Summary
Last Updated on May 5, 2015, by eNotes Editorial. Word Count: 139
“Oread” well represents H. D.’s early lyrical verse and the Imagist movement of poetry early in the twentieth century:
Whirl up, sea—whirl your pointed pines,splash your great pineson our rocks,hurl your green over us,cover us with your pools of fir.
Terse and compact, the poem crisply conveys the natural forces at work, or called upon to work, by the series of active verbs and imperatives—“whirl,” “splash,” “hurl,” and “cover.” The hard-hitting lines stress a sense of urgency for nature to fulfill this request.
Pound’s assessment of H. D.’s poetry best sums up “Oread” and the ideal verse he saw distinguishing the new American poetry for the century: “objective—no slither; direct—no excessive use of adjective, no metaphors that won’t permit examination. It’s straight talk, straight as the Greek!”
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