The Penguin Book of English Verse

by Paul Keegan

  Winter in Brighton!

  Politics nobody cares about. Spurn a

  Topic whereby all our happiness suffers.

  Dolts in the back streets of Brighton return a

  Couple of duffers.

  Fawcett and White in the Westminster Hades

  Strive the reporters’ misfortunes to heighten.

  What does it matter? Delicious young ladies

  Winter in Brighton!

  Good is the turtle for luncheon at Mutton’s,

  Good is the hock that they give you at Bacon’s,

  Mainwaring’s fruit in the bosom of gluttons

  Yearning awakens;

  Buckstone comes hither, delighting the million,

  ‘Mong the theatrical minnows a Triton;

  Dickens and Lemon pervade the Pavilion: –

  Winter in Brighton!

  If you’ve a thousand a year, or a minute –

  If you’re a D’Orsay, whom every one follows –

  If you’ve a head (it don’t matter what’s in it)

  Fair as Apollo’s –

  If you approve of flirtations, good dinners,

  Seascapes divine which the merry winds whiten,

  Nice little saints and still nicer young sinners –

  Winter in Brighton!

  MATTHEW ARNOLD1869

  Below the surface-stream, shallow and light,

  Of what we say we feel – below the stream,

  As light, of what we think we feel – there flows

  With noiseless current strong, obscure and deep,

  The central stream of what we feel indeed.

  AUGUSTA WEBSTER from A Castaway 1870

  Poor little diary, with its simple thoughts,

  Its good resolves, its ‘Studied French an hour,’

  ‘Read Modern History,’ ‘Trimmed up my grey hat,’

  ‘Darned stockings,’ ‘Tatted,’ ‘Practised my new song,’

  ‘Went to the daily service,’ ‘Took Bess soup,’

  ‘Went out to tea.’ Poor simple diary!

  And did I write it? Was I this good girl,

  This budding colourless young rose of home?

  Did I so live content in such a life,

  Seeing no larger scope, nor asking it,

  Than this small constant round – old clothes to mend,

  New clothes to make, then go and say my prayers,

  Or carry soup, or take a little walk

  And pick the ragged-robins in the hedge?

  Then, for ambition, (was there ever life

  That could forego that?) to improve my mind

  And know French better and sing harder songs;

  For gaiety, to go, in my best white

  Well washed and starched and freshened with new bows,

  And take tea out to meet the clergyman.

  No wishes and no cares, almost no hopes,

  Only the young girl’s hazed and golden dreams

  That veil the Future from her.

  So long since:

  And now it seems a jest to talk of me

  As if I could be one with her, of me

  Who am… me.

  And what is that? My looking-glass

  Answers it passably; a woman sure,

  No fiend, no slimy thing out of the pools,

  A woman with a ripe and smiling lip

  That has no venom in its touch I think,

  With a white brow on which there is no brand;

  A woman none dare call not beautiful,

  Not womanly in every woman’s grace.

  Aye, let me feed upon my beauty thus,

  Be glad in it like painters when they see

  At last the face they dreamed but could not find

  Look from their canvas on them, triumph in it,

  The dearest thing I have. Why, ’tis my all,

  Let me make much of it: is it not this,

  This beauty, my own curse at once and tool

  To snare men’s souls, (I know what the good say

  Of beauty in such creatures) is it not this

  That makes me feel myself a woman still,

  With still some little pride, some little –

  Stop!

  ‘Some little pride, some little’ – Here’s a jest!

  What word will fit the sense but modesty?

  A wanton I, but modest!

  Modest, true;

  I’m not drunk in the streets, ply not for hire

  At infamous corners with my likenesses

  Of the humbler kind; yes, modesty’s my word –

  ’Twould shape my mouth well too, I think I’ll try:

  ‘Sir, Mr. What-you-will, Lord Who-knows-what,

  My present lover or my next to come,

  Value me at my worth, fill your purse full,

  For I am modest; yes, and honour me

  As though your schoolgirl sister or your wife

  Could let her skirts brush mine or talk of me;

  For I am modest.’

  Well, I flout myself:

  But yet, but yet –

  Fie, poor fantastic fool,

  Why do I play the hypocrite alone,

  Who am no hypocrite with others by?

  Where should be my ‘But yet’? I am that thing

  Called half a dozen dainty names, and none

  Dainty enough to serve the turn and hide

  The one coarse English worst that lurks beneath:

  Just that, no worse, no better.

  And, for me,

  I say let no one be above her trade;

  I own my kindredship with any drab

  Who sells herself as I, although she crouch

  In fetid garrets and I have a home

  All velvet and marqueterie and pastilles,

  Although she hide her skeleton in rags

  And I set fashions and wear cobweb lace:

  The difference lies but in my choicer ware,

  That I sell beauty and she ugliness;

  Our traffic’s one – I’m no sweet slaver-tongue

  To gloze upon it and explain myself

  A sort of fractious angel misconceived –

  Our traffic’s one: I own it. And what then?

  I know of worse that are called honourable.

  Our lawyers, who with noble eloquence

  And virtuous outbursts lie to hang a man,

  Or lie to save him, which way goes the fee:

  Our preachers, gloating on your future hell

  For not believing what they doubt themselves:

  Our doctors, who sort poisons out by chance

  And wonder how they’ll answer, and grow rich:

  Our journalists, whose business is to fib

  And juggle truths and falsehoods to and fro:

  Our tradesmen, who must keep unspotted names

  And cheat the least like stealing that they can:

  Our – all of them, the virtuous worthy men

  Who feed on the world’s follies, vices, wants,

  And do their businesses of lies and shams

  Honestly, reputably, while the world

  Claps hands and cries ‘good luck,’ which of their trades,

  Their honourable trades, barefaced like mine,

  All secrets brazened out, would shew more white?

  And whom do I hurt more than they? as much?

  The wives? Poor fools, what do I take from them

  Worth crying for or keeping? If they knew

  What their fine husbands look like seen by eyes

  That may perceive there are more men than one!

  But, if they can, let them just take the pains

  To keep them: ’tis not such a mighty task

  To pin an idiot to your apron-string;

  And wives have an advantage over us,

  (The good and blind ones have) the smile or pout

  Leaves them no secret nausea at odd times.

  Oh, they could keep their husbands if they cared,

  But ’tis an easier lif
e to let them go,

  And whimper at it for morality.

  Oh! those shrill carping virtues, safely housed

  From reach of even a smile that should put red

  On a decorous cheek, who rail at us

  With such a spiteful scorn and rancorousness,

  (Which maybe is half envy at the heart)

  And boast themselves so measurelessly good

  And us so measurelessly unlike them,

  What is their wondrous merit that they stay

  In comfortable homes whence not a soul

  Has ever thought of tempting them, and wear

  No kisses but a husband’s upon lips

  There is no other man desires to kiss –

  Refrain in fact from sin impossible?

  How dare they hate us so? what have they done,

  What borne, to prove them other than we are?

  What right have they to scorn us – glass-case saints,

  Dianas under lock and key – what right

  More than the well-fed helpless barn-door fowl

  To scorn the larcenous wild-birds?

  Pshaw, let be!

  Scorn or no scorn, what matter for their scorn?

  I have outfaced my own – that’s harder work.

  Aye, let their virtuous malice dribble on –.

  Mock snowstorms on the stage – I’m proof long since:

  I have looked coolly on my what and why,

  And I accept myself.

  DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI A Match with the Moon

  Weary already, weary miles to-night

  I walked for bed: and so, to get some ease,

  I dogged the flying moon with similes.

  And like a wisp she doubled on my sight

  In ponds; and caught in tree-tops like a kite;

  And in a globe of film all liquorish

  Swam full-faced like a silly silver fish; –

  Last like a bubble shot the welkin’s height

  Where my road turned, and got behind me, and sent

  My wizened shadow craning round at me,

  And jeered, ‘So, step the measure, – one two three!’

  And if I faced on her, looked innocent.

  But just at parting, halfway down a dell,

  She kissed me for good-night. So you’ll not tell.

  DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI The Woodspurge

  The wind flapped loose, the wind was still,

  Shaken out dead from tree and hill:

  I had walked on at the wind’s will, –

  I sat now, for the wind was still.

  Between my knees my forehead was, –

  My lips drawn in, said not Alas!

  My hair was over in the grass,

  My naked ears heard the day pass.

  My eyes, wide open, had the run

  Of some ten weeds to fix upon;

  Among those few, out of the sun,

  The woodspurge flowered, three cups in one.

  From perfect grief there need not be

  Wisdom or even memory:

  One thing then learnt remains to me, –

  The woodspurge has a cup of three.

  1871 EDWARD LEAR

  There was an old man who screamed out

  Whenever they knocked him about;

  So they took off his boots, And fed him with fruits,

  And continued to knock him about.

  EDWARD LEAR The Owl and the Pussy-Cat

  I

  The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea

  In a beautiful pea-green boat,

  They took some honey, and plenty of money,

  Wrapped up in a five-pound note.

  The Owl looked up to the stars above,

  And sang to a small guitar,

  ‘O lovely Pussy! O Pussy, my love,

  What a beautiful Pussy you are,

  You are,

  You are!

  What a beautiful Pussy you are!’

  II

  Pussy said to the Owl, ‘You elegant fowl!

  How charmingly sweet you sing!

  O let us be married! too long we have tarried:

  But what shall we do for a ring?’

  They sailed away, for a year and a day,

  To the land where the Bong-tree grows

  And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood

  With a ring at the end of his nose,

  His nose,

  His nose,

  With a ring at the end of his nose.

  III

  ‘Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling

  Your ring?’ Said the Piggy, ‘I will.’

  So they took it away, and were married next day

  By the Turkey who lives on the hill.

  They dined on mince, and slices of quince,

  Which they ate with a runcible spoon;

  And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,

  They danced by the light of the moon,

  The moon,

  The moon,

  They danced by the light of the moon.

  LEWIS CARROLL from Through the Looking-Glass 1872

  ‘The piece I’m going to repeat’, he went on without noticing her remark, ‘was written entirely for your amusement.’

  Alice felt that in that case she really ought to listen to it; so she sat down, and said ‘Thank you’ rather sadly,

  ‘In winter, when the fields are white,

  I sing this song for your delight –

  only I don’t sing it,’ he added, as an explanation.

  ‘I see you don’t,’ said Alice.

  ‘If you can see whether I’m singing or not, you’ve sharper eyes than most,’ Humpty Dumpty remarked severely. Alice was silent.

  ‘In spring, when woods are getting green,

  I’ll try and tell you what I mean:’

  ‘Thank you very much,’ said Alice.

  ‘In summer, when the days are long,

  Perhaps you’ll understand the song:

  In autumn, when the leaves are brown,

  Take pen and ink, and write it down.’

  ‘I will, if I can remember it so long,’ said Alice.

  ‘You needn’t go on making remarks like that,’ Humpty Dumpty said: ‘they’re not sensible, and they put me out.’

  ‘I sent a message to the fish:

  I told them “This is what I wish.”

  The little fishes of the sea,

  They sent an answer back to me.

  The little fishes’ answer was

  “We cannot do it, Sir, because –” ’