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Home  »  The New Poetry  »  Lesbia

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

Lesbia

By Richard Aldington

GROW weary if you will, let me be sad.

Use no more speech now;

Let the silence spread gold hair above us,

Fold on delicate fold.

Use no more speech;

You had the ivory of my life to carve.…

And Picus of Mirandola is dead;

And all the gods they dreamed and fabled of,

Hermes, and Thoth and Bêl are rotten now,

Rotten and dank.

And through it all I see your pale Greek face;

Tenderness

Makes me eager as a little child to love you,

You morsel left half-cold on Cæsar’s plate.