13 Modernist Poems by H.D. (Hilda Doolittle)
By Nava Atlas | On November 26, 2019 | Updated September 2, 2022 | Comments (0)
Hilda Doolittle (1886 – 1961), known by her nom de plume H.D., was an American-born poet, novelist, translator, and essayist. Following is a selection of poems by H.D. that speak to her experimental and innovative approach to the craft.
Modernism, psychoanalysis, and feminism were all influences on her work, as were the effects of World Wars I and II. H.D earned her place among iconic modernist writers including T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Marianne Moore, and William Carlos Williams.
H.D. earned a strong reputation as one of the best of the new ‘Imagist’ poets — a short-lived but influential movement in poetry that favored hardness, clarity, and intensity in words.
More about H.D.’s life and work:
Here are the poems included in this listing:
- Oread
- At Baia
- Sea Rose
- Sea Poppies
- Loss
- Leda
- Heat
- Pear Tree
- Stars Wheel in Purple
- Adonis
- Helen
- The Mysteries Remain
- All Mountains
. . . . . . . . . .
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.
. . . . . . . . . .
At Baia
I should have thought
in a dream you would have brought
some lovely, perilous thing,
orchids piled in a great sheath,
as who would say (in a dream),
“I send you this,
who left the blue veins
of your throat unkissed.”
Why was it that your hands
(that never took mine),
your hands that I could see
drift over the orchid-heads
so carefully,
your hands, so fragile, sure to lift
so gently, the fragile flower-stuff—
ah, ah, how was it
You never sent (in a dream)
the very form, the very scent,
not heavy, not sensuous,
but perilous—perilous—
of orchids, piled in a great sheath,
and folded underneath on a bright scroll,
some word:
“Flower sent to flower;
for white hands, the lesser white,
less lovely of flower-leaf,”
or
“Lover to lover, no kiss,
no touch, but forever and ever this.”
. . . . . . . . . .
Sea Rose
Rose, harsh rose,
marred and with stint of petals,
meagre flower, thin,
sparse of leaf,
more precious
than a wet rose
single on a stem—
you are caught in the drift.
Stunted, with small leaf,
you are flung on the sand,
you are lifted
in the crisp sand
that drives in the wind.
Can the spice-rose
drip such acrid fragrance
hardened in a leaf?
. . . . . . . . . .
Sea Poppies
Amber husk
fluted with gold,
fruit on the sand
marked with a rich grain,
treasure
spilled near the shrub-pines
to bleach on the boulders:
your stalk has caught root
among wet pebbles
and drift flung by the sea
and grated shells
and split conch-shells.
Beautiful, wide-spread,
fire upon leaf,
what meadow yields
so fragrant a leaf
as your bright leaf?
. . . . . . . . . .
Loss
The sea called—
you faced the estuary,
you were drowned as the tide passed.—
I am glad of this—
at least you have escaped.
The heavy sea-mist stifles me.
I choke with each breath—
a curious peril, this—
the gods have invented
curious torture for us.
One of us, pierced in the flank,
dragged himself across the marsh,
he tore at the bay-roots,
lost hold on the crumbling bank—
Another crawled—too late—
for shelter under the cliffs.
I am glad the tide swept you out,
O beloved,
you of all this ghastly host
alone untouched,
your white flesh covered with salt
as with myrrh and burnt iris.
We were hemmed in this place,
so few of us, so few of us to fight
their sure lances,
the straight thrust—effortless
with slight life of muscle and shoulder.
So straight—only we were left,
the four of us—somehow shut off.
And the marsh dragged one back,
and another perished under the cliff,
and the tide swept you out.
Your feet cut steel on the paths,
I followed for the strength
of life and grasp.
I have seen beautiful feet
but never beauty welded with strength.
I marvelled at your height.
You stood almost level
with the lance-bearers
and so slight.
And I wondered as you clasped
your shoulder-strap
at the strength of your wrist
and the turn of your young fingers,
and the lift of your shorn locks,
and the bronze
of your sun-burnt neck.
All of this,
and the curious knee-cap,
fitted above the wrought greaves,
and the sharp muscles of your back
which the tunic could not cover—
the outline
no garment could deface.
I wonder if you knew how I watched,
how I crowded before the spearsmen—
but the gods wanted you,
the gods wanted you back.
. . . . . . . . . .
Leda
Where the slow river
meets the tide,
a red swan lifts red wings
and darker beak,
and underneath the purple down
of his soft breast
uncurls his coral feet.
Through the deep purple
of the dying heat
of sun and mist,
the level ray of sun-beam
has caressed
the lily with dark breast,
and flecked with richer gold
its golden crest.
Where the slow lifting
of the tide,
floats into the river
and slowly drifts
among the reeds,
and lifts the yellow flags,
he floats
where tide and river meet.
Ah kingly kiss—
no more regret
nor old deep memories
to mar the bliss;
where the low sedge is thick,
the gold day-lily
outspreads and rests
beneath soft fluttering
of red swan wings
and the warm quivering
of the red swan's breast.
. . . . . . . . . .
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 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;
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.
. . . . . . . . . .
Stars Wheel in Purple
Stars wheel in purple, yours is not so rare
as Hesperus, nor yet so great a star
as bright Aldeboran or Sirius,
nor yet the stained and brilliant one of War;
stars turn in purple, glorious to the sight;
yours is not gracious as the Pleiads are
nor as Orion's sapphires, luminous;
yet disenchanted, cold, imperious face,
when all the others blighted, reel and fall,
your star, steel-set, keeps lone and frigid tryst
to freighted ships, baffled in wind and blast.
. . . . . . . . . .
Adonis
1.
Each of us like you
has died once,
has passed through drift of wood-leaves,
cracked and bent
and tortured and unbent
in the winter-frost,
the burnt into gold points,
lighted afresh,
crisp amber, scales of gold-leaf,
gold turned and re-welded
in the sun;
each of us like you
has died once,
each of us has crossed an old wood-path
and found the winter-leaves
so golden in the sun-fire
that even the live wood-flowers
were dark.
2.
Not the gold on the temple-front
where you stand
is as gold as this,
not the gold that fastens your sandals,
nor thee gold reft
through your chiselled locks,
is as gold as this last year's leaf,
not all the gold hammered and wrought
and beaten
on your lover's face.
brow and bare breast
is as golden as this:
each of us like you
has died once,
each of us like you
stands apart, like you
fit to be worshipped.
. . . . . . . . . .
Helen
All Greece hates
the still eyes in the white face,
the lustre as of olives
where she stands,
and the white hands.
All Greece reviles
the wan face when she smiles,
hating it deeper still
when it grows wan and white,
remembering past enchantments
and past ills.
Greece sees, unmoved,
God's daughter, born of love,
the beauty of cool feet
and slenderest knees,
could love indeed the maid,
only if she were laid,
white ash amid funereal cypresses.
. . . . . . . . . .
The Mysteries Remain
The mysteries remain,
I keep the same
cycle of seed-time
and of sun and rain;
Demeter in the grass,
I multiply,
renew and bless
Bacchus in the vine;
I hold the law,
I keep the mysteries true,
the first of these
to name the living, dead;
I am the wine and bread.
I keep the law,
I hold the mysteries true,
I am the vine,
the branches, you
and you.
. . . . . . . . . .
All Mountains
“Give me all mountains.”
Hymn to Artemis
Give me all mountains.
City, town, the precinct
of temple,
the crowded town gate,
I have no love for:
walls must crush or hide
whether of market
palace court
or precinct.
Give me the stream’s cold path,
the grove of pine,
for garden terrace
the unclaimed
bleak
wild stretches
of the mountain side.
Give me no earth
crushed flat
with cruel layer
of fitted square
or meted length,
but boulders
unhewn
but set apart
as secret altars,
high in the loveliest
alder grove
or poplar.
Give me for altar fire
the wild azalia;
let Phoebos keep
the fervid market place.
Give him white marble,
him the luminous white
of sheltering porch,
carved pillar,
portico.
Give him the wharf,
the quay,
the street,
the market,
street-corner
and the turning of the street.
Nor do I envy him,
my fiery brother,
who count as fair
only the reach of snow
set stark
in midair.
Marble of islands,
snow of distant points,
threatened with wave of pine,
with wash of alder,
my islands
shift and change,
now here now there,
dazzling,
white,
granite,
silver
in blue ether.
I swim
who tread the mountain path as air.
Let Phoebos keep the market,
let white Love
claim all the islands
of sea-port or river;
would I contend with these?
Nay,
I would rather pity him, my brother,
pity white, passionate Love
who only knows
the prompting
of the restless, thwarted seas,
shivering in porches
from the bitter air.
Ah Zeus,
ennoble,
care for these thy children,
but give me the islands of the upper air,
all mountains
and the towering mountain trees.
. . . . . . . . . .
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