Amy Lowell

You are ice and fire,
The touch of you burns my hands like snow.
You are cold and flame.
You are the crimson of amaryllis

Tang of fruitage in the air;
Red boughs bursting everywhere;
Shimmering of seeded grass;
Hooded gentians all a’mass.…

At first a mere thread of a footpath half blotted
out by the grasses
Sweeping triumphant across it, it wound between hedges of roses
Whose blossoms were poised above leaves as pond lilies float on…

You came to me bearing bright roses,
Red like the wine of your heart;
You twisted them into a garland
To set me aside from the mart.…

You want to know what’s the matter with me, do yer?
My! ain’t men blinder’n moles?
It ain’t nothin’ new, be sure o’ that.
Why, ef you’d had eyes you’d ha’ seed…

A drifting, April, twilight sky,
A wind which blew the puddles dry,
And slapped the river into waves
That ran and hid among the staves…

April had covered the hills With flickering yellows and reds,
The sparkle and coolness of snow Was blown from the mountain beds.
Across a deep-sunken stream The pink of blossoming trees,
And from windless appleblooms The humming of…

A Minstrel stands on a marble stair,
Blown by the bright wind, debonair;
Below lies the sea, a sapphire floor,
Above on the terrace a turret door…

I ask but one thing of you, only one,
That always you will be my dream of you;
That never shall I wake to find untrue All this I have believed and rested on,
Forever vanished, like a vision gone Out into the night.

Hold your soul open for my welcoming.
Let the quiet of your spirit bathe me
With its clear and rippled coolness,
That, loose-limbed and weary, I find rest,…

The path runs straight between the flowering rows,
A moonlit path, hemmed in by beds of bloom,
Where phlox and marigolds dispute for room
With tall, red dahlias and the briar rose.…

But why did I kill him? Why? Why?
In the small, gilded room, near the stair?
My ears rack and throb with his cry,
And his eyes goggle under his hair,…

The little boy pressed his face against the window-pane
and looked out
at the bright sunshiny morning. The cobble-stones of
the square…

What charm is yours, you faded old-world tapestries,
Of outworn, childish mysteries,
Vague pageants woven on a web of dream!
And we, pushing and fighting in the turbid stream…

As one who sails upon a wide, blue sea
Far out of sight of land, his mind intent
Upon the sailing of his little boat,
On tightening ropes and shaping fair his course,…

A face seen passing in a crowded street, A voice heard singing music, large and free; And from that moment life is changed, and we Become of more heroic temper, meet To freely ask and give, a man complete Radiant because of faith, we dare to be…

He perches in the slime, inert,
Bedaubed with iridescent dirt.
The oil upon the puddles dries
To colours like a peacock’s eyes,…

GEORGE AUGUSTUS CLOUGH
A NATIVE OF LIVERPOOL,
DIED SUDDENLY OF ”STRANGER’S FEVER”
NOV’R 5th 1843…

Softly the water ripples
Against the canoe’s curving side,
Softly the birch trees rustle
Flinging over us branches wide.…

A flickering glimmer through a window-pane,
A dim red glare through mud bespattered glass,
Cleaving a path between blown walls of sleet
Across uneven pavements sunk in slime…

Cross-ribboned shoes; a muslin gown,
High-waisted, girdled with bright blue;
A straw poke bonnet which hid the frown
She pluckered her little brows into…

Glinting golden through the trees, Apples of Hesperides!
Through the moon-pierced warp of night Shoot pale shafts of yellow light,
Swaying to the kissing breeze Swings the treasure, golden-gleaming, Apples of Hesperides!
Far and…

They brought me a quilled, yellow dahlia,
Opulent, flaunting.
Round gold Flung out of a pale green stalk.
Round, ripe gold Of maturity

The Emperor's
CE, in the sultry heat of midsummer,
An Emperor caused the miniature mountains in his
To be covered with white silk,