etc.

We wish it to be clearly understood that we do not represent an exclusive
artistic sect; we publish our work together because of mutual artistic
sympathy, and we propose to bring out our coöperative volume each year for
a short term of years, until we have made a place for ourselves and our
principles such as we desire.




CONTENTS

RICHARD ALDINGTON
Childhood 3
The Poplar 10
Round-Pond 12
Daisy 13
Epigrams 15
The Faun sees Snow for the First Time 16
Lemures 17

H. D.
The Pool 21
The Garden 22
Sea Lily 24
Sea Iris 25
Sea Rose 27
Oread 28
Orion Dead 29

JOHN GOULD FLETCHER
The Blue Symphony 33
London Excursion 39

F. S. FLINT
Trees 53
Lunch 55
Malady 56
Accident 58
Fragment 60
Houses 62
Eau-Forte 63

D. H. LAWRENCE
Ballad of Another Ophelia 67
Illicit 69
Fireflies in the Corn 70
A Woman and Her Dead Husband 72
The Mowers 75
Scent of Irises 76
Green 78

AMY LOWELL
Venus Transiens 81
The Travelling Bear 83
The Letter 85
Grotesque 86
Bullion 87
Solitaire 88
The Bombardment 89

BIBLIOGRAPHY 93


Thanks are due to the editors of _Poetry_, _The Smart Set_,
_Poetry and Drama_, and _The Egoist_ for their courteous
permission to reprint certain of these poems which have been
copyrighted to them.




RICHARD ALDINGTON



RICHARD ALDINGTON


CHILDHOOD

I

The bitterness, the misery, the wretchedness of childhood
Put me out of love with God.
I can't believe in God's goodness;
I can believe
In many avenging gods.
Most of all I believe
In gods of bitter dullness,
Cruel local gods
Who seared my childhood.

II

I've seen people put
A chrysalis in a match-box,
"To see," they told me, "what sort of moth would come.
"
But when it broke its shell
It slipped and stumbled and fell about its prison
And tried to climb to the light
For space to dry its wings.

That's how I was.
Somebody found my chrysalis
And shut it in a match-box.
My shrivelled wings were beaten,
Shed their colours in dusty scales
Before the box was opened
For the moth to fly.

And then it was too late,
Because the beauty a child has,
And the beautiful things it learns before its birth,
Were shed, like moth-scales, from me.

III

I hate that town;
I hate the town I lived in when I was little;
I hate to think of it.
There were always clouds, smoke, rain
In that dingy little valley.
It rained; it always rained.
I think I never saw the sun until I was nine--
And then it was too late;
Everything's too late after the first seven years.

That long street we lived in
Was duller than a drain
And nearly as dingy.
There were the big College
And the pseudo-Gothic town-hall.
There were the sordid provincial shops--
The grocer's, and the shops for women,
The shop where I bought transfers,
And the piano and gramaphone shop
Where I used to stand
Staring at the huge shiny pianos and at the pictures
Of a white dog looking into a gramaphone.

How dull and greasy and grey and sordid it was!
On wet days--it was always wet--
I used to kneel on a chair
And look at it from the window.

The dirty yellow trams
Dragged noisily along
With a clatter of wheels and bells
And a humming of wires overhead.
They threw up the filthy rain-water from the hollow lines
And then the water ran back
Full of brownish foam bubbles.