Imagini ale paginilor
PDF
ePub

sculpture. In 1920, she made her long-deferred visit to America, settling on the Californian coast, returning, the following year, to England.

"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 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. What, at first, seemed static becomes fluent; the arrested moment glows with brimming energy.

Observe the 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.

Her efforts to draw the contemporary world are less happy. She is best in her reflections of clear-cut loveliness in a quietly pagan world. Her art, in its precision and polish, is curiously Hellenic; "H. D.," in most of her moods, seems less of a contemporary than an inspired anachronism.

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.

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;

no flower ever opened

so staunch a white leaf,

no flower ever parted silver

from such rare silver;

O white pear, your flower-tufts,

thick on the branch,

bring summer and ripe fruits

in their purple hearts.

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

[blocks in formation]

Nor fragrance of flowering bush,

Nor wailing of reed-bird to waken you.

Nor of linnet

Nor of thrush.

Nor word nor touch nor sight

Of lover, you

Shall long through the night but for this: The roll of the full tide to cover you

Without question,

Without kiss.

William Rose Benét was born at Fort Hamilton, New York Harbor, February 2, 1886. He was educated at Albany Academy and graduated from Yale in 1907. After various experiences as free-lance writer, publisher's reader, magazine editor and second lieutenant in the U. S. Air Service, Benét became the Associate Editor of the New York Post's Literary Review in 1920.

The outstanding feature of Benét's verse is its extraordinary whimsicality; an oriental imagination riots through his pages. Like the title-poem of his first volume, Merchants from Cathay (1913), all of Benét's volumes vibrate with a vigorous music; they are full of the sonorous stuff that one rolls out crossing wintry fields or tramping a road alone.

But Benét's charm is not confined to the lift and swing of rollicking choruses. His The Falconer of God (1914), The Great White Wall (1916) and The Burglar of the Zodiac (1918) contain decorations as bold as they are brilliant; they ring with a strange and spicy music evoked from seemingly casual words; they glow with a half-lurid, half-humorous reflection of the grotesque. There are times when Benét seems to be forcing his ingenuity. The poet frequently lets his fantastic Pegasus run away with him, and what started out to be a gallop among the stars ends in a scraping of shins on the pavement. But he is saved by an acrobatic dexterity even when his energy betrays him.

Moons of Grandeur (1920) represents the fullest development of Benét's unusual gifts; a combination of Eastern phantasy and Western vigor.

How that

They came.

MERCHANTS FROM CATHAY

Their heels slapped their bumping mules; their fat chaps glowed.

Glory unto Mary, each seemed to wear a crown!

Of their
Beasts,

And their
Boast,

With its
Burthen

Like sunset their robes were on the wide, white road:

So we saw those mad merchants come dusting into town!

Two paunchy beasts they rode on and two they drove before.

May the Saints all help us, the tigerstripes they had!

And the panniers upon them swelled full of stuffs and ore!

The square buzzed and jostled at a sight so mad.

They bawled in their beards, and their turbans they wried.

They stopped by the stalls with curvetting and clatter.

As bronze as the bracken their necks and faces dyed

And a stave they sat singing, to tell us of the matter.

"For your silks, to Sugarmago! For your
dyes, to Isfahan!

Weird fruits from the Isle o' Lamaree.
But for magic merchandise,

For treasure-trove and spice,

Here's a catch and a carol to the great, grand Chan,

The King of all the Kings across the

sea!

« ÎnapoiContinuă »