The Penguin Book of English Verse

by Paul Keegan

  No. If he do ride at night

  Vrom the zide the zun went under,

  Woone hour vrom his western light

  Needen meäke woone hour asunder;

  Woone hour onward, woone hour nigher

  To the hopevul eastern skies,

  Where his mornèn rim o’ vier

  Soon ageän shall meet his eyes.

  Leaves be now a-scatter’d round

  In the wind, a blowèn bleaker,

  An’ if we do walk the ground

  Wi’ our life-strangth woone year weaker;

  Woone year weaker, woone year nigher

  To the pleäce where we shall vind

  Woone that’s deathless vor the dier,

  Voremost they that dropp’d behind.

  WILLIAM BARNES The Turnstile

  Ah! sad wer we as we did peäce

  The wold church road, wi’ downcast feäce,

  The while the bells, that mwoan’d so deep

  Above our child a-left asleep,

  Wer now a-zingèn all alive

  Wi’ tother bells to meäke the vive.

  But up at woone pleäce we come by,

  ‘Twer hard to keep woone’s two eyes dry;

  On Steän-cliff road, ’ithin the drong,

  Up where, as vo’k do pass along,

  The turnèn stile, a-païnted white,

  Do sheen by day an’ show by night.

  Vor always there, as we did goo

  To church, thik stile did let us drough,

  Wi’ spreadèn eärms that wheel’d to guide

  Us each in turn to tother zide.

  An’ vu’st ov all the train he took

  My wife, wi’ winsome gaït an’ look;

  An’ then zent on my little maïd,

  A-skippèn onward, overjaÿ’d

  To reach ageän the pleäce o’ pride,

  Her comely mother’s left han’ zide.

  An’ then, a-wheelèn roun’, he took

  On me, ’ithin his third white nook.

  An’ in the fourth, a-sheäkèn wild,

  He zent us on our giddy child.

  But eesterday he guided slow

  My downcast Jenny, vull o’ woe,

  An’ then my little maïd in black,

  A-walkèn softly on her track;

  An’ after he’d a-turn’d ageän,

  To let me goo along the leäne,

  He had noo little bwoy to vill

  His last white eärms, an’ they stood still.

  WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR Memory1863

  The mother of the Muses, we are taught,

  Is Memory: she has left me; they remain,

  And shake my shoulder, urging me to sing

  About the summer days, my loves of old.

  Alas! alas! is all I can reply.

  Memory has left me with that name alone,

  Harmonious name, which other bards may sing,

  But her bright image in my darkest hour

  Comes back, in vain comes back, call’d or uncall’d.

  Forgotten are the names of visitors

  Ready to press my hand but yesterday;

  Forgotten are the names of earlier friends

  Whose genial converse and glad countenance

  Are fresh as ever to mine ear and eye:

  To these, when I have written, and besought

  Remembrance of me, the word Dear alone

  Hangs on the upper verge, and waits in vain.

  A blessing wert thou, O oblivion,

  If thy stream carried only weeds away,

  But vernal and autumnal flowers alike

  It hurries down to wither on the strand.

  DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI Sudden Light

  I have been here before,

  But when or how I cannot tell:

  I know the grass beyond the door,

  The sweet, keen smell,

  The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.

  You have been mine before, –

  How long ago I may not know:

  But just when at that swallow’s soar

  Your neck turned so,

  Some veil did fall, – I knew it all of yore.

  Has this been thus before?

  And shall not thus time’s eddying flight

  Still with our lives our love restore

  In death’s despite,

  And day and night yield one delight once more?

  1864ROBERT BROWNING Youth and Art

  It once might have been, once only:

  We lodged in a street together,

  You, a sparrow on the housetop lonely,

  I, a lone she-bird of his feather.

  Your trade was with sticks and clay,

  You thumbed, thrust, patted and polished,

  Then laughed ‘They will see some day

  Smith made, and Gibson demolished.’

  My business was song, song, song;

  I chirped, cheeped, trilled and twittered,

  ‘Kate Brown’s on the boards ere long,

  And Grisi’s existence embittered!’

  I earned no more by a warble

  Than you by a sketch in plaster;

  You wanted a piece of marble,

  I needed a music-master.

  We studied hard in our styles,

  Chipped each at a crust like Hindoos,

  For air looked out on the tiles,

  For fun watched each other’s windows.

  You lounged, like a boy of the South,

  Cap and blouse – nay, a bit of beard too;

  Or you got it, rubbing your mouth

  With fingers the clay adhered to.

  And I – soon managed to find

  Weak points in the flower-fence facing,

  Was forced to put up a blind

  And be safe in my corset-lacing.

  No harm! It was not my fault

  If you never turned your eye’s tail up

  As I shook upon E in alt,

  Or ran the chromatic scale up:

  For spring bade the sparrows pair,

  And the boys and girls gave guesses,

  And stalls in our street looked rare

  With bulrush and watercresses.

  Why did not you pinch a flower

  In a pellet of clay and fling it?

  Why did not I put a power

  Of thanks in a look, or sing it?

  I did look, sharp as a lynx,

  (And yet the memory rankles)

  When models arrived, some minx

  Tripped up-stairs, she and her ankles.

  But I think I gave you as good!

  ‘That foreign fellow, – who can know

  How she pays, in a playful mood,

  For his tuning her that piano?’

  Could you say so, and never say

  ‘Suppose we join hands and fortunes,

  And I fetch her from over the way,

  Her piano, and long tunes and short tunes?’

  No, no: you would not be rash,

  Nor I rasher and something over:

  You’ve to settle yet Gibson’s hash,

  And Grisi yet lives in clover.

  But you meet the Prince at the Board,

  I’m queen myself at bals-paré,

  I’ve married a rich old lord,

  And you’re dubbed knight and an R.A.

  Each life unfulfilled, you see;

  It hangs still, patchy and scrappy:

  We have not sighed deep, laughed free,

  Starved, feasted, despaired, – been happy.

  And nobody calls you a dunce,

  And people suppose me clever:

  This could but have happened once,

  And we missed it, lost it for ever.

  JOHN CLARE

  The thunder mutters louder and more loud

  With quicker motion hay folks ply the rake

  Ready to burst slow sails the pitch black cloud

  And all the gang a bigger haycock make

  To sit beneath – the woodland
winds awake

  The drops so large wet all thro’ in an hour

  A tiney flood runs down the leaning rake

  In the sweet hay yet dry the hay folks cower

  And some beneath the waggon shun the shower

  (1984)

  1865LEWIS CARROLL from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

  ‘Repeat “You are old, Father William,’ ” said the Caterpillar.

  Alice folded her hands, and began: –

  ‘You are old, Father William,’ the young man said,

  ‘And your hair has become very white;

  And yet you incessantly stand on your head –

  Do you think, at your age, it is right?’

  ‘In my youth,’ Father William replied to his son,

  ‘I feared it might injure the brain;

  But, now that I’m perfectly sure I have none,

  Why, I do it again and again.’

  ‘You are old,’ said the youth, ‘as I mentioned before,

  And have grown most uncommonly fat;

  Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door –

  Pray, what is the reason of that?’

  ‘In my youth,’ said the sage, as he shook his grey locks,

  ‘I kept all my limbs very supple

  By the use of this ointment – one shilling the box –

  Allow me to sell you a couple?’

  ‘You are old,’ said the youth, ‘and your jaws are too weak

  For anything tougher than suet;

  Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak –

  Pray, how did you manage to do it?’

  ‘In my youth,’ said his father, ‘I took to the law,

  And argued each case with my wife;

  And the muscular strength, which it gave to my jaw

  Has lasted the rest of my life.’

  ‘You are old,’ said the youth, ‘one would hardly suppose

  That your eye was as steady as ever;

  Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose –

  What made you so awfully clever?’

  ‘I have answered three questions, and that is enough,’

  Said his father. ‘Don’t give yourself airs!

  Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?

  Be off, or I’ll kick you down-stairs!’

  ‘That is not said right,’ said the Caterpillar.

  (… )

  ‘Begin at the beginning,’ the King said, very gravely, ‘and go on till you come to the end: then stop.’

  There was dead silence in the court, whilst the White Rabbit read out these verses: –

  ‘They told me you had been to her,

  And mentioned me to him:

  She gave me a good character,

  But said I could not swim.

  He sent them word I had not gone

  (We know it to be true):

  If she should push the matter on,

  What would become of you?

  I gave her one, they gave him two,

  You gave us three or more;

  They all returned from him to you,

  Though they were mine before.

  If I or she should chance to be

  Involved in this affair,

  He trusts to you to set them free,

  Exactly as we were.

  My notion was that you had been

  (Before she had this fit)

  An obstacle that came between

  Him, and ourselves, and it.

  Don’t let him know she liked them best,

  For this must ever be

  A secret, kept from all the rest,

  Between yourself and me.’

  ‘That’s the most important piece of evidence we’ve heard yet,’ said the King, rubbing his hands…

  GEORGE ELIOT In a London Drawingroom

  The sky is cloudy, yellowed by the smoke.

  For view there are the houses opposite.

  Cutting the sky with one long line of wall

  Like solid fog: far as the eye can stretch

  Monotony of surface and of form

  Without a break to hang a guess upon.

  No bird can make a shadow as it flies,

  For all is shadow, as in ways o’erhung

  By thickest canvass, where the golden rays

  Are clothed in hemp. No figure lingering

  Pauses to feed the hunger of the eye

  Or rest a little on the lap of life.

  All hurry on and look upon the ground,

  Or glance unmarking at the passers by.

  The wheels are hurrying too, cabs, carriages

  All closed, in multiplied identity.

  The world seems one huge prison-house and court

  Where men are punished at the slightest cost,

  With lowest rate of colour, warmth and joy.

  ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH from Dipsychus

  ‘There is no God,’ the wicked saith,

  ‘And truly it’s a blessing,

  For what he might have done with us

  It’s better only guessing.’

  ‘There is no God,’ a youngster thinks,

  ‘Or really, if there may be,

  He surely didn’t mean a man

  Always to be a baby.’

  ‘There is no God, or if there is,’

  The tradesman thinks, “twere funny

  If he should take it ill in me

  To make a little money.’

  ‘Whether there be,’ the rich man says,

  ‘It matters very little,

  For I and mine, thank somebody,

  Are not in want of victual.’

  Some others, also, to themselves

  Who scarce so much as doubt it,

  Think there is none, when they are well,

  And do not think about it.

  But country folks who live beneath

  The shadow of the steeple;

  The parson and the parson’s wife,

  And mostly married people;

  Youths green and happy in first love,

  So thankful for illusion;