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Richard Aldington Short Poems

Famous Short Richard Aldington Poems. Short poetry by famous poet Richard Aldington. A collection of the all-time best Richard Aldington short poems


by Richard Aldington
 Come, thrust your hands in the warm earth 
And feel her strength through all your veins; 
Breathe her full odors, taste her mouth, 
Which laughs away imagined pains; 
Touch her life's womb, yet know 
This substance makes your grave also.

Shrink not; your flesh is no more sweet 
Than flowers which daily blow and die; 
Nor are your mein and dress so neat, 
Nor half so pure your lucid eye; 
And, yet, by flowers and earth I swear 
You're neat and pure and sweet and fair.



by Richard Aldington
 Four days the earth was rent and torn
By bursting steel,
The houses fell about us;
Three nights we dared not sleep,
Sweating, and listening for the imminent crash
Which meant our death. 

The fourth night every man,
Nerve-tortured, racked to exhaustion,
Slept, muttering and twitching,
While the shells crashed overhead.

The fifth day there came a hush;
We left our holes
And looked above the wreckage of the earth
To where the white clouds moved in silent lines
Across the untroubled blue.

by Richard Aldington
 Che son contenti nel fuoco

We are of those that Dante saw
Glad, for love's sake, among the flames of hell,
Outdaring with a kiss all-powerful wrath;
For we have passed athwart a fiercer hell,
Through gloomier, more desperate circles
Than ever Dante dreamed:
And yet love kept us glad.

by Richard Aldington
 In Nineveh 
And beyond Nineveh 
In the dusk 
They were afraid. 

In Thebes of Egypt 
In the dust 
They chanted of them to the dead. 

In my Lesbos and Achaia 
Where the God dwelt 
We knew them. 

Now men say "They are not": 
But in the dusk 
Ere the white sun comes -
A gay child that bears a white candle -
I am afraid of their rustling, 
Of their terrible silence, 
The menace of their secrecy.


Book: Reflection on the Important Things