Prelude

HOW could I love you more?

I would give up

Even that beauty I have loved too well

That I might love you better.

Alas, how poor the gifts that lovers give—

I can but give you of my flesh and strength,

I can but give you these few passing days

And passionate words that, since our speech began,

All lovers whisper in all ladies' ears.



I try to think of some one lovely gift

No lover yet in all the world has found;

I think: If the cold sombre gods

Were hot with love as I am

Could they not endow you with a star

And fix bright youth for ever in your limbs?

Could they not give you all things that I lack?



You should have loved a god; I am but dust.

Yet no god loves as loves this poor frail dust.

Richard Aldington

Images

I



LIKE a gondola of green scented fruits

Drifting along the dank canals of Venice,

You, O exquisite one,

Have entered into my desolate city.



II



The blue smoke leaps

Like swirling clouds of birds vanishing.

So my love leaps forth toward you,

Vanishes and is renewed.



III



A rose-yellow moon in a pale sky

When the sunset is faint vermilion

In the mist among the tree-boughs

Art thou to me, my beloved.



IV



A young beech tree on the edge of the forest

Stands still in the evening,

Yet shudders through all its leaves in the light air

And seems to fear the stars—

So are you still and so tremble.



V



The red deer are high on the mountain,

They are beyond the last pine trees.

And my desires have run with them.



VI



The flower which the wind has shaken

Is soon filled again with rain;

So does my heart fill slowly with tears,

O Foam-Driver, Wind-of-the-Vineyards,

Until you return.

Richard Aldington

At the British Museum

I TURN the page and read:

"I dream of silent verses where the rhyme

Glides noiseless as an oar."

The heavy musty air, the black desks,

The bent heads and the rustling noises

In the great dome

Vanish...

And

The sun hangs in the cobalt-blue sky,

The boat drifts over the lake shallows,

The fishes skim like umber shades through the undulating weeds,

The oleanders drop their rosy petals on the lawns,

And the swallows dive and swirl and whistle

About the cleft battlements of Can Grande's castle....

Richard Aldington

[Index to poems in the collection by Richard Aldington]