Sword Blades and Poppy Seed | Page 2

the French call
"Vers Libre", a nomenclature more suited to French use and to French
versification than to ours. I prefer to call them poems in "unrhymed
cadence", for that conveys their exact meaning to an English ear. They
are built upon "organic rhythm", or the rhythm of the speaking voice
with its necessity for breathing, rather than upon a strict metrical
system. They differ from ordinary prose rhythms by being more curved,
and containing more stress. The stress, and exceedingly marked curve,
of any regular metre is easily perceived. These poems, built upon
cadence, are more subtle, but the laws they follow are not less fixed.
Merely chopping prose lines into lengths does not produce cadence, it
is constructed upon mathematical and absolute laws of balance and
time. In the preface to his "Poems", Henley speaks of "those unrhyming
rhythms in which I had tried to quintessentialize, as (I believe) one
scarce can do in rhyme." The desire to "quintessentialize", to head-up
an emotion until it burns white-hot, seems to be an integral part of the
modern temper, and certainly "unrhymed cadence" is unique in its
power of expressing this.
Three of these poems are written in a form which, so far as I know, has

never before been attempted in English. M. Paul Fort is its inventor,
and the results it has yielded to him are most beautiful and satisfactory.
Perhaps it is more suited to the French language than to English. But I
found it the only medium in which these particular poems could be
written. It is a fluid and changing form, now prose, now verse, and
permitting a great variety of treatment.
But the reader will see that I have not entirely abandoned the more
classic English metres. I cannot see why, because certain manners suit
certain emotions and subjects, it should be considered imperative for an
author to employ no others. Schools are for those who can confine
themselves within them. Perhaps it is a weakness in me that I cannot.
In conclusion, I would say that these remarks are in answer to many
questions asked me by people who have happened to read some of
these poems in periodicals. They are not for the purpose of forestalling
criticism, nor of courting it; and they deal, as I said in the beginning,
solely with the question of technique. For the more important part of
the book, the poems must speak for themselves.
Amy Lowell.
May 19, 1914.
Contents
Sword Blades and Poppy Seed
Sword Blades and Poppy Seed
Sword Blades
The Captured Goddess
The Precinct. Rochester
The Cyclists

Sunshine through a Cobwebbed Window
A London Thoroughfare. 2
A.M.
Astigmatism
The Coal Picker
Storm-Racked

Convalescence
Patience
Apology
A Petition
A Blockhead

Stupidity
Irony
Happiness
The Last Quarter of the Moon
A Tale
of Starvation
The Foreigner
Absence
A Gift
The Bungler

Fool's Money Bags
Miscast I
Miscast II
Anticipation
Vintage


The Tree of Scarlet Berries
Obligation
The Taxi
The Giver of
Stars
The Temple
Epitaph of a Young Poet Who Died Before
Having Achieved Success In Answer to a Request
Poppy Seed
The Great Adventure of Max Breuck
Sancta Maria, Succurre Miseris

After Hearing a Waltz by Bartok
Clear, with Light, Variable Winds

The Basket
In a Castle
The Book of Hours of Sister Clotilde

The Exeter Road
The Shadow
The Forsaken
Late September

The Pike
The Blue Scarf
White and Green
Aubade
Music
A
Lady
In a Garden
A Tulip Garden
Sword Blades and Poppy Seed
Sword Blades and Poppy Seed
A drifting, April, twilight sky,
A wind which blew the puddles dry,

And slapped the river into waves
That ran and hid among the staves

Of an old wharf. A watery light
Touched bleak the granite bridge,
and white
Without the slightest tinge of gold,
The city shivered in
the cold.
All day my thoughts had lain as dead,
Unborn and
bursting in my head.
From time to time I wrote a word
Which lines
and circles overscored.
My table seemed a graveyard, full
Of
coffins waiting burial.
I seized these vile abortions, tore
Them into
jagged bits, and swore
To be the dupe of hope no more.
Into the
evening straight I went,
Starved of a day's accomplishment.

Unnoticing, I wandered where
The city gave a space for air,
And on
the bridge's parapet
I leant, while pallidly there set
A dim,
discouraged, worn-out sun.
Behind me, where the tramways run,

Blossomed bright lights, I turned to leave,
When someone plucked
me by the sleeve.
"Your pardon, Sir, but I should be
Most grateful
could you lend to me
A carfare, I have lost my purse."
The voice

was clear, concise, and terse.
I turned and met the quiet gaze
Of
strange eyes flashing through the haze.
The man was old and slightly bent,
Under his cloak some instrument

Disarranged its stately line,
He rested on his cane a fine
And
nervous hand, an almandine
Smouldered with dull-red flames,
sanguine
It burned in twisted gold, upon
His finger. Like some
Spanish don,
Conferring favours even when
Asking an alms, he
bowed again
And waited. But my pockets proved
Empty, in vain I
poked and shoved,
No hidden penny lurking there
Greeted my
search. "Sir, I declare
I have no money, pray forgive,
But let me
take you where you live."
And so we plodded through the mire

Where street lamps cast a wavering fire.
I