Richard Aldington, "Daisy" (1915)


Daisy

You were my playmate by the sea.
We swam together.
Your girl's body had no breasts.

To-day I pass through the streets.
She who touches my arm and talks with me
Is--who knows? Helen of Sparta,
Dryope, Laodamia.

And there you are
A whore in Oxford Street.

(quoted in full by Padraic Colum in "Egoism in Poetry," The New Republic 5, 55 (November 20, 1915), p. 6)