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Collected Poems, 1912-1944 QUOTES

Collected Poems, 1912-1944 QUOTES

1 " Helen

All Greece hates
the still eyes in the white face,
the lustre as of olives
where she stands,
and the white hands.

All Greece reviles
the wan face when she smiles,
hating it deeper still
when it grows wan and white,
remembering past enchantments
and past ills.

Greece sees, unmoved,
God’s daughter, born of love,
the beauty of cool feet
and slenderest knees,
could love indeed the maid,
only if she were laid,
white ash amid funereal cypresses. "

― H.D. , Collected Poems, 1912-1944

2 " Could beauty be caught and hurt
they had done her to death with their sneers
in ages and ages past,
could beauty be sacrificed
for a thrust of a sword,
for a piece of thin money
tossed up to fall half alloy—
then beauty were dead
long, long before we saw her face. "

― H.D. , Collected Poems, 1912-1944

3 " if I could have caught up from the earth,
the whole of the flowers of the earth,
if once I could have breathed into myself
the very golden crocuses
and the red,
and the very golden hearts of the first saffron,
the whole of the golden mass,
the whole of the great fragrance,
I could have dared the loss.

— H.D., from “Eurydice,” Collected Poems 1912-1944 (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1982) "

― H.D. , Collected Poems, 1912-1944

4 " Are you a witch? A vulture, a hieroglyph, the sign or the name of a goddess? What sort of goddess is this? Who are you? "

― H.D. , Collected Poems, 1912-1944