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Home  »  The New Poetry  »  Night and Morning Songs

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

Night and Morning Songs

By Gordon Bottomley

Elegiac Mood

FROM song and dream for ever gone

Are Helen, Helen of Troy,

And Cleopatra made to look upon,

And many a daring boy—

Young Faust and Sigurd and Hippolytus:

They are twice dead and we must find

Great ladies yet unblemished by the mind,

Heroes and acts not cold for us

In amber or spirits of too many words.

Ay, these are murdered by much thinking on.

I hanker even for new shapes of swords,

More different sins, and raptures not yet done.

Yet, as I wait on marvels, such a bird

As maybe Sigurd heard—

A thrush—alighting with a little run

Out-tops the daisies as it passes

And peeps bright-eyed above the grasses.