Gay Love Poetry

by Neil Powell (ed)

  On glorious bright,

  Nature’s weak senses shrouds

  From harming light.

  Absence maintains the treasure

  Of pleasure unto pleasure,

  Sparing with praise;

  Absence doth nurse the fire,

  Which starves and feeds desire

  With sweet delays.

  Presence to every part

  Of beauty ties,

  Where wonder rules the heart

  There pleasure dies:

  Pleasure plagues mind and senses

  With modesty’s defences,

  Absence is free:

  Thoughts do in absence venter

  On Cupids shadowed centre,

  They wink and see.

  But thoughts be not so brave,

  With absent joy;

  For you with that you have

  Yourself destroy:

  The absence which you glory,

  Is that which makes you sorry,

  And burn in vain:

  For thought is not the weapon,

  Wherewith thoughts ease men cheapen,

  Absence is pain.

  MICHAEL DRAYTON

  ‘Since theres no help ... ’

  Since theres no help, come, let us kiss and part —

  Nay, I have done: you get no more of me;

  And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart

  That thus so cleanly I myself can free.

  Shake hands forever, cancel all our vows,

  And when we meet at any time again,

  Be it not seen in either of our brows

  That we one jot of former love retain.

  Now at the last gasp of loves latest breath,

  When, his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies,

  When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death,

  And Innocence is closing up his eyes -

  Now, if thou wouldst, when all have given him over,

  From death to life thou might st him yet recover.

  ANDREW MARVELL

  The Definition of Love

  i

  My love is of a birth as rare

  As ’tis for object strange and high:

  It was begotten by Despair

  Upon Impossibility.

  ii

  Magnanimous Despair alone

  Could show me so divine a thing,

  Where feeble Hope could ne’er have flown

  But vainly flapped its tinsel wing.

  iii

  And yet I quickly might arrive

  Where my extended soul is fixed,

  But Fate does iron wedges drive,

  And always crowds itself betwixt.

  iv

  For Fate with jealous eye does see

  Two perfect loves, nor lets them close:

  Their union would her ruin be,

  And her tyrannic power depose.

  v

  And therefore her decrees of steel

  Us as the distant Poles have placed,

  (Though Loves whole world on us doth wheel)

  Not by themselves to be embraced,

  vi

  Unless the giddy heaven fall,

  And earth some new convulsion tear;

  And, us to join, the world should all

  Be cramped into a planisphere.

  vii

  As lines (so loves) oblique may well

  Themselves in every angle greet:

  But ours so truly parallel,

  Though infinite, can never meet.

  viii

  Therefore the love which us doth bind,

  But Fate so enviously debars,

  Is the conjunction of the mind,

  And opposition of the stars.

  JOHN DRYDEN

  from The Maiden Queen

  I feed a flame which so torments me

  That it both pains my heart and yet contents me:

  ’Tis such a pleasing smart and I so love it,

  That I had rather die, then once remove it.

  Yet he for whom I grieve shall never know it,

  My tongue does not betray, nor my eyes show it:

  Not a sigh not a tear my pain discloses,

  But they fall silently like dew on roses.

  Thus to prevent my love from being cruel,

  My hearts the sacrifice as ’tis the fuel:

  And while I suffer thus to give him quiet,

  My faith rewards my love, though he deny it.

  On his eyes will I gaze, and there delight me;

  Where I conceal my love, no frown can fright me:

  To be more happy I dare not aspire;

  Nor can I fall more low, mounting no higher.

  ALEXANDER POPE

  from An Epistle from Mr Pope,

  to Dr Arbuthnot

  Let Sporus tremble — ‘What? that Thing of silk,

  Sporus, that mere white Curd of Ass’s milk?

  Satire or Sense alas! can Sporus feel?

  Who breaks a Butterfly upon a Wheel?

  Yet let me flap this Bug with gilded wings,

  This painted Child of Dirt that stinks and stings;

  Whose Buzz the Witty and the Fair annoys,

  Yet Wit ne’er tastes, and Beauty ne’er enjoys,

  So well-bred Spaniels civilly delight

  In mumbling of the Game they dare not bite.

  Eternal Smiles his Emptiness betray,

  As shallow streams run dimpling all the way.

  Whether in florid Impotence he speaks,

  And, as the Prompter breathes, the Puppet squeaks;

  Or at the Ear of Eve, familiar Toad,

  Half Froth, half Venom, spits himself abroad,

  In Puns, or Politics, or Tales, or Lies,

  Or Spite, or Smut, or Rhymes, or Blasphemies.

  His Wit all see-saw between that and this,

  Now high, now low, now Master up, now Miss,

  And he himself one vile Antithesis.

  Amphibious Thing! that acting either Part,

  The trifling Head, or the corrupted Heart!

  Fop at the Toilet, Flatt’rer at the Board,

  Now trips a Lady, and now struts a Lord.

  Eve’s Tempter thus the Rabbins have expressed,

  A Cherub’s face, a Reptile all the rest;

  Beauty that shocks you, Parts that none will trust,

  Wit that can creep, and Pride that licks the dust.

  CHRISTOPHER SMART

  Hymn 13: St Philip and St James

  Now the winds are all composure,

  But the breath upon the bloom,

  Blowing sweet o’er each inclosure,

  Grateful ofFrings of perfume.

  Tansy, calaminth and daisies,

  On the rivers margin thrive;

  And accompany the mazes

  Of the stream that leaps alive.

  Muse, accordant to the season,

  Give the numbers life and air;

  When the sounds and objects reason

  In behalf of praise and pray’r.

  All the scenes of nature quicken,

  By the genial spirits fann’d;

  And the painted beauties thicken

  Colour’d by the master’s hand.

  Earth her vigour repossessing

  As the blasts are held in ward;

  Blessing heap’d and press’d on blessing,

  Yield the measure of the Lord.

  Beeches, without order seemly,

  Shade the flow’rs of annual birth,

  And the lily smiles supremely

  Mention’d by the Lord on earth.

  Cowslips seize upon the fallow,

  And the cardamine in white,

  Where the cornflow’rs join the mallow,

  Joy and health, and thrift unite.

  Study sits beneath her arbour,

  By the basons glossy side;

  While the boat from out its harbour

  Exercise and pleasure guide.

  Pray’r and praise be mine employment,

/>   Without grudging or regret;

  Lasting life, and long enjoyment,

  Are not here, and are not yet.

  Hark! aloud, the black-bird whistles,

  With surrounding fragrance blest,

  And the goldfinch in the thistles

  Makes provision for her nest.

  Evn the hornet hives his honey,

  Bluecap builds his stately dome,

  And the rocks supply the coney

  With a fortress and an home.

  But the servants of their Saviour,

  Which with gospel peace are shod,

  Have no bed but what the paviour

  Makes them in the porch of God.

  O thou house that hold st the charter

  Of salvation from on high,

  Fraught with prophet, saint, and martyr,

  Born to weep, to starve and die!

  Great today thy song and rapture

  In the Choir of Christ and wren

  When two prizes were the capture

  Of the hand that fish’d for men.

  To the man of quick compliance

  Jesus call’d, and Philip came;

  And began to make alliance

  For his master’s cause and name.

  James, of title most illustrious,

  Brother of the Lord, allow’d;

  In the vineyard how industrious,

  Nor by years nor hardship bow’d!

  Each accepted in his trial,

  One the cheerful one the just;

  Both of love and self-denial,

  Both of everlasting trust.

  Living they dispens’d salvation,

  Heav’n-endow’d with grace and pow’r;

  And they dy’d in imitation

  Of their Saviour’s final hour,

  Who, for cruel traitors pleading,

  Triumph’d in his parting breath;

  O’er all miracles preceding

  His inestimable death.

  CHARLES CHURCHILL

  from The Times

  Go where we will, at every time and place,

  Sodom confronts, and stares us in the face;

  They ply in public at our very doors,

  And take the bread from much more honest whores.

  Those who are mean high paramours secure,

  And the rich guilty screen the guilty poor;

  The sin too proud to feel from reason awe,

  And those who practise it too great for law.

  Woman, the pride and happiness of man,

  Without whose soft endearments Natures plan

  Had been a blank, and life not worth a thought;

  Woman, by all the Loves and Graces taught

  With softest arts, and sure, though hidden skill,

  To humanise, and mould us to her will;

  Woman, with more than common grace form’d here,

  With the persuasive language of a tear

  To melt the rugged temper of our isle,

  Or win us to her purpose with a smile;

  Woman, by fate the quickest spur decreed,

  The fairest, best reward of every deed

  Which bears the stamp of honour; at whose name

  Our ancient heroes caught a quicker flame,

  And dared beyond belief, whilst o’er the plain,

  Spurning the carcases of princes slain,

  Confusion proudly strode, whilst Horror blew

  The fatal trump, and Death stalk’d full in view;

  Woman is out of date, a thing thrown by

  As having lost its use: no more the eye,

  Gazes entranced, and could for ever gaze;

  No more the heart, that seat where Love resides,

  Each breath drawn quick and short, in fuller tides

  Life posting through the veins, each pulse on fire,

  And the whole body tingling with desire,

  Pants for those charms, which Virtue might engage

  To break his vow, and thaw the frost of Age,

  Bidding each trembling nerve, each muscle strain,

  And giving pleasure which is almost pain.

  Women are kept for nothing but the breed;

  For pleasure we must have a Ganymede,

  A fine, fresh Hylas, a delicious boy,

  To serve our purposes of beastly joy.

  [293-334]

  GEORGE CRABBE

  from Peter Grimes

  Peter had heard there were in London then, —

  Still have they being! — workhouse-clearing men,

  Who, undisturb’d by feelings just or kind,

  Would parish-boys to needy tradesmen bind:

  They in their want a trifling sum would take,

  And toiling slaves of piteous orphans make.

  Such Peter sought, and when a lad was found,

  The sum was dealt him, and the slave was bound.

  Some few in town observed in Peter’s trap

  A boy, with jacket blue and woollen cap;

  But none inquired how Peter used the rope,

  Or what the bruise, that made the stripling stoop;

  None could the ridges on his back behold,

  None sought him shiv’ring in the winter’s cold;

  None put the question — ‘Peter, dost thou give

  The boy his food? — What, man! the lad must live:

  Consider, Peter, let the child have bread,

  He’ll serve thee better if he’s stroked and fed.’

  None reason’d thus — and some, on hearing cries,

  Said calmly, ‘Grimes is at his exercise.’

  Pinn’d, beaten, old, pinch’d, threaten’d, and abused —

  His efforts punish’d and his food refused, —

  Awake tormented, — soon aroused from sleep, —

  Struck if he wept, and yet compelld to weep,

  The trembling boy dropp’d down and strove to pray,

  Received a blow, and trembling turn’d away,

  Or sobb’d and hid his piteous face; — while he,

  The savage master, grinn’d in horrid glee:

  He’d now the power he ever loved to show,

  A feeling being subject to his blow.

  Thus lived the lad, in hunger, peril, pain,

  His tears despised, his supplications vain:

  Compell’d by fear to lie, by need to steal,

  His bed uneasy and unbless’d his meal,

  For three sad years the boy his tortures bore,

  And then his pains and trials were no more.

  ‘How died he, Peter?’ when the people said,

  He growl’d — ‘I found him lifeless in his bed;’

  Then tried for softer tone, and sigh’d, ‘Poor Sam is dead.’

  Yet murmurs were there, and some questions ask’d, —

  How he was fed, how punish’d, and how task’d?

  Much they suspected, but they little proved,

  And Peter pass’d untroubled and unmoved.

  Another boy with equal ease was found,

  The money granted, and the victim bound;

  And what his fate? — One night it chanced he fell

  From the boat’s mast and perish’d in her well,

  Where fish were living kept, and where the boy

  (So reason’d men) could not himself destroy: —

  ‘Yes! so it was,’ said Peter, ‘in his play,

  (For he was idle both by night and day,)

  He climb’d the main-mast and then fell below;’ —

  Then show’d the corpse and pointed to the blow:

  What said the jury? — they were long in doubt,

  But sturdy Peter faced the matter out:

  So they dismiss’d him, saying at the time,

  ‘Keep fast your hatchway when you’ve boys who climb.’

  This hit the conscience, and he colour’d more

  Than for the closest questions put before.

  Thus all his fears the verdict set aside,

  And at the slave-shop Peter still
applied.

  Then came a boy, of manners soft and mild, —

  Our seamen’s wives with grief beheld the child;

  All thought (the poor themselves) that he was one

  Of gentle blood, some noble sinner’s son,

  Who had, belike, deceived some humble maid,

  Whom he had first seduced and then betray’d: —

  However this, he seem’d a gracious lad,

  In grief submissive and with patience sad.

  Passive he labour’d, till his slender frame

  Bent with his loads, and he at length was lame:

  Strange that a frame so weak could bear so long

  The grossest insult and the foulest wrong;

  But there were causes — in the town they gave

  Fire, food, and comfort, to the gentle slave;

  And though stern Peter, with a cruel hand,

  And knotted rope, enforced the rude command,

  Yet he consider’d what he’d lately felt,

  And his vile blows with selfish pity dealt.

  One day such draughts the cruel fisher made,

  He could not vend them in his borough-trade,

  But sail’d for London-mart: the boy was ill,

  But ever humbled to his master’s will;