Penguin's Poems for Love

by Laura Barber

  While fish in streams, or birds delight in air,

  Or in a coach and six the British Fair,

  As long as Atalantis shall be read,

  Or the small pillow grace a Lady’s bed,

  While visits shall be paid on solemn days,

  When num’rous wax-lights in bright order blaze,

  While nymphs take treats, or assignations give,

  So long my honour, name, and praise shall live!

  What Time would spare, from steel receives its date,

  And monuments, like men, submit to fate!

  Steel could the labour of the Gods destroy,

  And strike to dust th’ imperial tow’rs of Troy;

  Steel could the works of mortal pride confound,

  And hew triumphal arches to the ground.

  What wonder then, fair nymph! thy hairs should feel

  The conqu’ring force of unresisted steel?

  W. B. YEATS

  Leda and the Swan

  A sudden blow: the great wings beating still

  Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed

  By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,

  He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

  How can those terrified vague fingers push

  The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?

  And how can body, laid in that white rush,

  But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

  A shudder in the loins engenders there

  The broken wall, the burning roof and tower

  And Agamemnon dead.

  Being so caught up,

  So mastered by the brute blood of the air,

  Did she put on his knowledge with his power

  Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

  D. H. LAWRENCE

  Love on the Farm

  What large, dark hands are those at the window

  Grasping in the golden light

  Which weaves its way through the evening wind

  At my heart’s delight?

  Ah, only the leaves! But in the west

  I see a redness suddenly come

  Into the evening’s anxious breast –

  ’Tis the wound of love goes home!

  The woodbine creeps abroad

  Calling low to her lover:

  The sun-lit flirt who all the day

  Has poised above her lips in play

  And stolen kisses, shallow and gay

  Of pollen, now has gone away –

  She woos the moth with her sweet, low word:

  And when above her his moth-wings hover

  Then her bright breast she will uncover

  And yield her honey-drop to her lover.

  Into the yellow, evening glow

  Saunters a man from the farm below;

  Leans, and looks in at the low-built shed

  Where the swallow has hung her marriage bed.

  The bird lies warm against the wall.

  She glances quick her startled eyes

  Towards him, then she turns away

  Her small head, making warm display

  Of red upon the throat. Her terrors sway

  Her out of the nest’s warm, busy ball,

  Whose plaintive cry is heard as she flies

  In one blue stoop from out the sties

  Into the twilight’s empty hall.

  Oh, water-hen, beside the rushes

  Hide your quaintly scarlet blushes,

  Still your quick tail, lie still as dead,

  Till the distance folds over his ominous tread!

  The rabbit presses back her ears,

  Turns back her liquid, anguished eyes

  And crouches low; then with wild spring

  Spurts from the terror of his oncoming;

  To be choked back, the wire ring

  Her frantic effort throttling:

  Piteous brown ball of quivering fears!

  Ah, soon in his large, hard hands she dies,

  And swings all loose from the swing of his walk!

  Yet calm and kindly are his eyes

  And ready to open in brown surprise

  Should I not answer to his talk

  Or should he my tears surmise.

  I hear his hand on the latch, and rise from my chair

  Watching the door open; he flashes bare

  His strong teeth in a smile, and flashes his eyes

  In a smile like triumph upon me; then careless-wise

  He flings the rabbit soft on the table board

  And comes towards me: ah! the uplifted sword

  Of his hand against my bosom! and oh, the broad

  Blade of his glance that asks me to applaud

  His coming! With his hand he turns my face to him

  And caresses me with his fingers that still smell grim

  Of the rabbit’s fur! God, I am caught in a snare!

  I know not what fine wire is round my throat;

  I only know I let him finger there

  My pulse of life, and let him nose like a stoat

  Who sniffs with joy before he drinks the blood.

  And down his mouth comes to my mouth! and down

  His bright dark eyes come over me, like a hood

  Upon my mind! his lips meet mine, and a flood

  Of sweet fire sweeps across me, so I drown

  Against him, die, and find death good.

  TED HUGHES

  Lovesong

  He loved her and she loved him

  His kisses sucked out her whole past and future or tried to

  He had no other appetite

  She bit him she gnawed him she sucked

  She wanted him complete inside her

  Safe and sure forever and ever

  Their little cries fluttered into the curtains

  Her eyes wanted nothing to get away

  Her looks nailed down his hands his wrists his elbows

  He gripped her hard so that life

  Should not drag her from that moment

  He wanted all future to cease

  He wanted to topple with his arms round her

  Off that moment’s brink and into nothing

  Or everlasting or whatever there was

  Her embrace was an immense press

  To print him into her bones

  His smiles were the garrets of a fairy palace

  Where the real world would never come

  Her smiles were spider bites

  So he would lie still till she felt hungry

  His words were occupying armies

  Her laughs were an assassin’s attempts

  His looks were bullets daggers of revenge

  Her glances were ghosts in the corner with horrible secrets

  His whispers were whips and jackboots

  Her kisses were lawyers steadily writing

  His caresses were the last hooks of a castaway

  Her love-tricks were the grinding of locks

  And their deep cries crawled over the floors

  Like an animal dragging a great trap

  His promises were the surgeon’s gag

  Her promises took the top off his skull

  She would get a brooch made of it

  His vows pulled out all her sinews

  He showed her how to make a love-knot

  Her vows put his eyes in formalin

  At the back of her secret drawer

  Their screams stuck in the wall

  Their heads fell apart into sleep like the two halves

  Of a lopped melon, but love is hard to stop

  In their entwined sleep they exchanged arms and legs

  In their dreams their brains took each other hostage

  In the morning they wore each other’s face

  ISOBEL DIXON

  Truce

  You bear the hatchet.

  I’ll bury my heart.

  Bitterly

  THOMAS MOORE

  To ——

  When I loved you, I ca
n’t but allow

  I had many an exquisite minute;

  But the scorn that I feel for you now

  Hath even more luxury in it!

  Thus, whether we’re on or we’re off,

  Some witchery seems to await you;

  To love you is pleasant enough,

  And, oh! ’tis delicious to hate you!

  GAVIN EWART

  Ending

  The love we thought would never stop

  now cools like a congealing chop.

  The kisses that were hot as curry

  are bird-pecks taken in a hurry.

  The hands that held electric charges

  now lie inert as four moored barges.

  The feet that ran to meet a date

  are running slow and running late.

  The eyes that shone and seldom shut

  are victims of a power cut.

  The parts that then transmitted joy

  are now reserved and cold and coy.

  Romance, expected once to stay,

  has left a note saying GONE AWAY.

  ROSEMARY TONKS

  Orpheus in Soho

  His search is desperate!

  And the little night-shops of the Underworld

  With their kiosks… they know it,

  The little bars as full of dust as a stale cake,

  None of these places would exist without Orpheus

  And how well they know it.

  … when the word goes ahead to the next city,

  An underworld is hastily constructed,

  With bitch-clubs, with cellars and passages,

  So that he can go on searching, desperately!

  As the brim of the world is lit,

  And breath pours softly over the Earth,

  And as Heaven moves ahead to the next city

  With deep airs, and with lights and rains,

  He plunges into Hades, for his search is desperate!

  And there is so little risk… down there,

  That is the benefit of searching frenziedly

  Among the dust-shops and blind-alleys

  … there is so little risk of finding her

  In Europe’s old blue Kasbah, and he knows it.

  BABETTE DEUTSCH

  Solitude

  There is the loneliness of peopled places:

  Streets roaring with their human flood; the crowd

  That fills bright rooms with billowing sounds and faces,

  Like foreign music, overshrill and loud.

  There is the loneliness of one who stands

  Fronting the waste under the cold sea-light,

  A wisp of flesh against the endless sands,

  Like a lost gull in solitary flight.

  Single is all up-rising and down-lying;

  Struggle or fear or silence none may share;

  Each is alone in bearing and in dying;

  Conquest is uncompanioned as despair.

  Yet I have known no loneliness like this,

  Locked in your arms and bent beneath your kiss.

  PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

  When the lamp is shattered

  The light in the dust lies dead –

  When the cloud is scattered

  The rainbow’s glory is shed.

  When the lute is broken,

  Sweet tones are remembered not;

  When the lips have spoken,

  Loved accents are soon forgot.

  As music and splendour

  Survive not the lamp and the lute,

  The heart’s echoes render

  No song when the spirit is mute:–

  No song but sad dirges,

  Like the wind through a ruined cell,

  Or the mournful surges

  That ring the dead seaman’s knell.

  When hearts have once mingled

  Love first leaves the well-built nest;

  The weak one is singled

  To endure what it once possessed.

  O Love! who bewailest

  The frailty of all things here,

  Why choose you the frailest

  For your cradle, your home, and your bier?

  Its passions will rock thee

  As the storms rock the ravens on high;

  Bright reason will mock thee,

  Like the sun from a wintry sky.

  From thy nest every rafter

  Will rot, and thine eagle home

  Leave thee naked to laughter,

  When leaves fall and cold winds come.

  THOMAS HARDY

  Neutral Tones

  We stood by a pond that winter day,

  And the sun was white, as though chidden of God,

  And a few leaves lay on the starving sod;

  – They had fallen from an ash, and were gray.

  Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove

  Over tedious riddles of years ago;

  And some words played between us to and fro

  On which lost the more by our love.

  The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing

  Alive enough to have strength to die;

  And a grin of bitterness swept thereby

  Like an ominous bird a-wing…

  Since then, keen lessons that love deceives,

  And wrings with wrong, have shaped to me

  Your face, and the God-curst sun, and a tree,

  And a pond edged with grayish leaves.

  CHARLOTTE MEW

  Rooms

  I remember rooms that have had their part

  In the steady slowing down of the heart;

  The room in Paris, the room at Geneva,

  The little damp room with the seaweed smell

  And that ceaseless maddening sound of the tide –

  Rooms where for good or for ill, things died:

  But there is the room where we two lie dead

  Though every morning we seem to wake, and might just as well seem to sleep again

  As we shall some day in the other dustier quieter bed

  Out there – in the sun – in the rain.

  SYLVIA PLATH

  The Other Two

  All summer we moved in a villa brimful of echoes,

  Cool as the pearled interior of a conch.

  Bells, hooves, of the high-stepping black goats woke us.

  Around our bed the baronial furniture

  Foundered through levels of light seagreen and strange.

  Not one leaf wrinkled in the clearing air.

  We dreamed how we were perfect, and we were.

  Against bare, whitewashed walls, the furniture

  Anchored itself, griffin-legged and darkly grained.

  Two of us in a place meant for ten more –

  Our footsteps multiplied in the shadowy chambers,

  Our voices fathomed a profounder sound:

  The walnut banquet table, the twelve chairs

  Mirrored the intricate gestures of two others.

  Heavy as statuary, shapes not ours

  Performed a dumbshow in the polished wood,

  That cabinet without windows or doors:

  He lifts an arm to bring her close, but she

  Shies from his touch: his is an iron mood.

  Seeing her freeze, he turns his face away.

  They poise and grieve as in some old tragedy.

  Moon-blanched and implacable, he and she

  Would not be eased, released. Our each example

  Of tenderness dove through their purgatory

  Like a planet, a stone, swallowed in a great darkness,

  Leaving no sparky track, setting up no ripple.

  Nightly we left them in their desert place.

  Lights out, they dogged us, sleepless and envious:

  We dreamed their arguments, their stricken voices.

  We might embrace, but those two never did,

  Come, so unlike us, to a stiff impasse,

  Burdened in such a way we seemed the lighter –

  Ourselves the haunters, and they, flesh and
blood;

  As if, above love’s ruinage, we were

  The heaven those two dreamed of, in despair.

  GEORGE MEREDITH

  from Modern Love

  I

  By this he knew she wept with waking eyes:

  That, at his hand’s light quiver by her head,

  The strange low sobs that shook their common bed,

  Were called into her with a sharp surprise,

  And strangled mute, like little gaping snakes,

  Dreadfully venomous to him. She lay

  Stone-still, and the long darkness flowed away

  With muffled pulses. Then, as midnight makes

  Her giant heart of Memory and Tears

  Drink the pale drug of silence, and so beat

  Sleep’s heavy measure, they from head to feet

  Were moveless, looking through their dead black years,

  By vain regret scrawled over the blank wall.

  Like sculptured effigies they might be seen

  Upon their marriage-tomb, the sword between;

  Each wishing for the sword that severs all.

  DON PATERSON

  The Wreck

  But what lovers we were, what lovers,

  even when it was all over –

  the deadweight, bull-black wines we swung

  towards each other rang and rang

  like bells of blood, our own great hearts.

  We slung the drunk boat out of port

  and watched our unreal sober life

  unmoor, a continent of grief;

  the candlelight strange on our faces

  like the tiny silent blazes

  and coruscations of its wars.