Gay Love Poetry
Page 17
Strato of Sardis 93, 94
Symonds, John Addington 32
Tapscott, Stephen 65
Theocritus 3
Tennyson, Alfred, Lord 205
Treby, Ivor C. 61
Vaughan, R.M. 79
Verlaine, Paul 219
Virgil 6,10,199
Whitman, Walt 30, 31, 44,102, 142, 209
Wilde, Oscar 35,193
Wilkins, Paul 69,157
Woods, Gregory 39,124,160
Wordsworth, William 190
Wyles, Peter 129,170
INDEX OF FIRST LINES
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i. cause when he laughs at my jokes ... 79
A bugler boy from barrack (it is over the hill 103
A goatboy pissing 39
A score of hopefuls, then we fitted 168
A scruffy beer drinkers’ club, a basement 223
A womans face, with Natures own hand painted 99
Absence, the noble truce 175
An amorous shepherd lov’d a charming boy 3
Anyone could succumb to those eyes 132
As I go down the street 45
Blest is the man who loves and after early play 87
Butch. You are no poet, you are not 149
By eagle’s eye, the pubescence on the boy 38
Can you feel, as your fingers dance across 172
Charms, that call down the moon from out her sphere 100
Chin raised 59
City of orgies, walks and joys 44
Close to the top 147
Come live with me, and be my love 19
Come, gentle Ganymede, and play with me 17
Dark house, by which once more I stand 205
David Jones lacks motivation 165
Dead drunk by nine — this used to be enough 234
Dear man, my love goes out in waves 145
Down the steep rock with hurried feet and fast 35
Farewell, thou art too dear for my possessing 139
Fierce Volscens foams with rage, and gazing round 199
Frost on the bare ribs of ploughed earth 170
Go where we will, at every time and place 185
Good shepherd, tell this youth what ’tis to love 21
Guilts dirty hands, memory’s kitchen sink ... 151
He must be hardly twenty-two. And yet 47
He, deeply groaning — ‘to this cureless grief’ 198
Here and again 124
His father was a baker, he the youngest son 154
Hours continuing long, sore and heavy-hearted 142
How cold it is to stand on the street corner no
How it was. Pat Stack, lanky, loth to wear 125
How, Hyllus, dare you today deny 91
I commend to you myself and my love 89
I did not think that I would care 56
I feed a flame which so torments me 180
I have a secret love. My heart is burning 229
I kissed you while you were playing, sweet Juventius 90
I lose myself on a working-class block 51
I love you, as the sum of all those forms 43
I met a boy among the market-stalls 94
I must have wanton poets, pleasant wits 97
I saw his round mouths crimson deepen as it fell 220
I sit in the Charles Hallé 171
I walked to the end of that street 130
I was following a man 63
I’ve had my eye on you 57
If I should be allowed to go as far as kissing 89
If music and sweet poetry agree 141
If there were dancers, they were not dancing. If there was a tree 160
If we’d been straight, coming out 77
In paths untrodden 30
In that I loved you, Love, I worshipped you 143
In twos and threes, they have not far to roam 50
In vain to me the smiling mornings shine 204
It was a cowboy story as he told it 108
It was a day like yesterday 230
It was the smallest moment I’ve known 126
Its over, love. Look at me pushing fifty now 111
It’s safe, you say, nobody walks 76
It’s so stretchy today 162
Let Sporus tremble — ‘What? that Thing of silk 181
Let the boy try along this bayonet-blade 194
Loneliness of city Christmas Eves 54
Love a Woman! y’are an Ass 101
Make him into a stained glass window 129
Meeting without meaning to, crossing the marble floors 62
Much as I like a twelve year old’s cock 93
‘My father is deceased; come Gaveston 97
My love is of a birth as rare 178
My tired darlings, with what swift 69
My true love hath my heart, and I have his 13
No mortal object did these eyes behold 190
Now take your turns, ye muses, to rehearse 10
Now the winds are all composure 182
O break my heart, quoth he, O break and die 201
O none but gods have power their love to hide 14
Observe! I turn the key in this new door 107
One queen squeals as the other retreats 65
Peter had heard there were in London then 187
Quiet seeps in 73
Really there is little enough I shall care now to remember 146
Rereading Cavafy I suddenly remembered 144
Saw someone yesterday who looked like you did 224
Scarce had the morning star hid from the light 22
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? 203
Since there’s no help, come, let us kiss and part 177
That night, when storms were spent and tranquil heaven 32
The breath of balm from foreign branches pressed 92
The day was gold early and I went out under the wind 78
The forward violet thus did I chide 20
The Greeks were only half correct 81
The moment the light goes out 166
The month Ivan’s and Misha’s tank whined 157
The Puerto Rican gogo boy 71
The rush hour in Naples 52
These are the letters which Endymion wrote 193
They met, as most these days do 48
This Edward in the April of his age 95
This is the poem I have to write 113
Three rompers run together, hand in hand 106
Thus like the rage of fire the combat burns 197
To nothing fitter can I thee compare 137
To this effect, Achilles, have I mov’d you 140
Two beds, one stripped and one on which I lie 37
Two rows of foolish faces blent 105
We came to Hundred River through a slow October 228
We never knew what became of him, that was so curious 221
We two boys together clinging 102
We watch the gathering sea through sepia dusk 156
When I heard at the close of the day ... 31
When in disgrace with Fortune and mens eyes 138
When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d 209
When we two parted 191
With your fair eyes a charming light I see 135
You know what the day feels like 169
‘You must write me a poem some day ... 163
You were not in my arms when you died 219
you zipped up too fast when the train came in 61
You’re getting hairy legs, Nicander 88
Young Corydon, the unhappy shepherd swain 6
Your illness was bad enough. The frantic 232
Gay love poetry has enriched and enlivened our culture for more than two thousand years. This wide-ranging collection includes a generous selection of work stretching from classical times — Homer, Virgil, Catullus, Martial — to contemporary writers such as Edwin Morgan, Thom Gunn and Gregory Woods.
The English Renaissance is richly represented, both by the major figu
res of Marlowe and Shakespeare and by less well-known but intriguing poets such as Barnfield and Drayton. The nineteenth century provides vital poems by Tennyson, Whitman and Wilde. Essential European texts, from Michelangelo to Verlaine, are given in translation.
Many poems, by both new and established poets, appear here for the first time in book form.
Gay Love Poetry is arranged thematically, whether focusing on the pastoral and elegiac, on different aspects of the gay life or on poems which may not have been conceived as gay love poetry by their authors but which have certainly been perceived as such by their readers.
The result is above all a collection of marvellous poems, one which makes a compelling case for the central place of gay writing in our literary culture.
Cover design Uncle Bob.
Cover photography Mark Pennington