Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

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

The Cyclists

Amy Lowell

SPREAD on the roadway,

With open-blown jackets

Like black, soaring pinions,

They swoop down the hill-side,

The Cyclists.

Seeming dark-plumaged

Birds, after carrion,

Careening and circling,

Over the dying

Of England.

She lies with her bosom

Beneath them, no longer

The Dominant Mother,

The Virile—but rotting

Before time.

The smell of her, tainted,

Has bitten their nostrils.

Exultant they hover,

And shadow the sun with

Foreboding.