Evening

By H. D. 1886–1961 H. D.

The light passes

from ridge to ridge,

from flower to flower—

the hepaticas, wide-spread

under the light

grow faint—

the petals reach inward,

the blue tips bend

toward the bluer heart

and the flowers are lost.

The cornel-buds are still white,

but shadows dart

from the cornel-roots—

black creeps from root to root,

each leaf

cuts another leaf on the grass,

shadow seeks shadow,

then both leaf

and leaf-shadow are lost.

Source: Collected Poems 1912-1944 (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1982)

Biography

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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