Sea Garden   By: Unknown (1886-1961)

SEA GARDEN

The editors and publishers concerned have kindly given me permission to reprint some of the poems in this book which appeared originally in "Poetry" (Chicago), "The Egoist" (London), "The Little Review" (Chicago), "Greenwich Village" (New York), the first Imagist anthology (New York: A. and C. Boni. London: Poetry Bookshop), the second Imagist anthology ("Some Imagist Poets," London: Constable and Co. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.).

SEA GARDEN

BY

H. D.

LONDON CONSTABLE AND COMPANY LTD. 1916

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN. CHISWICK PRESS: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO. TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.

CONTENTS

PAGE

SEA ROSE 1

THE HELMSMAN 2

THE SHRINE 4

MID DAY 7

PURSUIT 8

THE CONTEST 10

SEA LILY 12

THE WIND SLEEPERS 13

THE GIFT 14

EVENING 17

SHELTERED GARDEN 18

SEA POPPIES 20

LOSS 21

HUNTRESS 23

GARDEN 24

SEA VIOLET 25

THE CLIFF TEMPLE 26

ORCHARD 29

SEA GODS 30

ACON 33

NIGHT 35

PRISONERS 36

STORM 39

SEA IRIS 40

HERMES OF THE WAYS 41

PEAR TREE 43

CITIES 44

THE CITY IS PEOPLED 47

SEA GARDEN

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?

THE HELMSMAN

O be swift we have always known you wanted us.

We fled inland with our flocks, we pastured them in hollows, cut off from the wind and the salt track of the marsh.

We worshipped inland we stepped past wood flowers, we forgot your tang, we brushed wood grass.

We wandered from pine hills through oak and scrub oak tangles, we broke hyssop and bramble, we caught flower and new bramble fruit in our hair: we laughed as each branch whipped back, we tore our feet in half buried rocks and knotted roots and acorn cups.

We forgot we worshipped, we parted green from green, we sought further thickets, we dipped our ankles through leaf mould and earth, and wood and wood bank enchanted us

and the feel of the clefts in the bark, and the slope between tree and tree and a slender path strung field to field and wood to wood and hill to hill and the forest after it.

We forgot for a moment tree resin, tree bark, sweat of a torn branch were sweet to the taste.

We were enchanted with the fields, the tufts of coarse grass in the shorter grass we loved all this.