Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

Choricos

By Richard Aldington

THE ANCIENT songs

Pass deathward mournfully.

Cold lips that sing no more, and withered wreaths,

Regretful eyes and drooping breasts and wings—

Symbols of ancient songs

Mournfully passing

Down to the great white surges,

Watched of none

Save the frail sea-birds

And the lithe pale girls,

Daughters of Okeanos.

And the songs pass

From the green land

Which lies upon the waves as a leaf

On the flowers of hyacinth;

And they pass from the waters,

The manifold winds and the dim moon,

And they come,

Silently winging through soft Kimmerian dusk,

To the quiet level lands

That she keeps for us all,

That she wrought for us all for sleep

In the silver days of the earth’s dawning—

Prosperine, daughter of Zeus.

And we turn from the Kuprian’s breasts,

And we turn from thee,

Phoibos Apollon,

And we turn from the music of old

And the hills that we loved and the meads,

And we turn from the fiery day,

And the lips that were over-sweet;

For silently

Brushing the fields with red-shod feet,

With purple robe

Searing the flowers as with a sudden flame,

Death,

Thou hast come upon us.

And of all the ancient songs

Passing to the swallow-blue halls

By the dark streams of Persephone,

This only remains:

That in the end we turn to thee,

Death,

That we turn to thee, singing

One last song.

O Death,

Thou art an healing wind

That blowest over white flowers

A-tremble with dew;

Thou art a wind flowing

Over long leagues of lonely sea;

Thou art the dusk and the fragrance;

Thou art the lips of love mournfully smiling;

Thou art the pale peace of one

Satiate with old desires;

Thou art the silence of beauty,

And we look no more for the morning;

We yearn no more for the sun,

Since with thy white hands,

Death,

Thou crownest us with the pallid chaplets,

The slim colorless poppies

Which in thy garden alone

Softly thou gatherest.

And silently;

And with slow feet approaching;

And with bowed head and unlit eyes,

We kneel before thee.

And thou, leaning towards us,

Caressingly layest upon us

Flowers from thy thin cold hands,

And, smiling as a chaste woman

Knowing love in her heart,

Thou sealest our eyes

And the illimitable quietude

Comes gently upon us.