The Penguin Book of English Verse

by Paul Keegan

And men caught out in what the world

  Calls guilt, in first confusion;

  And almost every one when age,

  Disease, or sorrows strike him,

  Inclines to think there is a God,

  Or something very like Him.

  1866ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE Itylus

  Swallow, my sister, O sister swallow,

  How can thine heart be full of the spring?

  A thousand summers are over and dead.

  What hast thou found in the spring to follow?

  What hast thou found in thine heart to sing?

  What wilt thou do when the summer is shed?

  O swallow, sister, O fair swift swallow,

  Why wilt thou fly after spring to the south,

  The soft south whither thine heart is set?

  Shall not the grief of the old time follow?

  Shall not the song thereof cleave to thy mouth?

  Hast thou forgotten ere I forget?

  Sister, my sister, O fleet sweet swallow,

  Thy way is long to the sun and the south;

  But I, fulfilled of my heart’s desire,

  Shedding my song upon height, upon hollow,

  From tawny body and sweet small mouth

  Feed the heart of the night with fire.

  I the nightingale all spring through,

  O swallow, sister, O changing swallow,

  All spring through till the spring be done,

  Clothed with the light of the night on the dew,

  Sing, while the hours and the wild birds follow,

  Take flight and follow and find the sun.

  Sister, my sister, O soft light swallow,

  Though all things feast in the spring’s guest-chamber,

  How hast thou heart to be glad thereof yet?

  For where thou fliest I shall not follow,

  Till life forget and death remember,

  Till thou remember and I forget.

  Swallow, my sister, O singing swallow,

  I know not how thou hast heart to sing.

  Hast thou the heart? is it all past over?

  Thy lord the summer is good to follow,

  And fair the feet of thy lover the spring:

  But what wilt thou say to the spring thy lover?

  O swallow, sister, O fleeting swallow,

  My heart in me is a molten ember

  And over my head the waves have met.

  But thou wouldst tarry or I would follow,

  Could I forget or thou remember,

  Couldst thou remember and I forget.

  O sweet stray sister, O shifting swallow,

  The heart’s division divideth us.

  Thy heart is light as a leaf of a tree;

  But mine goes forth among sea-gulfs hollow

  To the place of the slaying of Itylus,

  The feast of Daulis, the Thracian sea.

  O swallow, sister, O rapid swallow,

  I pray thee sing not a little space.

  Are not the roofs and the lintels wet?

  The woven web that was plain to follow,

  The small slain body, the flowerlike face,

  Can I remember if thou forget?

  O sister, sister, thy first-begotten!

  The hands that cling and the feet that follow,

  The voice of the child’s blood crying yet

  Who hath remembered me? who hath forgotten?

  Thou hast forgotten, O summer swallow,

  But the world shall end when I forget.

  ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE from Sapphics

  All the night sleep came not upon my eyelids,

  Shed not dew, nor shook nor unclosed a feather,

  Yet with lips shut close and with eyes of iron

  Stood and beheld me.

  Then to me so lying awake a vision

  Came without sleep over the seas and touched me,

  Softly touched mine eyelids and lips; and I too,

  Full of the vision,

  Saw the white implacable Aphrodite,

  Saw the hair unbound and the feet unsandalled

  Shine as fire of sunset on western waters;

  Saw the reluctant

  Feet, the straining plumes of the doves that drew her,

  Looking always, looking with necks reverted,

  Back to Lesbos, back to the hills whereunder

  Shone Mitylene;

  Heard the flying feet of the Loves behind her

  Make a sudden thunder upon the waters,

  As the thunder flung from the strong unclosing

  Wings of a great wind.

  So the goddess fled from her place, with awful

  Sound of feet and thunder of wings around her;

  While behind a clamour of singing women

  Severed the twilight.

  Ah the singing, ah the delight, the passion!

  All the Loves wept, listening; sick with anguish,

  Stood the crowned nine Muses about Apollo;

  Fear was upon them,

  While the tenth sang wonderful things they knew not

  Ah the tenth, the Lesbian! the nine were silent,

  None endured the sound of her song for weeping;

  Laurel by laurel,

  Faded all their crowns; but about her forehead,

  Round her woven tresses and ashen temples

  White as dead snow, paler than grass in summer,

  Ravaged with kisses,

  Shone a light of fire as a crown for ever.

  Yea, almost the implacable Aphrodite

  Paused, and almost wept; such a song was that song.

  CHRISTINA ROSSETTI The Queen of Hearts

  How comes it, Flora, that, whenever we

  Play cards together, you invariably,

  However the pack parts,

  Still hold the Queen of Hearts?

  I’ve scanned you with a scrutinizing gaze,

  Resolved to fathom these your secret ways:

  But, sift them as I will,

  Your ways are secret still.

  I cut and shuffle; shuffle, cut, again;

  But all my cutting, shuffling, proves in vain:

  Vain hope, vain forethought too;

  That Queen still falls to you.

  I dropped her once, prepense; but, ere the deal

  Was dealt, your instinct seemed her loss to feel:

  ‘There should be one card more,’

  You said, and searched the floor.

  I cheated once; I made a private notch

  In Heart-Queen’s back, and kept a lynx-eyed watch;

  Yet such another back

  Deceived me in the pack:

  The Queen of Clubs assumed by arts unknown

  An imitative dint that seemed my own;

  This notch, not of my doing,

  Misled me to my ruin.

  It baffles me to puzzle out the clue,

  Which must be skill, or craft, or luck in you:

  Unless, indeed, it be

  Natural affinity.

  CHRISTINA ROSSETTI What Would I Give?

  What would I give for a heart of flesh to warm me thro’,

  Instead of this heart of stone ice-cold whatever I do;

  Hard and cold and small, of all hearts the worst of all.

  What would I give for words, if only words would come;

  But now in its misery my spirit has fallen dumb:

  O merry friends, go your way, I have never a word to say.

  What would I give for tears, not smiles but scalding tears,

  To wash the black mark clean, and to thaw the frost of years,

  To wash the stain ingrain and to make clean again.

  1867MATTHEW ARNOLD Dover Beach

  The sea is calm to-night.

  The tide is full, the moon lies fair

  Upon the straits; – on the French coast the light

  Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,

  Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.

  Come to the window, swe
et is the night-air!

  Only, from the long line of spray

  Where the sea meets the moon-blanch’d land,

  Listen! you hear the grating roar

  Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,

  At their return, up the high strand,

  Begin, and cease, and then again begin,

  With tremulous cadence slow, and bring

  The eternal note of sadness in.

  Sophocles long ago

  Heard it on the Aegaean, and it brought

  Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow

  Of human misery; we

  Find also in the sound a thought,

  Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

  The Sea of Faith

  Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore

  Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl’d.

  But now I only hear

  Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,

  Retreating, to the breath

  Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear

  And naked shingles of the world.

  Ah, love, let us be true

  To one another! for the world, which seems

  To lie before us like a land of dreams,

  So various, so beautiful, so new,

  Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

  Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

  And we are here as on a darkling plain

  Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

  Where ignorant armies clash by night.

  (written? 1851)

  MATTHEW ARNOLD Growing Old

  What is it to grow old?

  Is it to lose the glory of the form,

  The lustre of the eye?

  Is it for beauty to forego her wreath?

  – Yes, but not this alone.

  Is it to feel our strength –

  Not our bloom only, but our strength – decay?

  Is it to feel each limb

  Grow stiffer, every function less exact,

  Each nerve more loosely strung?

  Yes, this, and more; but not

  Ah, ’tis not what in youth we dream’d ’twould be!

  ’Tis not to have our life

  Mellow’d and soften’d as with sunset-glow,

  A golden day’s decline.

  ’Tis not to see the world

  As from a height, with rapt prophetic eyes,

  And heart profoundly stirr’d;

  And weep, and feel the fulness of the past,

  The years that are no more.

  It is to spend long days

  And not once feel that we were ever young;

  It is to add, immured

  In the hot prison of the present, month

  To month with weary pain.

  It is to suffer this,

  And feel but half, and feebly, what we feel.

  Deep in our hidden heart

  Festers the dull remembrance of a change,

  But no emotion – none.

  It is – last stage of all –

  When we are frozen up within, and quite

  The phantom of ourselves,

  To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost

  Which blamed the living man.

  DORA GREENWELL A Scherzo. (A Shy Person’s Wishes)

  With the wasp at the innermost heart of a peach,

  On a sunny wall out of tip-toe reach,

  With the trout in the darkest summer pool,

  With the fern-seed clinging behind its cool

  Smooth frond, in the chink of an aged tree,

  In the woodbine’s horn with the drunken bee,

  With the mouse in its nest in a furrow old,

  With the chrysalis wrapt in its gauzy fold;

  With things that are hidden, and safe, and bold,

  With things that are timid, and shy, and free,

  Wishing to be;

  With the nut in its shell, with the seed in its pod,

  With the corn as it sprouts in the kindly clod,

  Far down where the secret of beauty shows

  In the bulb of the tulip, before it blows;

  With things that are rooted, and firm, and deep,

  Quiet to lie, and dreamless to sleep;

  With things that are chainless, and tameless, and proud,

  With the fire in the jagged thunder-cloud,

  With the wind in its sleep, with the wind in its waking,

  With the drops that go to the rainbow’s making,

  Wishing to be with the light leaves shaking,

  Or stones on some desolate highway breaking;

  Far up on the hills, where no foot surprises

  The dew as it falls, or the dust as it rises;

  To be couched with the beast in its torrid lair,

  Or drifting on ice with the polar bear,

  With the weaver at work at his quiet loom;

  Anywhere, anywhere, out of this room!

  CHARLES TURNER On a Vase of Gold-Fish 1868

  The tortured mullet served the Roman’s pride

  By darting round the crystal vase, whose heat

  Ensured his woe and beauty till he died:

  These unharm’d gold-fish yield as rich a treat;

  Seen thus, in parlour-twilight, they appear

  As though the hand of Midas, hovering o’er,

  Wrought on the waters, as his touch drew near,

  And set them glancing with his golden power,

  The flash of transmutation! In their glass

  They float and glitter, by no anguish rackt;

  And, though we see them swelling as they pass,

  ’Tis but a painless and phantasmal act,

  The trick of their own bellying walls, which charms

  All eyes – themselves it vexes not, nor harms.

  MORTIMER COLLINS Winter in Brighton

  Will there be snowfall on lofty Soracte

  After a summer so tranquil and torrid?

  Whoso detests the east wind, as a fact he

  Thinks ’twill be horrid.

  But there are zephyrs more mild by the ocean,

  Every keen touch of the snowdrifts to lighten:

  If to be cosy and snug you’ve a notion