Helen

Hilda Doolittle 1886 (Bethlehem, Pennsylvania) – 1961 (Zurich)



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.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 26, 2023

24 sec read
256

Quick analysis:

Scheme AXXBB AXXXAX XXXXCCA
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 436
Words 80
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 5, 6, 7

Hilda Doolittle

Hilda Doolittle was an American poet, novelist, and memoirist, associated with the early 20th century avant-garde Imagist group of poets, including Ezra Pound and Richard Aldington. She published under the pen name H. D. Hilda was born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in 1886, and grew up just outside Philadelphia in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, and attended Bryn Mawr College. She moved to London in 1911, where she played a central role within the then-emerging Imagist movement. Young and charismatic, she was championed by the modernist poet Ezra Pound, who was instrumental in building her career. From 1916–17, she acted as the literary editor of the Egoist journal, while her poetry appeared in the English Review and the Transatlantic Review.  more…

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