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II

There was a darkness in this man; an immense and hollow darkness,

Of which we may not speak, nor share with him, nor

enter;

A darkness through which strong roots stretched downwards into the earth

Towards old things;

Towards the herdman-kings who walked the earth and spoke with God,

Towards the wanderers who sought for they knew not what, and found their goal at last;

Towards the men who waited, only waited patiently when all seemed lost,

Many bitter winters of defeat;

Down to the granite of patience

These roots swept, knotted fibrous roots, prying, piercing, seeking,

And drew from the living rock and the living waters about it

The red sap to carry upwards to the sun.

Not proud, but humble,

Only to serve and pass on, to endure to the end through service;

For the ax is laid at the root of the trees, and all that bring not forth good fruit

Shall be cut down on the day to come and cast into the fire.

III

There is silence abroad in the land today,

And in the hearts of men, a deep and anxious silence;

And, because we are still at last, those bronze lips slowly

open,

Those hollow and weary eyes take on a gleam of light.

Slowly a patient, firm-syllabled voice cuts through the endless silence

Like labouring oxen that drag a plow through the chaos of rude clay-fields:

"I went forward as the light goes forward in early spring,

But there were also many things which I left behind.

"Tombs that were quiet;

One, of a mother, whose brief light went out in the darkness,

One, of a loved one, the snow on whose grave is long falling,

One, only of a child, but it was mine.

"Have you forgot your graves? Go, question them in anguish,

Listen long to their unstirred lips. From your hostages to silence,

Learn there is no life without death, no dawn without sun-setting,

No victory but to Him who has given all."

IV

The clamour of cannon dies down, the furnace-mouth of the battle is silent.

The midwinter sun dips and descends, the earth takes on afresh its bright colours.

But he whom we mocked and obeyed not, he whom we scorned and mistrusted,

He has descended, like a god, to his rest.

Over the uproar of cities,

Over the million intricate threads of life wavering and

crossing,

In the midst of problems we know not, tangling, per

plexing, ensnaring,

Rises one white tomb alone.

Beam over it, stars.

Wrap it round, stripes-stripes red for the pain that he bore for you

Enfold it forever, O flag, rent, soiled, but repaired through your anguish;

Long as you keep him there safe, the nations shall bow to your law.

Strew over him flowers;

Blue forget-me-nots from the north, and the bright pink arbutus

From the east, and from the west rich orange blossoms, But from the heart of the land take the passion-flower.

Rayed, violet, dim,

With the nails that pierced, the cross that he bore and the circlet,

And beside it there, lay also one lonely snow-white magnolia,

Bitter for remembrance of the healing which has passed.

THE SKATERS

Black swallows swooping or gliding
In a flurry of entangled loops and curves;
The skaters skim over the frozen river.

And the grinding click of their skates as they impinge upon the surface,

Is like the brushing together of thin wing-tips of silver.

"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 J. 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.

Her first volume, Sea Garden, appeared in 1916; her second, Hymen, an amplification of her gift, was published in 1921.

"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 to 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.

Observe the tiny poem entitled "Heat." Here, in the fewest possible words, is something beyond the description of heathere is the effect of it. In these lines one feels the very weight and solidity of a midsummer afternoon.

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.

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
the points of pears
and rounds the grapes.

Cut through the heat-
plough through it,
turning it on either side
of your path.

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;

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