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NIGHT SONG AT AMALFI1

I asked the heaven of stars
What I should give my love—
It answered me with silence,
Silence above.

I asked the darkened sea

Down where the fishermen go-
It answered me with silence,
Silence below.

Oh, I could give him weeping,
Or I could give him song-
But how can I give silence
My whole life long?

WATER LILIES 2

If you have forgotten water-lilies floating

On a dark lake among mountains in the afternoon shade,

If you have forgotten their wet, sleepy fragrance,
Then you can return and not be afraid.

But if you remember, then turn away forever

To the plains and the prairies where pools are far apart,

There you will not come at dusk on closing water lilies, And the shadow of mountains will not fall on your

heart.

Reprinted by permission of the publishers, The Macmillan Company, from Love Songs by Sara Teasdale.

2

Reprinted by permission of the publishers, The Macmillan Company, from Flame and Shadow by Sara Teasdale.

TWO SONGS FOR SOLITUDE

The Crystal Gazer

I shall gather myself into myself again,

I shall take my scattered selves and make them one, I shall fuse them into a polished crystal ball Where I can see the moon and the flashing sun.

I shall sit like a sibyl, hour after hour intent,
Watching the future come and the present go—
And the little shifting pictures of people rushing
In tiny self-importance to and fro.

The Solitary

Let them think I love them more than I do,
Let them think I care, though I go alone,
If it lifts their pride, what is it to me

Who am self-complete as a flower or a stone?

It is one to me that they come or go

If I have myself and the drive of my will,
And strength to climb on a summer night
And watch the stars swarm over the hill.

My heart has grown rich with the passing of years,
I have less need now than when I was young

To share myself with every comer,

Or shape my thoughts into words with my tongue.

Ezra Pound

Ezra (Loomis) Pound was born at Hailey, Idaho, October 30, 1885; attended Hamilton College and the University of Penn

sylvania and went abroad, seeking fresh material to complete a thesis on Lope de Vega, in 1908.

It was in Venice that Pound's first book, A Lume Spento (1908), was printed. The following year Pound went to London and the chief poems of the little volume were incorporated in Persona (1909), a small collection containing some of Pound's finest work.

Although the young American was a total stranger to the English literary world, his book made a definite impression on critics of all shades. Edward Thomas, the English poet and one of the most careful appraisers, wrote "the beauty of it is the beauty of passion, sincerity and intensity, not of beautiful words and suggestions. . . . The thought dominates the words and is greater than they are."

Exultations (1909) was printed in the autumn of the same year that saw the appearance of Persona. Too often in his later work, Pound seems to be more the archaeologist than the artist, digging with little energy and less enthusiasm. Canzoni (1911) and Ripostes (1912) both contain much that is sharp and living; they also contain the germs of desiccation and decay. Pound began to scatter his talents; to start movements which he quickly discarded for new ones; to spend himself in poetic propaganda for the Imagists and others (see Preface); to give more and more time to translation.

Too special to achieve permanence, too intellectual to become popular, Pound's contribution to his age should not be underestimated. He was a pioneer in the new forms; under his leadership, the Imagists became not only a group but a protest; he helped to make many of the paths which a score of unconsciously influenced poets tread to-day with more ease but far less grace.

A VIRGINAL

No, no! Go from me. I have left her lately.
I will not spoil my sheath with lesser brightness,
For my surrounding air has a new lightness;

Slight are her arms, yet they have bound me straitly

And left me cloaked as with a gauze of aether;
As with sweet leaves; as with a subtle clearness.
Oh, I have picked up magic in her nearness

To sheathe me half in half the things that sheathe her.

No, no! Go from me. I still have the flavour,
Soft as spring wind that's come from birchen bowers.
Green come the shoots, aye April in the branches,
As winter's wound with her sleight hand she staunches,
Hath of the trees a likeness of the savour:

As white their bark, so white this lady's hours.

BALLAD FOR GLOOM

For God, our God is a gallant foe
That playeth behind the veil.

I have loved my God as a child at heart
That seeketh deep bosoms for rest,

I have loved my God as a maid to man-
But lo, this thing is best:

To love your God as a gallant foe that plays behind the

veil;

To meet your God as the night winds meet beyond Arcturus' pale.

I have played with God for a woman,
I have staked with my God for truth,
I have lost to my God as a man, clear-eyed-
His dice be not of ruth.

For I am made as a naked blade,

But hear ye this thing in sooth:

Who loseth to God as man to man

Shall win at the turn of the game.

I have drawn my blade where the lightnings meet

But the ending is the same:

Who loseth to God as the sword blades lose

Shall win at the end of the game.

For God, our God is a gallant foe that playeth behind the veil.

Whom God deigns not to overthrow hath need of triple mail.

IN A STATION OF THE METRO
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

Louis Untermeyer

Louis Untermeyer was born October 1, 1885, in New York City, where he has lived, except for brief sojourns in Maine and New Jersey, ever since. His education was sketchy; his continued failure to comprehend algebra and geometry kept him from entering college.

Untermeyer's first volume was The Younger Quire (1911), a twenty-four-page burlesque of an anthology (The Younger Choir). It was issued anonymously and only one hundred copies were printed. Later in the same year, he published a sequence of some seventy lyrics entitled First Love (1911). With the exception of about eight of these songs, the volume is devoid of character and, in spite of a certain technical facility, wholly undistinguished.

It was with Challenge (1914) that the author first spoke in his own idiom. Poems like "Summons," "Landscapes" and "Caliban in the Coal Mines" show "a fresh and lyrical concern not only with a mechanistic society but with the modern world." "His vision" (thus the Boston Transcript) “is a

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