The Little Review, August 1915 (Vol. 2, No. 5)

Name: The Little Review, August 1915 (Vol. 2, No. 5)
Author: Various

Various

Literature, Modern -- 20th century -- Periodicals

The shops and sheds and hovels
     Are massed with the church’s shade;
   And a girl with a face like a lily
     Is plying her wretched trade.

   And a drunken man reels homeward
     With a sullen leer in his eye.
   And the street is filled with children,
     That play and wrestle and cry.

   A broken hurdy-gurdy
     Rattles a hollow tune,
   And a light as yellow as fever
     Shines from the vile saloon.

   Two men are talking together,
     They pass where the children are;
   And one wears a robe of sable,
     The other a silver star.

   And one of them goes to vespers
     And one of them makes a search,
   And one of them enters the groggery,
     And one of them enters the church.

   And a shot is fired by the drunkard,
     And the girl falls dead in the street;
   And God is peaceful in heaven,
     And all in the world is sweet.

   [Illustration: EDGAR LEE MASTERS
   _Copyright, 1915, by Eugene Hutchinson._]




                                 Poems


   (_from the Greek of Myrrhine of Mitulene, and Konallis; translated
                         by Richard Aldington_)


                                   I

   Hierocleia, bring hither my silver vine-leaf-carved armlet and the
      mirror graven with two Maenads,
   For my heart is burned to dust with longing for Konallis;
   And this is the silver armlet which pressed into her side when I held
      her,
   And before this mirror she bound up her golden-hyacinth-curled hair,
      sitting in the noon sunlight.


                                   II

   I, Konallis, am but a goat-girl dwelling on the violet hills of
      Korinthos,
   But going down to the city a marvellous thing befell me;
   For the beautiful-silver-fingered hetaira, Myrrhine, held me nightlong
      in her couch,
   Teaching me to stretch wide my arms to receive her strange burning
      caresses.


                                  III

   Fair young men have brought me presents of silver caskets and white
      mirrors,
   Gold for my hair and long lemon-colored chitons and dew-soft perfumes of
      sweet herbs.
   Their bodies are whiter than Leucadian foam and delicate are their
      flute-girls,
   But the wild sleepless nightingales cry in the darkness even as I for
      Konallis.


                                   IV

   We, Konallis and Myrrhine, dedicate to thee, Proserpine, two white
      torches of wax,
   For thou didst watch over our purple-embroidered couch all night;
   Was it thou who gavest us the sweetness of sharp caresses?
   For at midday when we awoke we laughed to see black poppies blooming
      beneath our eyes.


                                   V

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

The Little Review, August 1915 (Vol. 2, No. 5)

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