href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@37469@[email protected]#chapter18" class="pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">Mid-day

30   John Gould Fletcher     Arizona 35     The Unquiet Street 42     In the Theatre 43     Ships in the Harbour 44     The Empty House 45     The Skaters 48   F. S. Flint     Easter 51     Ogre 54     Cones 56     Gloom 57     Terror 60     Chalfont Saint Giles 61     War-Time 63   D. H. Lawrence     Erinnyes 67     Perfidy 70     At the Window 72     In Trouble and Shame 73     Brooding Grief 74   Amy Lowell     Patterns 77     Spring Day 82     Stravinsky's Three Pieces, “Grotesques,” for String Quartet     87   Bibliography 93

The authors wish to express their gratitude to the editors of The Egoist and Poetry and Drama, London; The Poetry Journal, Boston; The Little Review and Poetry, Chicago, for permission to reprint certain of these poems which originally appeared in their columns. To Poetry belongs the credit of having introduced Imagism to the world: it seems fitting, therefore, that the authors should record their thanks in this place for the constant interest and encouragement shown them by its editor, Miss Harriet Monroe.

RICHARD ALDINGTON

EROS AND PSYCHE

In an old dull yard near Camden Town,
Which echoes with the rattle of cars and 'busses
And freight-trains, puffing steam and smoke and dirt
To the steaming, sooty sky—
There stands an old and grimy statue,
A statue of Psyche and her lover, Eros.

A little nearer Camden Town,
In a square of ugly sordid shops,
Is another statue, facing the Tube,
Staring with a heavy, purposeless glare
At the red and white shining tiles—
A tall stone statue of Cobden.
And though no one ever pauses to see
What hero it is that faces the Tube,
I can understand very well indeed
That England must honour its national heroes,
Must honour the hero of Free Trade—
Or was it the Corn Laws?—
That I can understand.
But what I shall never understand
Is the little group in the dingy yard
Under the dingier sky,
The Eros and Psyche—
Surrounded with pots and terra-cotta busts
And urns and broken pillars—
Eros, naked, with his wings stretched out
Just lighting down to kiss her on the lips.

What are they doing here in Camden Town
In the midst of all this clamour and filth?
They who should stand in a sun-lit room
Hung with deep purple, painted with gods,
Paved with white porphyry,
Stand for ever embraced
By the side of a rustling fountain
Over a marble basin
Carved with leopards and grapes and young men dancing;
Or in a garden leaning above