Gay Love Poetry
neil powell is the author of four books of poetry, a novel, a study of contemporary English poetry and a critical biography, Roy Fuller: Writer and Society (1995). He lives in Suffolk.
Also by Neil Powell
Poetry
AT THE EDGE
A SEASON OF CALM WEATHER TRUE COLOURS
THE STONES ON THORPENESS BEACH
Fiction
UNREAL CITY
Biography & Criticism
CARPENTERS OF LIGHT
ROY FULLER: WRITER AND SOCIETY
Editor
SELECTED POEMS OF FULKE GREVILLE
Gay Love Poetry
Edited by Neil Powell
CARROLL & GRAF PUBLISHERS, INC.
New York
Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc.
260 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10001
First Carroll & Graf edition 1997
First published in the UK by Robinson Publishing Ltd 1997
Selection, introduction and editorial matter © Neil Powell 1997
The moral right of the editor has been asserted.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher.
A copy of the Cataloging in Publication Data for this title is available from the Library of Congress.
isbn 0-7867-0469-1
Printed and bound in the EC
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
for Nick: vanishing trick
Table of Contents
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
I NATURE BOYS
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
RICHARD BARNFIELD
WALT WHITMAN
JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS
OSCAR WILDE
FRANCIS KING
ROGER FINCH
GREGORY WOODS
II STREET LIFE
AUGUST GRAF VON PLATEN-HALLERMÜNDE
WALT WHITMAN
JOHN GAMBRIL NICHOLSON
C.P. CAVAFY
WILLIAM PLOMER
WILFRED OWEN
SANDRO PENNA
JAMES KIRKUP
EDWIN MORGAN
FRANCIS KING
THOM GUNN
QUENTIN STEVENSON
IVOR C. TREBY
PETER DANIELS
JOHN ASH
STEPHEN TAPSCOTT
PAUL WILKINS
MARC ALMOND
DAVID KINLOCH
JOEL LANE
STEVE ANTHONY
ADAM JOHNSON
R.M. VAUGHAN
LAWRENCE SCHIMEL
III LADS’ LOVE
SOLON
ALCAEUS
CATULLUS
MARTIAL
STRATO OF SARDIS
STRATO OF SARDIS
MICHAEL DRAYTON
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
ROBERT HERRICK
JOHN WILMOT, EARL OF ROCHESTER
WALT WHITMAN
GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS
HORATIO BROWN
WILFRED OWEN
J.R. ACKERLEY
ROBERT FRIEND
EDWIN MORGAN
J.D. McCLATCHY
RICHARD ESSENDEN
GREGORY WOODS
STEVE CRANFIELD
TIM NEAVE
PETER WYLES
IESTYN EDWARDS
DINYAR GODREJ
IV AS IT IS
MICHELANGELO
MICHAEL DRAYTON
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
RICHARD BARNFIELD
WALT WHITMAN
WILFRED OWEN
ROBERT FRIEND
EDWIN MORGAN
FRANCIS KING
THOM GUNN
ROGER FINCH
J.D. McCLATCHY
MICHAEL SCHMIDT
NEIL POWELL
PAUL WILKINS
GREGORY WOODS
FORBES
STEVE CRANFIELD
PETER DANIELS
DAVID KINLOCH
STEVE ANTHONY
JOEL LANE
PETER WYLES
ADAM JOHNSON
LAWRENCE SCHIMEL
V BORDERLINES
FULKE GREVILLE
MICHAEL DRAYTON
ANDREW MARVELL
JOHN DRYDEN
ALEXANDER POPE
CHRISTOPHER SMART
CHARLES CHURCHILL
GEORGE CRABBE
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON
OSCAR WILDE
WILFRED OWEN
VI IN MEMORIAM
HOMER
VIRGIL
MICHAEL DRAYTON
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
THOMAS GRAY
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
WALT WHITMAN
PAUL VERLAINE
WILFRED OWEN
J. R. ACKERLEY
JOHN HEATH-STUBBS
THOM GUNN
NEIL POWELL
STEVE CRANFIELD
ROBERT COCHRANE
JOEL LANE
ADAM JOHNSON
NOTES ON POETS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
INDEX OF FIRST LINES
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
____________________________
An anthologist should declare his principles, if only to assist his critics in their task of demonstrating how thoroughly he has betrayed them. The first thing to say about Gay Love Poetry is that I’ve taken liberties — pardonable ones, I hope — with my title: ‘gay’ has had the sense of ‘male homosexual’ for a good deal longer than its enemies pretend, certainly since the late nineteenth century, but for the purpose of this book I have applied its convenient shorthand to poetry written as far back as the eighth century bc; and I have allowed ‘love’ to encompass as wide a range of affectionate relationships as possible. That double inclusiveness has enabled me to gather together a more various and more interesting group of poems than is usual in anthologies of this sort.
The poems are arranged in six broadly thematic sections, each with an introductory note; within each section they are printed in chronological order of their authors’ births, although I’ve made a few deliberate exceptions among twentieth-century poets. While the thematic groupings offer intriguing juxtapositions, the sequences within them provide some sense of historical development. The first and last sections, ‘Nature Boys’ and ‘In Memoriam’, essentially comprise pastorals and elegies — the two oldest and most enduring forms of gay love poetry — while three others explore somewhat looser categories; the sixth, ‘Borderlines’, consists mainly of poems which may not have been conceived by their authors as about gay love but which have certainly been so interpreted by grateful readers.
For reasons to do equally with the histories of homosexuality and of literature, three eras are predominant here: the classical age in Greece and Rome; the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries in England; and the period from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. In the first two cases, I have included both the work of major writers and some lesser-known and possibly unexpected pieces; in pre-eighteenth-century texts, spellings which might be obstructive to the general reader have been modernized. The third is deliberately weighted towards poems published or collected here for the first time, rather than those which are readily accessible elsewhere; it is also drawn more from Britain than from America, partly because these are the writers I know best, but also because several anthologies of gay poetry have appeared in the USA during recent years an
d my guess is that readers there will welcome the less familiar work included here.
One of the pleasures (at first hoped-for rather than confidently anticipated) of assembling this book has been discovering the quality and diversity of recent writing which would be offered for it: among the newly collected poems here are several which seem to me outstanding as well as others, perhaps less completely distinguished, which IVe liked for particular qualities — for catching their specific moment or for an irresistible line or image. In other words, every poem has earned its place. Inevitably, there are a few missing persons — writers who didn’t receive or reply to my letters, who weren’t happy about contributing, or whose publishers were unwilling to grant affordable permissions — but I’d like to suspect that on the whole they may regret having missed this particular party. I am especially sorry that W.H. Auden’s American publishers (Random House, Inc.) refused to allow his work to appear in this book.
I am grateful to all the poets, translators and publishers who have allowed material to appear in this anthology; to Mark Crean at Robinson Publishing for commissioning the book; and to Steve Anthony, Peter Daniels, Thom Gunn, Francis King, David Kinloch, Joel Lane, Michael Schmidt, Ivor C. Treby, Gregory Woods and Martin Wright for useful suggestions and advice.
N.P.
I NATURE BOYS
____________________________
The pastoral provides one of the oldest strands of gay love poetry. The classical tradition of rustic love which is often unreciprocated or obstructed or at least delayed is represented here by Theocritus and Virgil. It was rediscovered and adapted by major writers of the English renaissance such as Sidney, Marlowe and Shakespeare; as well as work by these three, I have included in full Richard Barnfield’s splendid long poem ‘The Affectionate Shepherd’.
The Greek myth of Ganymede also surfaces and resurfaces here, either glancingly or centrally, in Marlowe’s Hero and Leander and the opening of Dido Queen of Carthage (grouped here for that reason, though it isn’t otherwise a pastoral scene), Shakespeare’s As You Like It and Roger Finch’s ‘The Rape of Ganymede’. The As You Like It extract, incidentally, may at first seem an odd choice: but it is a deliciously concise example of the gender-masking which so permeates Shakespeare’s comedies as well as a moment of high pastoral pastiche.
Wildes ‘Charmides’, though not wholly a gay text, was the author’s own ‘favourite poem ... my best... the most perfect and finished’; the very beguiling extract printed here perhaps suggests why.
THEOCRITUS
Translated by Thomas Creech
Idyll 23
An amorous shepherd lov’d a charming boy,
As fair as thought could frame, or wish enjoy;
Unlike his soul, ill-natur’d and unkind,
An angel’s body with a fury’s mind:
How great a God Love was, he scorn’d to know,
How sharp his arrows, and how strong his bow,
What raging wounds he scatters here below.
In his address and talk fierce, rude, untame,
He gave no comfort to the shepherd’s flame:
No cherry lips, no rose his cheeks did dye,
No pleasing fire did sparkle in his eye,
Where eager thoughts with fainting virtue strove,
No soft discourse, nor kiss to ease his love:
But as a lion on the Lybian plain
Looks on his hunters, he beheld the swain:
His lips still pouting, and his eyes unkind,
His forehead too was rough as was his mind;
His colour gone, and every pleasing grace
Beset by fury had forsook his face;
Yet midst his passion, midst his frowns he mov’d,
As these were charms he was the more belov’d:
But when o’ercome he could endure no more,
He came and wept before the hated door,
He wept and pin’d, he hung his sickly head,
The threshold kiss’d, and thus at last he said:
Ah cruel fair, and of a Tigress born!
Ah stony boy, compos’d of frowns and scorn:
Unworthy of my love, this rope receive,
The last and welcom’st present I can give:
I’ll never vex thee more, I’ll cease to woe,
And whether you condemn’d, I’ll freely go,
Where certain cures for love, as stories tell,
Where dismal shades, and dark oblivion dwell:
Yet did I drink the whole forgetful stream,
It would not drown my love, nor quench my flame:
Thy cruel doors I bid my last adieu,
Know what will come, and you shall find it true:
The day is fair but quickly yields to shades,
The lily white, but when ’tis pluck’d it fades:
The violet lovely, but it withers soon,
Youth’s beauty charming, but ’tis quickly gone:
The time shall come when you, proud boy, shall prove
The heat of passion, and the rage of love:
Then shall thy soul melt through thy weeping eye,
Whilst all shall smile, and you unpitied die.
Yet grant one kindness, and I ask no more,
When you shall see me hanging at the door
Do not go proudly by, forbear to smile,
But stay, sweet boy, and gaze, and weep a while;
Then take me down, and whilst some tears are shed,
Thy own soft garment o’er my body spread,
And grant one kiss, one kiss when I am dead:
Ne’er fear, for you may safely grant me this,
I shan’t revive though you could love and kiss:
Then dig a grave, there let my love be laid,
And when you part, say thrice, “My friend is dead”,
Or else go further on to please my ghost,
And cry, “My best, my dearest friend is lost”:
And on my monument inscribe this rhyme,
The witness of my love and of thy crime,
This shepherd died for love, stay Stranger here,
And weep, and cry, He lov'd a cruel fair. ’
This said, he roll’d a stone, a mighty stone,
Fate lent a hand behind, and push’d it on:
High by the wall, on this he panting rose,
And tied, and fitted well the Fatal noose:
Then from the place on which before he stood
He slipp’d, and hung the door’s unhappy load:
The boy came forth, and with a scornful mien
And smiling look beheld the tragic scene;
‘Hang there,* said he, ‘but O how I despise
So base, so mean a trophy of my eyes!
The proudest kings should fall by my disdain,
Too noble to be lost upon a swain.’
This said, he turn’d, and as he turn’d his head
His garments were polluted by the dead,
Thence to the plays and to the baths did move,
The bath was sacred to the God of Love;
For there he stood in comely majesty,
Smiles on his cheeks, and softness in his eye,
That part of th’marble wrought into his breast
By power divine was softer than the rest,
To show how pity did exactly suit
With love, and was his darling attribute:
The God leap forth, and dash’d the boy, the wound
Let out his soul, and as it fled he groan’d.
‘Hail Lovers, hail, see here the scornful dies,
A just, and acceptable sacrifice,
Be kind, and Love for mutual Love return,
For see the God takes vengeance on my scorn.’
VIRGIL
Translated by John Dryden
Pastoral II
Young Corydon, the unhappy shepherd swain,
The fair Alexis loved, but loved in vain;
And undernearth the beechen shade, alone,
Thus to the woods a
nd mountains made his moan:
Is this, unkind Alexis, my reward?
And must I die unpitied, and unheard?
Now the green lizard in the grove is laid;
The sheep enjoy the coolness of the shade:
And Thestylis wild thyme and garlic beats,
For harvest hinds, o’erspent with toil and heats;
While in the scorching sun I trace in vain
The flying footsteps o’er the burning plain.
The creaking locusts with my voice conspire,
They fried with heat, and I with fierce desire.
How much more easy was it to sustain
Proud Amaryllis, and her haughty reign;
The scorns of young Menalcas, once my care,
Though he was black, and thou art heavenly fair!
Trust not too much to that enchanting face:
Beauty’s a charm; but soon the charm will pass.
White lilies lie neglected on the plain,
While dusky hyacinths for use remain.
My passion is thy scorn; nor wilt thou know
What wealth I have, what gifts I can bestow;
What stores my dairies and my folds contain —
A thousand lambs that wander on the plain,
New milk that, all the winter, never fails,
And, all the summer, overflows the pails.
Amphion sung not sweeter to his herd,
When summoned stones the Theban turrets reared.
Nor am I so deformed; for late I stood
Upon the margin of the briny flood:
The winds were still; and, if the glass be true,
With Daphnis I may vie, though judged by you.
0 leave the noisy town: O come and see
Our country cots, and live content with me!
To wound the flying deer, and from their cotes
With me to drive a-field the browsing goats;
To pipe and sing, and, in our country strain,
To copy, or perhaps contend with Pan.
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