Penguin's Poems for Life

by Laura Barber

  More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.

  Comforter, where, where is your comforting?

  Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?

  My cries heave, herds-long; huddle in a main, a chief

  Woe, wórld-sorrow; on an áge-old anvil wince and sing –

  Then lull, then leave off. Fury had shrieked ‘No ling-

  ering! Let me be fell: force I must be brief’.

  O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall

  Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap

  May who ne’er hung there. Nor does long our small

  Durance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep,

  Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all

  Life death does end and each day dies with sleep.

  ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

  Grief

  I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless;

  That only men incredulous of despair,

  Half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air

  Beat upward to God’s throne in loud access

  Of shrieking and reproach. Full desertness,

  In souls as countries, lieth silent-bare

  Under the blanching, vertical eye-glare

  Of the absolute Heavens. Deep-hearted man, express

  Grief for thy Dead in silence like to death –

  Most like a monumental statue set

  In everlasting watch and moveless woe

  Till itself crumble to the dust beneath.

  Touch it; the marble eyelids are not wet:

  If it could weep, it could arise and go.

  IVOR GURNEY

  To His Love

  He’s gone, and all our plans

  Are useless indeed.

  We’ll walk no more on Cotswold

  Where the sheep feed

  Quietly and take no heed.

  His body that was so quick

  Is not as you

  Knew it, on Severn river

  Under the blue

  Driving our small boat through.

  You would not know him now…

  But still he died

  Nobly, so cover him over

  With violets of pride

  Purple from Severn side.

  Cover him, cover him soon!

  And with thick-set

  Masses of memoried flowers –

  Hide that red wet

  Thing I must somehow forget.

  DOUGLAS DUNN

  The Kaleidoscope

  To climb these stairs again, bearing a tray,

  Might be to find you pillowed with your books,

  Your inventories listing gowns and frocks

  As if preparing for a holiday.

  Or, turning from the landing, I might find

  My presence watched through your kaleidoscope,

  A symmetry of husbands, each redesigned

  In lovely forms of foresight, prayer and hope.

  I climb these stairs a dozen times a day

  And, by that open door, wait, looking in

  At where you died. My hands become a tray

  Offering me, my flesh, my soul, my skin.

  Grief wrongs us so. I stand, and wait, and cry

  For the absurd forgiveness, not knowing why.

  EDNA ST VINCENT MILLAY

  Time does not bring relief; you all have lied

  Who told me time would ease me of my pain!

  I miss him in the weeping of the rain;

  I want him at the shrinking of the tide;

  The old snows melt from every mountain-side,

  And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;

  But last year’s bitter loving must remain

  Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.

  There are a hundred places where I fear

  To go, – so with his memory they brim.

  And entering with relief some quiet place

  Where never fell his foot or shone his face

  I say, ‘There is no memory of him here!’

  And so stand stricken, so remembering him.

  WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

  Surprized by joy – impatient as the Wind

  I wished to share the transport – Oh! with whom

  But Thee, long buried in the silent Tomb,

  That spot which no vicissitude can find?

  Love, faithful love recalled thee to my mind –

  But how could I forget thee? – Through what power,

  Even for the least division of an hour,

  Have I been so beguiled as to be blind

  To my most grievous loss? – That thought’s return

  Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore,

  Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn,

  Knowing my heart’s best treasure was no more;

  That neither present time, nor years unborn

  Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.

  THOMAS HARDY

  After a Journey

  Hereto I come to view a voiceless ghost;

  Whither, O whither will its whim now draw me?

  Up the cliff, down, till I’m lonely, lost,

  And the unseen waters’ ejaculations awe me.

  Where you will next be there’s no knowing,

  Facing round about me everywhere,

  With your nut-coloured hair,

  And gray eyes, and rose-flush coming and going.

  Yes: I have re-entered your olden haunts at last;

  Through the years, through the dead scenes I have

  tracked you;

  What have you now found to say of our past –

  Scanned across the dark space wherein I have

  lacked you?

  Summer gave us sweets, but autumn wrought division?

  Things were not lastly as firstly well

  With us twain, you tell?

  But all’s closed now, despite Time’s derision.

  I see what you are doing: you are leading me on

  To the spots we knew when we haunted here

  together,

  The waterfall, above which the mist-bow shone

  At the then fair hour in the then fair weather,

  And the cave just under, with a voice still so hollow

  That it seems to call out to me from forty years ago,

  When you were all aglow,

  And not the thin ghost that I now frailly follow!

  Ignorant of what there is flitting here to see,

  The waked birds preen and the seals flop lazily;

  Soon you will have, Dear, to vanish from me,

  For the stars close their shutters and the dawn whitens

  hazily.

  Trust me, I mind not, though Life lours,

  The bringing me here; nay, bring me here again!

  I am just the same as when

  Our days were a joy, and our paths through flowers.

  ANONYMOUS (15TH CENTURY)

  The Unquiet Grave

  The wind doth blow today, my love,

  And a few small drops of rain;

  I never had but one true-love,

  In cold grave she was lain.

  I’ll do as much for my true-love

  As any young man may;

  I’ll sit and mourn all at her grave

  For a twelvemonth and a day.

  The twelvemonth and a day being up,

  The dead began to speak:

  ‘Oh who sits weeping on my grave,

  And will not let me sleep?’

  ’Tis I, my love, sits on your grave,

  And will not let you sleep;

  For I crave one kiss of your clay-cold lips,

  And that is all I seek.

  ‘You crave one kiss of my clay-cold lips;

  But my breath smells earthy strong;

  If you have one kiss of my clay-cold lips,

  Your time will not be long.

  ‘ ’Tis down in yonder garden green,

  Love, where we use
d to walk,

  The finest flower that ere was seen

  Is withered to a stalk.

  ‘The stalk is withered dry, my love,

  So will our hearts decay;

  So make yourself content, my love,

  Till God calls you away.’

  EMILY BRONTË

  Remembrance

  Cold in the earth – and the deep snow piled above thee,

  Far, far, removed, cold in the dreary grave!

  Have I forgot, my only Love, to love thee,

  Severed at last by Time’s all-severing wave?

  Now, when alone, do my thoughts no longer hover

  Over the mountains, on that northern shore,

  Resting their wings where heath and fern-leaves cover

  Thy noble heart for ever, ever more?

  Cold in the earth – and fifteen wild Decembers,

  From those brown hills, have melted into spring:

  Faithful, indeed, is the spirit that remembers

  After such years of change and suffering!

  Sweet Love of youth, forgive, if I forget thee,

  While the world’s tide is bearing me along;

  Other desires and other hopes beset me,

  Hopes which obscure, but cannot do thee wrong!

  No later light has lightened up my heaven,

  No second morn has ever shone for me;

  All my life’s bliss from thy dear life was given,

  All my life’s bliss is in the grave with thee.

  But, when the days of golden dreams had perished,

  And even Despair was powerless to destroy;

  Then did I learn how existence could be cherished,

  Strengthened, and fed without the aid of joy.

  Then did I check the tears of useless passion –

  Weaned my young soul from yearning after thine;

  Sternly denied its burning wish to hasten

  Down to that tomb already more than mine.

  And, even yet, I dare not let it languish,

  Dare not indulge in memory’s rapturous pain;

  Once drinking deep of that divinest anguish,

  How could I seek the empty world again?

  R. S. THOMAS

  Comparisons

  To all light things

  I compared her; to

  a snowflake, a feather.

  I remember she rested

  at the dance on my

  arm, as a bird

  on its nest lest

  the eggs break, lest

  she lean too heavily

  on our love. Snow

  melts, feathers

  are blown away;

  I have let

  her ashes down

  in me like an anchor.

  EMILY DICKINSON

  After great pain, a formal feeling comes –

  The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs –

  The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,

  And Yesterday, or Centuries before?

  The Feet, mechanical, go round –

  Of Ground, or Air, or Ought –

  A Wooden way

  Regardless grown,

  A Quartz contentment, like a stone –

  This is the Hour of Lead –

  Remembered, if outlived,

  As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow –

  First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go –

  THOM GUNN

  The Reassurance

  About ten days or so

  After we saw you dead

  You came back in a dream.

  I’m all right now you said.

  And it was you, although

  You were fleshed out again:

  You hugged us all round then,

  And gave your welcoming beam.

  How like you to be kind,

  Seeking to reassure.

  And, yes, how like my mind

  To make itself secure.

  ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

  from In Memoriam A. H. H.

  XXVII

  I envy not in any moods

  The captive void of noble rage,

  The linnet born within the cage,

  That never knew the summer woods:

  I envy not the beast that takes

  His license in the field of time,

  Unfettered by the sense of crime,

  To whom a conscience never wakes;

  Nor, what may count itself as blest,

  The heart that never plighted troth

  But stagnates in the weeds of sloth;

  Nor any want-begotten rest.

  I hold it true, whate’er befall;

  I feel it, when I sorrow most;

  ’Tis better to have loved and lost

  Than never to have loved at all.

  WILLIAM JOHNSON CORY

  Heraclitus

  They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead,

  They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to

  shed.

  I wept, as I remembered, how often you and I

  Had tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky.

  And now that thou art lying, my dear old Carian guest,

  A handful of grey ashes, long long ago at rest,

  Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales, awake;

  For Death, he taketh all away, but them he cannot take.

  DYLAN THOMAS

  And death shall have no dominion

  And death shall have no dominion.

  Dead men naked they shall be one

  With the man in the wind and the west moon;

  When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones

  gone,

  They shall have stars at elbow and foot;

  Though they go mad they shall be sane,

  Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;

  Though lovers be lost love shall not;

  And death shall have no dominion.

  And death shall have no dominion.

  Under the windings of the sea

  They lying long shall not die windily;

  Twisting on racks when sinews give way,

  Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;

  Faith in their hands shall snap in two,

  And the unicorn evils run them through;

  Split all ends up they shan’t crack;

  And death shall have no dominion.

  And death shall have no dominion.

  No more may gulls cry at their ears

  Or waves break loud on the seashores;

  Where blew a flower may a flower no more

  Lift its head to the blows of the rain;

  Though they be mad and dead as nails,

  Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;

  Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,

  And death shall have no dominion.

  PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

  from Adonais

  Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep –

  He hath awakened from the dream of life –

  ’Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep

  With phantoms an unprofitable strife,

  And in mad trance, strike with our spirit’s knife

  Invulnerable nothings. – We decay

  Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief

  Convulse us and consume us day by day,

  And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay.

  He has outsoared the shadow of our night;

  Envy and calumny and hate and pain,

  And that unrest which men miscall delight,

  Can touch him not and torture not again;

  From the contagion of the world’s slow stain

  He is secure, and now can never mourn

  A heart grown cold, a head grown gray in vain;

  Nor, when the spirit’s self has ceased to burn,

  With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn.

  ROBERT BROWNING

&nbs
p; My Last Duchess

  Ferrara

  That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,

  Looking as if she were alive. I call

  That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf’s hands

  Worked busily a day, and there she stands.

  Will’t please you sit and look at her? I said

  ‘Frà Pandolf’ by design, for never read

  Strangers like you that pictured countenance,

  The depth and passion of its earnest glance,

  But to myself they turned (since none puts by

  The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)

  And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,

  How such a glance came there; so, not the first

  Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, ’twas not

  Her husband’s presence only, called that spot

  Of joy into the Duchess’ cheek: perhaps

  Frà Pandolf chanced to say ‘Her mantle laps

  Over my lady’s wrist too much,’ or ‘Paint

  Must never hope to reproduce the faint

  Half-flush that dies along her throat’: such stuff

  Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough

  For calling up that spot of joy. She had

  A heart – how shall I say? – too soon made glad,

  Too easily impressed; she liked whate’er

  She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.

  Sir, ’twas all one! My favour at her breast,

  The dropping of the daylight in the West,

  The bough of cherries some officious fool

  Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule

  She rode with round the terrace – all and each

  Would draw from her alike the approving speech,