Penguin's Poems for Love

by Laura Barber

  Flash raucous squawking by my swivelling head

  While squirrels sine-wave past over the dead

  Oak-leaves, and not miss you – although I may

  Admit that near the telescope yesterday

  By a small bushcovered gully I blundered on

  Five golden fox-cubs playing in the sun

  And wished you had been there to see them play;

  But that I only mention by the way.

  GWEN HARWOOD

  Anniversary

  So the light falls, and so it fell

  on branches leaved with flocking birds.

  Light stole a city’s weight to swell

  the coloured life of stone. Your words

  hung weightless in my ear: Remember me.

  All words except those words were drowned

  in the fresh babbling rush of spring.

  In summer’s dream-filled light one sound

  echoed through all the whispering

  galleries of green: Remember me.

  Rods of light point home the flocking

  starlings to wintry trees, and turn

  stone into golden ochre, locking

  the orbit of my pain. I learn

  the weight of light and stone. Remember me.

  DUNCAN FORBES

  Recension Day

  Unburn the boat, rebuild the bridge,

  Reconsecrate the sacrilege,

  Unspill the milk, decry the tears,

  Turn back the clock, relive the years,

  Replace the smoke inside the fire,

  Unite fulfilment with desire,

  Undo the done, gainsay the said,

  Revitalise the buried dead,

  Revoke the penalty and clause,

  Reconstitute unwritten laws,

  Repair the heart, untie the tongue,

  Change faithless old to hopeful young,

  Inure the body to disease

  And help me to forget you please.

  Fatally

  SIR HENRY WOTTON

  Upon the Death of Sir Albert Morton’s Wife

  He first deceased: She for a little tried

  To live without Him: liked it not, and died.

  OSCAR WILDE

  from The Ballad of Reading Gaol

  Yet each man kills the thing he loves,

  By each let this be heard,

  Some do it with a bitter look,

  Some with a flattering word,

  The coward does it with a kiss,

  The brave man with a sword!

  Some kill their love when they are young,

  And some when they are old;

  Some strangle with the hands of Lust,

  Some with the hands of Gold:

  The kindest use a knife, because

  The dead so soon grow cold.

  Some love too little, some too long,

  Some sell, and others buy;

  Some do the deed with many tears,

  And some without a sigh:

  For each man kills the thing he loves.

  Yet each man does not die.

  WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

  from Othello, V, ii

  Desdemona in her bed. Enter OTHELLO with a light.

  OTHELLO:

  It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul:

  Let me not name it to you, you chaste stars!

  It is the cause. Yet I’ll not shed her blood,

  Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow,

  And smooth as monumental alabaster:

  Yet she must die, else she’ll betray more men.

  Put out the light, and then put out the light:

  If I quench thee, thou flaming minister,

  I can again thy former light restore,

  Should I repent me; but once put out thy light,

  Thou cunning’st pattern of excelling nature,

  I know not where is that Promethean heat

  That can thy light relume. When I have plucked thy rose,

  I cannot give it vital growth again,

  It needs must wither. I’ll smell it on the tree. He kisses her.

  O balmy breath, that dost almost persuade

  Justice to break her sword! One more, one more.

  Be thus when thou art dead and I will kill thee,

  And love thee after. One more, and this the last.

  So sweet was ne’er so fatal. I must weep.

  But they are cruel tears: this sorrow’s heavenly –

  It strikes where it doth love.

  ROBERT BROWNING

  Porphyria’s Lover

  The rain set early in tonight,

  The sullen wind was soon awake,

  It tore the elm-tops down for spite,

  And did its worst to vex the lake:

  I listened with heart fit to break.

  When glided in Porphyria; straight

  She shut the cold out and the storm,

  And kneeled and made the cheerless grate

  Blaze up, and all the cottage warm;

  Which done, she rose, and from her form

  Withdrew the dripping cloak and shawl,

  And laid her soiled gloves by, untied

  Her hat and let the damp hair fall,

  And, last, she sat down by my side

  And called me. When no voice replied,

  She put my arm about her waist,

  And made her smooth white shoulder bare,

  And all her yellow hair displaced,

  And, stooping, made my cheek lie there,

  And spread, o’er all, her yellow hair,

  Murmuring how she loved me – she

  Too weak, for all her heart’s endeavour,

  To set its struggling passion free

  From pride, and vainer ties dissever,

  And give herself to me for ever.

  But passion sometimes would prevail,

  Nor could tonight’s gay feast restrain

  A sudden thought of one so pale

  For love of her, and all in vain:

  So, she was come through wind and rain.

  Be sure I looked up at her eyes

  Happy and proud; at last I knew

  Porphyria worshipped me; surprise

  Made my heart swell, and still it grew

  While I debated what to do.

  That moment she was mine, mine, fair,

  Perfectly pure and good: I found

  A thing to do, and all her hair

  In one long yellow string I wound

  Three times her little throat around,

  And strangled her. No pain felt she;

  I am quite sure she felt no pain.

  As a shut bud that holds a bee,

  I warily oped her lids: again

  Laughed the blue eyes without a stain.

  And I untightened next the tress

  About her neck; her cheek once more

  Blushed bright beneath my burning kiss:

  I propped her head up as before,

  Only, this time my shoulder bore

  Her head, which droops upon it still:

  The smiling rosy little head,

  So glad it has its utmost will,

  That all it scorned at once is fled,

  And I, its love, am gained instead!

  Porphyria’s love: she guessed not how

  Her darling one wish would be heard.

  And thus we sit together now,

  And all night long we have not stirred,

  And yet God has not said a word!

  ALFRED NOYES

  The Highwayman

  I

  The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,

  The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,

  The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,

  And the highwayman came riding

  Riding – riding –

  The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.

  He’d a French cocked-hat on his forehead, a bunch of lace at his chin,

 
A coat of claret velvet, and breeches of brown doe-skin;

  They fitted with never a wrinkle: his boots were up to the thigh!

  And he rode with a jewelled twinkle,

  His pistol butts a-twinkle,

  His rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jewelled sky.

  Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the dark inn-yard,

  And he tapped with his whip on the shutters, but all was locked and barred;

  He whistled a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there

  But the landlord’s black-eyed daughter,

  Bess, the landlord’s daughter,

  Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

  And dark in the old inn-yard a stable-wicket creaked

  Where Tim the ostler listened; his face was white and peaked;

  His eyes were hollows of madness, his hair like mouldy hay,

  But he loved the landlord’s daughter,

  The landlord’s red-lipped daughter;

  Dumb as a dog he listened, and he heard the robber say –

  ‘One kiss, my bonny sweetheart, I’m after a prize to-night,

  But I shall be back with the yellow gold before the morning light;

  Yet, if they press me sharply, and harry me through the day,

  Then look for me by moonlight,

  Watch for me by moonlight,

  I’ll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way.’

  He rose upright in the stirrups; he scarce could reach her hand,

  But she loosened her hair i’ the casement! His face burnt like a brand

  As the black cascade of perfume came tumbling over his breast;

  And he kissed its waves in the moonlight,

  (Oh, sweet black waves in the moonlight!)

  Then he tugged at his rein in the moonlight, and galloped away to the west.

  II

  He did not come in the dawning; he did not come at noon;

  And out o’ the tawny sunset, before the rise o’ the moon,

  When the road was a gipsy’s ribbon, looping the purple moor,

  A red-coat troop came marching –

  Marching – marching –

  King George’s men came marching, up to the old inn-door.

  They said no word to the landlord, they drank his ale instead,

  But they gagged his daughter and bound her to the foot of her narrow bed;

  Two of them knelt at her casement, with muskets at their side!

  There was death at every window;

  And hell at one dark window;

  For Bess could see, through her casement, the road that he would ride.

  They had tied her up to attention, with many a sniggering jest;

  They had bound a musket beside her, with the barrel beneath her breast!

  ‘Now keep good watch!’ and they kissed her.

  She heard the dead man say –

  Look for me by moonlight;

  Watch for me by moonlight;

  I’ll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way!

  She twisted her hands behind her; but all the knots held good!

  She writhed her hands till her fingers were wet with sweat or blood!

  They stretched and strained in the darkness, and the hours crawled by like years,

  Till, now, on the stroke of midnight,

  Cold, on the stroke of midnight,

  The tip of one finger touched it! The trigger at least was hers!

  The tip of one finger touched it; she strove no more for the rest!

  Up, she stood to attention, with the barrel beneath her breast,

  She would not risk their hearing; she would not strive again;

  For the road lay bare in the moonlight;

  Blank and bare in the moonlight;

  And the blood of her veins in the moonlight throbbed to her love’s refrain.

  Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot! Had they heard it? The horse-hoofs ringing clear;

  Tlot-tlot, tlot-tlot, in the distance? Where they deaf that they did not hear?

  Down the ribbon of moonlight, over the brow of the hill,

  The highwayman came riding,

  Riding, riding!

  The red-coats looked to their priming! She stood up, straight and still!

  Tlot-tlot, in the frosty silence! tlot-tlot, in the echoing night!

  Nearer he came and nearer! Her face was like a light!

  Her eyes grew wide for a moment; she drew one last deep breath,

  Then her finger moved in the moonlight,

  Her musket shattered the moonlight,

  Shattered her breast in the moonlight and warned him – with her death.

  He turned; he spurred to the westward; he did not know who stood

  Bowed, with her head o’er the musket, drenched with her own red blood!

  Not till the dawn he heard it, and slowly blanched to hear

  How Bess, the landlord’s daughter,

  The landlord’s black-eyed daughter,

  Had watched for her love in the moonlight, and died in the darkness there.

  Back, he spurred like a madman, shrieking a curse to the sky,

  With the white road smoking behind him and his rapier brandished high!

  Blood-red were his spurs i’ the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat;

  When they shot him down on the highway,

  Down like a dog on the highway,

  And he lay in his blood on the highway, with the bunch of lace at his throat.

  And still of a winter’s night, they say, when the wind is in the trees,

  When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,

  When the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,

  A highwayman comes riding –

  Riding – riding –

  A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door.

  Over the cobbles he clatters and clangs in the dark inn-yard

  And he taps with his whip on the shutters, but all is locked and barred;

  He whistles a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there

  But the landlord’s black-eyed daughter,

  Bess, the landlord’s daughter,

  Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

  OLIVER GOLDSMITH

  from The Vicar of Wakefield

  When lovely woman stoops to folly,

  And finds too late that men betray,

  What charm can sooth her melancholy,

  What art can wash her guilt away?

  The only art her guilt to cover,

  To hide her shame from every eye,

  To give repentance to her lover,

  And wring his bosom, is – to die.

  ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

  The Lady of Shalott

  PART I

  On either side the river lie

  Long fields of barley and of rye,

  That clothe the wold and meet the sky;

  And thro’ the field the road runs by

  To many-tower’d Camelot;

  And up and down the people go,

  Gazing where the lilies blow

  Round an island there below,

  The island of Shalott.

  Willows whiten, aspens quiver,

  Little breezes dusk and shiver

  Thro’ the wave that runs for ever

  By the island in the river

  Flowing down to Camelot.

  Four gray walls, and four gray towers,

  Overlook a space of flowers,

  And the silent isle imbowers

  The Lady of Shalott.

  By the margin, willow-veil’d,

  Slide the heavy barges trail’d

  By slow horses; and unhail’d

  The shallop flitteth silken-sail’d

  Skimming down to Camelot;

  But who hath seen her wave her hand?

  Or at the casement seen her stand?

  Or is she known in all the land,

  The
Lady of Shalott?

  Only reapers, reaping early

  In among the bearded barley,

  Hear a song that echoes cheerly

  From the river winding clearly,

  Down to tower’d Camelot:

  And by the moon the reaper weary,

  Piling sheaves in uplands airy,

  Listening, whispers ‘ ’Tis the fairy

  Lady of Shalott.’

  PART II

  There she weaves by night and day

  A magic web with colours gay.

  She has heard a whisper say,

  A curse is on her if she stay

  To look down to Camelot.

  She knows not what the curse may be,

  And so she weaveth steadily,

  And little other care hath she,

  The Lady of Shalott.

  And moving thro’ a mirror clear

  That hangs before her all the year,

  Shadows of the world appear.

  There she sees the highway near

  Winding down to Camelot:

  There the river eddy whirls,

  And there the surly village-churls,

  And the red cloaks of market girls,

  Pass onward from Shalott.

  Sometimes a troop of damsels glad,

  An abbot on an ambling pad,

  Sometimes a curly shepherd-lad

  Or long-hair’d page in crimson clad,

  Goes by to tower’d Camelot;

  And sometimes thro’ the mirror blue

  The knights come riding two and two:

  She hath no loyal knight and true,

  The Lady of Shalott.

  But in her web she still delights

  To weave the mirror’s magic sights,

  For often thro’ the silent nights

  A funeral, with plumes and lights

  And music, went to Camelot:

  Or when the moon was overhead,

  Came two young lovers lately wed;