reflies in the Corn 70
A Woman and Her Dead Husband 72
The Mowers 75
Scent of Irises 76
Green 78

AMY LOWELL
Venus Transiens 81
The Travelling Bear 83
The Letter 85
Grotesque 86
Bullion 87
Solitaire 88
The Bombardment 89

BIBLIOGRAPHY 93

Thanks are due to the editors of _Poetry_, _The Smart Set_,
_Poetry and Drama_, and _The Egoist_ for their courteous
permission to reprint certain of these poems which have been
copyrighted to them.

RICHARD ALDINGTON

RICHARD ALDINGTON

CHILDHOOD

I

The bitterness, the misery, the wretchedness of childhood
Put me out of love with God.
I can't believe in God's goodness;
I can believe
In many avenging gods.
Most of all I believe
In gods of bitter dullness,
Cruel local gods
Who seared my childhood.

II

I've seen people put
A chrysalis in a match-box,
"To see," they told me, "what sort of moth would come."
But when it broke its shell
It slipped and stumbled and fell about its prison
And tried to climb to the light
For space to dry its wings.

That's how I was.
Somebody found my chrysalis
And shut it in a match-box.
My shrivelled wings were beaten,
Shed their colours in dusty scales
Before the box was opened
For the moth to fly.

And then it was too late,
Because the beauty a child has,
And the beautiful things it learns before its birth,
Were shed, like moth-scales, from me.

III

I hate that town;
I hate the town I lived in when I was little;
I hate to think of it.
There were always clouds, smoke, rain
In that dingy little valley.
It rained; it always rained.
I think I never saw the sun until I was nine--
And then it was too late;
Everything's too late