Rose, harsh rose,
marred and with stint of petals,
meagre flower, thin,
sparse of leaf,
more precious
than a wet rose
single on a stem—
you are caught in the drift.
Stunted, with small leaf,
you are flung on the sand,
you are lifted
in the crisp sand
that drives in the wind.
Can the spice-rose
drip such acrid fragrance
hardened in a leaf?
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Poet
H. D.
1886–1961
POET’S REGION
U.S., Mid-Atlantic
SCHOOL / PERIOD
Imagist
Subjects
Nature,
Trees & Flowers,
Seas, Rivers, & Streams,
Gardening,
Activities
Poetic Terms
Free Verse,
Imagist
H.D.’s life and work recapitulate the central themes of literary modernism: the emergence from Victorian norms and certainties, the entry into an age characterized by rapid technological change and the violence of two great wars, and the development of literary modes which reflected the disintegration of traditional symbolic systems and the mythmaking quest for new meanings. H.D.’s oeuvre spans five decades of the twentieth . . .
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