Conrad Aiken’s poetry is deeply psychological, musical, and introspective, reflecting his strong interest in human consciousness and inner life. Influenced by modernist ideas and by poets such as T. S. Eliot, Aiken often explored themes of identity, memory, fear, and emotional fragmentation. His poems frequently move inward, focusing less on external action and more on the shifting moods and thoughts of the mind.
Aiken is especially known for his long, meditative poems, including “Silent Snow, Secret Snow,” which captures the gradual withdrawal of a young boy from reality into an imagined inner world. In this work, and many others, Aiken uses rich imagery, repetition, and rhythmic language to suggest obsession and isolation. Sound plays an important role in his poetry; his careful use of cadence and tone creates a dreamlike atmosphere that draws readers into the speaker’s mental state.
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| Conrad aiken |
Although some of his poems can feel dark or unsettling, Aiken’s work is not merely pessimistic. Instead, it seeks to understand the complexity of human emotion and the fragile boundaries between sanity and imagination. His poetry stands as an important contribution to American modernism, offering readers a subtle, haunting exploration of the inner self and the hidden forces that shape human experience.
All Lovely Things
All lovely things will have an ending,
All lovely things will fade and die,
And youth, that's now so bravely spending,
Will beg a penny by and by.
Fine ladies soon are all forgotten,
And goldenrod is dust when dead,
The sweetest flesh and flowers are rotten
And cobwebs tent the brightest head.
Come back, true love! Sweet youth, return!—
But time goes on, and will, unheeding,
Though hands will reach, and eyes will yearn,
And the wild days set true hearts bleeding.
Come back, true love! Sweet youth, remain!—
But goldenrod and daisies wither,
And over them blows autumn rain,
They pass, they pass, and know not whither.
Beloved, Let Us Once More Praise The Rain
Beloved, let us once more praise the rain.
Let us discover some new alphabet,
For this, the often praised; and be ourselves,
The rain, the chickweed, and the burdock leaf,
The green-white privet flower, the spotted stone,
And all that welcomes the rain; the sparrow too,—
Who watches with a hard eye from seclusion,
Beneath the elm-tree bough, till rain is done.
There is an oriole who, upside down,
Hangs at his nest, and flicks an orange wing,—
Under a tree as dead and still as lead;
There is a single leaf, in all this heaven
Of leaves, which rain has loosened from its twig:
The stem breaks, and it falls, but it is caught
Upon a sister leaf, and thus she hangs;
There is an acorn cup, beside a mushroom
Which catches three drops from the stooping cloud.
The timid bee goes back to the hive; the fly
Under the broad leaf of the hollyhock
Perpends stupid with cold; the raindark snail
Surveys the wet world from a watery stone…
And still the syllables of water whisper:
The wheel of cloud whirs slowly: while we wait
In the dark room; and in your heart I find
One silver raindrop,—on a hawthorn leaf,—
Orion in a cobweb, and the World.
Chiaroscuro Rose
He
Fill your bowl with roses: the bowl, too, have of crystal.
Sit at the western window. Take the sun
Between your hands like a ball of flaming crystal,
Poise it to let it fall, but hold it still,
And meditate on the beauty of your existence;
The beauty of this, that you exist at all.
She
The sun goes down, — but without lamentation.
I close my eyes, and the stream of my sensation
In this, at least, grows clear to me:
Beauty is a word that has no meaning.
Beauty is naught to me.
He
The last blurred raindrops fall from the half-clear sky,
Eddying lightly, rose-tinged, in the windless wake of the sun.
The swallow ascending against cold waves of cloud
Seems winging upward over huge bleak stairs of stone.
The raindrop finds its way to the heart of the leaf-bud.
But no word finds its way to the heart of you.
She
This also is clear in the stream of my sensation:
That I am content, for the moment, Let me be.
How light the new grass looks with the rain-dust on it!
But heart is a word that has no meaning,
Heart means nothing to me.
He
To the end of the world I pass and back again
In flights of the mind; yet always find you here,
Remote, pale, unattached . . . O Circe-too-clear-eyed,
Watching amused your fawning tiger-thoughts,
Your wolves, your grotesque apes — relent, relent!
Be less wary for once: it is the evening.
She
But if I close my eyes what howlings greet me!
Do not persuade. Be tranquil. Here is flesh
With all its demons. Take it, sate yourself.
But leave my thoughts to me.
Dead Cleopatra
Dead Cleopatra lies in a crystal casket,
Wrapped and spiced by the cunningest of hands.
Around her neck they have put a golden necklace
Her tatbebs, it is said, are worn with sands.
Dead Cleopatra was once revered in Egypt—
Warm-eyed she was, this princess of the south.
Now she is very old and dry and faded,
With black bitumen they have sealed up her mouth.
Grave-robbers pulled the gold rings from her fingers,
Despite the holy symbols across her breast;
They scared the bats that quietly whirled above her.
Poor lady! she would have been long since at rest
If she had not been wrapped and spiced so shrewdly,
Preserved, obscene, to mock black flights of years.
What would her lover have said, had he foreseen it?
Had he been moved to ecstasy, or tears?
O sweet clean earth from whom the green blade cometh!—
When we are dead, my best-beloved and I,
Close well above us that we may rest forever,
Sending up grass and blossoms to the sky.
Hatteras Calling
Southeast, and storm, and every weather vane
shivers and moans upon its dripping pin,
ragged on chimneys the cloud whips, the rain
howls at the flues and windows to get in,
the golden rooster claps his golden wings
and from the Baptist Chapel shrieks no more,
the golden arrow in the southeast sings
and hears on the roof the Atlantic Ocean roar.
Waves among wires, sea scudding over poles,
down every alley the magnificence of rain,
dead gutters live once more, the deep manholes
hollow in triumph a passage to the main.
Umbrellas, and in the Gardens one old man
hurries away along a dancing path,
listens to music on a watering-can,
observes among the tulips the sudden wrath,
pale willows thrashing to the needled lake,
and dinghies filled with water; while the sky
smashes the lilacs, swoops to shake and break,
till shattered branches shriek and railings cry.
Speak, Hatteras, your language of the sea:
scour with kelp and spindrift the stale street:
that man in terror may learn once more to be
child of that hour when rock and ocean meet.
Illicit
Of what she said to me that night—no matter.
The strange thing came next day.
My brain was full of music—something she played me;
I couldn't remember it all, but phrases of it
Wreathed and wreathed among faint memories,
Seeking for something, trying to tell me something,
Urging to restlessness, verging on grief.
I tried to play the tune, from memory—
But memory failed: the chords and discords climbed
And found no resolution, only hung there,
And left me morbid. Where, then, had I heard it? ...
What secret dusty chamber was it hinting?
"Dust," it said, "dust .... and dust .... and sunlight ....
A cold clear April evening .... snow-bedraggled ....
Rain-worn snow dappling the hideous grass ....
And someone walking alone; and someone saying
That all must end, for the time had come to go ... ."
These were the phrases; but behind, beneath them,
A greater shadow moved, and in this shadow
I stood and guessed Was it the blue-eyed lady?
The one who always danced in golden slippers?—
And had I danced, with her, upon this music?
Or was it further back—the unplumbed twilight
Of childhood? .... No—much recenter than that.
You know, without my telling you, how sometimes
A word or name eludes you, and you seek it
Through running ghosts of shadow—leaping at it,
Lying in wait for it to spring upon it,
Spreading faint snares for it of sense or sound ;
Until of a sudden, as if in a phantom forest,
You hear it, see it flash among the branches,
And, scarcely knowing how, suddenly have it.
Well, it was so I followed down this music,
Glimpsing a face in darkness, hearing a cry,
Remembering days forgotten, moods exhausted.
Corners in sunlight, puddles reflecting stars;
Until, of a sudden, and least of all expected,
The thing resolved itself: and I remembered
An April afternoon, eight years ago—
Or was it nine ?—no matter, call it nine—
A room in which the last of sunlight faded;
A vase of violets, fragrance in white curtains;
And she, who played this same thing later, playing.
She played this tune. And in the middle of it
Abruptly broke it off, letting her hands
Fall in her lap. She sat there so a moment,
With shoulders drooped, then lifted up a rose,
One great white rose, wide open, like a lotus,
And pressed it to her cheek, and closed her eyes.
"You know—we've got to end this—Miriam loves you....
If she should ever know, or even guess it,
What would she do? Listen!—I'm not absurd....
I'm sure of it. If you had eyes for women,
To understand them, which you've never had,
You'd know it too . . . ." So went this colloquy,
Half humorous, with undertones of pathos,
Half grave, half flippant .... while her ringers, softly,
Felt for this tune, played it and let it fall,
Now note by singing note, now chord by chord,
Repeating phrases with a kind of pleasure.
Was it symbolic of the woman's weakness
That she could neither break it—nor conclude?
It paused .... and wandered .... paused again; while she,
Perplexed and tired, half told me I must go,
Half asked me if I thought I ought to go....
Well, April passed, with many other evenings,
Evenings like this, with later suns and warmer,
With violets always there, and fragrant curtains....
And she was right. And Miriam found it out....
And after that, when eight deep years had passed—
Or nine—we met once more, by accident.
But was it just by accident, I wonder,
She played this tune? Or what, then, was intended?
Music I Heard
Music I heard with you was more than music,
And bread I broke with you was more than bread;
Now that I am without you, all is desolate;
All that was once so beautiful is dead.
Your hands once touched this table and this silver,
And I have seen your fingers hold this glass.
These things do not remember you, beloved,
And yet your touch upon them will not pass.
For it was in my heart that you moved among them,
And blessed them with your hands and with your eyes;
And in my heart they will remember always,
—They knew you once, O beautiful and wise.
Herman Melville
‘My towers at last!’—
What meant the word
from what acknowledged circuit sprung
and in the heart and on the tongue
at sight of few familiar birds
when seaward his last sail unfurled
to leeward from the wheel once more
bloomed the pale crags of haunted shore
that once-more-visited notch of world:
and straight he knew as known before
the Logos in Leviathan’s roar
he deepest sounding with his lead
who all had fathomed all had said.
Much-loving hero—towers indeed
were those that overhung your log
with entries of typhoon and fog
and thunderstone for Adam’s breed:
man’s warm Sargasso Sea of faith
dislimned in light by luck or fate
you for mankind set sail by hate
and weathered it, and with it death.
And now at world’s end coasting late
in dolphined calms beyond the gate
which Hercules flung down, you come
to the grim rocks that nod you home.
Depth below depth this love of man:
among unnumbered and unknown
to mark and make his cryptic own
one landfall of all time began:
of all life’s hurts to treasure one
and hug it to the wounded breast,
in this to dedicate the rest,
all injuries received or done.
Your towers again but towers now blest
your haven in a shoreless west
o mariner of the human soul
who in the landmark notched the Pole
and in the Item loved the Whole.
