H. D. Poems

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

O wind, rend open the heat,
cut apart the heat,
rend it to tatters.
...

You are as gold
as the half-ripe grain
that merges to gold again,
as white as the white rain
...

Stars wheel in purple, yours is not so rare
as Hesperus, nor yet so great a star
as bright Aldeboran or Sirius,
nor yet the stained and brilliant one of War;
...

Did her eyes slant in the old way?
was she Greek or Egyptian?
had some Phoenician sailor wrought her?
...

I should have thought
in a dream you would have brought
some lovely, perilous thing,
orchids piled in a great sheath,
...

Was Helen stronger than Achilles even 'as the arrows fell'? That could not be, but he recognised in her some power other than her legendary beauty.
...