Penguin’s Poems for Love
Laura Barber is former editorial director for Penguin Classics and now publishes contemporary literature and writes. She also selected and introduced Penguin’s Poems for Life and Penguin’s Poems by Heart.
Penguin᾿s Poems for Love
Selected with a preface by
LAURA BARBER
PENGUIN CLASSICS
an imprint of
PENGUIN BOOKS
PENGUIN CLASSICS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3
(a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland
(a division of Penguin Books Ltd)
Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia
(a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)
Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India
Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand
(a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
www.penguinclassics.com
This selection first published 2009
Selection and editorial material copyright © Laura Barber, 2009
The moral right of the editor has been asserted
The Acknowledgements on pages 349–356 constitute an extension of this copyright page
All rights reserved
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book
ISBN: 978-0-14-193229-3
Contents
Preface
A Note on the Poems
How do I love thee? …
Suddenly
Christina G. Rossetti: ‘I wish I could remember that first day’
Elizabeth Jennings: Light
Simon Barraclough: Los Alamos Mon Amour
John Gower: Pygmaleon, from Confessio Amantis
Sylvia Plath: Love Letter
Sir Arthur Gorges: ‘Her face Her tongue Her wit’
Emily Dickinson: ‘It was a quiet way – ’
John Milton: ‘That day I oft remember, when from sleep/ I first awaked’, from Paradise Lost, Book IV
Hart Crane: Episode of Hands
William Shakespeare: ‘When she first met Mark Antony, she pursed up his heart’, from Antony and Cleopatra, II, ii
Christopher Marlowe: ‘And in the midst a silver altar stood’, from Hero and Leander, Sestiad I
Elizabeth Barrett Browning: ‘First time he kissed me, he but only kissed’, from Sonnets from the Portuguese: XXXVIII
William Barnes: ‘With you first shown to me’
May Theilgaard Watts: Vision
John Donne: The Good Morrow
Jenny Joseph: The sun has burst the sky
Secretly
John Clare: ‘I hid my love when young till I’
Robert Browning: ‘Eyes, calm beside thee (Lady, could’st thou know!)’
William Shakespeare: ‘Say that some lady, as perhaps there is’, from Twelfth Night, II, iv
Carol Ann Duffy: Warming Her Pearls
William Blake: The Sick Rose
Wallace Stevens: Gray Room
Wilfred Owen: Maundy Thursday
Sarah Fyge Egerton: A Song: ‘How pleasant is love’
Nearly
Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze: Dubwise
John Dryden: ‘Calm was the Even, and clear was the sky’, Song, from An Evening’s Love
Thomas Hardy: A Thunderstorm in Town
Connie Bensley: A Friendship
Tentatively
Arthur Hugh Clough: ‘I am in love, meantime, you think; no doubt you would think so’, from Amours de Voyage, Canto II: X
Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton: ‘I do not love thee! – no! I do not love thee!’
Brian Patten: Forgetmeknot
Sir Philip Sidney: ‘Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show’, from Astrophil and Stella: I
Bernard O’Donoghue: Stealing Up
William Shakespeare: ‘But soft! what light through yonder window breaks?’, from Romeo and Juliet, II, ii
Thom Gunn: Jamesian
Jacob Sam-La Rose: Things That Could Happen
George Herbert: Love
Olivia McCannon: Timing
Walt Whitman: Are You the New Person Drawn toward Me?
W. B. Yeats: He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
Alice Oswald: Sonnet
Haplessly
Amy Lowell: The Bungler
Edmund Spenser: ‘My love is like to ice, and I to fire’, from Amoretti: XXX
W. B. Yeats: The Song of Wandering Aengus
Thomas Campion: ‘Thrice toss these oaken ashes in the air’
Thomas Hardy: A Broken Appointment
John Crowe Ransom: Piazza Piece
Stevie Smith: Infelice
Ephelia: To One That Asked Me Why I Loved J.G.
Sir John Suckling: Against Fruition
Robert Browning: Life in a Love
Incurably
Dorothy Parkers: Ymptom Recital
Samuel Daniel: ‘Love is a sickness full of woes’
Anonymous: Dunt Dunt Dunt Pittie Pattie
John Keats: La Belle Dame sans Merci. A Ballad
Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey: ‘Alas, so all things now do hold their peace’
William Shakespeare: ‘My love is as a fever, longing still’, Sonnet 147
D. H. Lawrence: Bei Hennef
Emily Grosholz: On Spadina Avenue
Elizabeth Thomas: Remedia Amoris
Walter Savage Landor: Hearts-Ease
Impatiently
Edmund Waller: Song ‘Go, lovely Rose’
Emily Dickinson: ‘If you were coming in the Fall’
Alfred, Lord Tennyson: Mariana
Christina G. Rossetti: Twilight Night, II
Anne Michaels: Three Weeks
Robert Browning: In Three Days
Robert Graves: Not to Sleep
Elizabeth Bishop: Invitation to Miss Marianne Moore
Moniza Alvi: A Bowl of Warm Air
John Montague: All Legendary Obstacles
Superlatively
William Shakespeare: ‘My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun’, Sonnet 130
Ian Duhig: From the Irish
Ben Jonson: Her Triumph, from A Celebration of Charis, in Ten Lyric Pieces
The King James Bible: ‘My beloved is white and ruddy, the chiefest among ten thousand’, from The Song of Solomon
George Gordon, Lord Byron: She Walks in Beauty Austin Clarke: The Planter’s Daughter
Austin Clarke: The Planter’s Daughter
E. E. Cummings: ‘somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond’
William Shakespeare: ‘The moon shines bright. In such a night as this’, from The Merchant of Venice, V, i
Ogden Nash: Reprise
Persuasively
Maya Angelou: Come. And Be My Baby
John Ke
ats: To Fanny: ‘I cry your mercy, pity, love – ay love!’
Anonymous: Against Platonic Love
Robin Robertson: Trysts
Thomas Carew: ‘I will enjoy thee now, my Celia, come’, from A Rapture
Barnabe Barnes: Would I Were Changed
Robert Herrick: Upon Julia’s Clothes
Anne Stevenson: Sous-entendu
John Donne: Elegy: To His Mistress Going to Bed
Edward Thomas: Will you come?
Passionately
Robert Jones: ‘And is it night? are they thine eyes that shine?’
Robert Browning: Now
Jackie Kay: High Land
George Gordon, Lord Byron: ‘A long, long kiss, a kiss of youth, and love’, from Don Juan, Canto II: CLXXXVI–IX
Emily Dickinson: ‘Come slowly – Eden!’
Hugo Williams: Rhetorical Questions
Jo Shapcott: Muse
Percy Bysshe Shelley: ‘Our breath shall intermix, our bosoms bound’, from Epipsychidion
Thom Gunn: The Bed
Elizabeth Jennings: Passion
Michael Donaghy: Pentecost
W. H. AUDEN: Lullaby: ‘Lay your sleeping head, my love’
Simon Armitage: ‘Let me put it this way’
Gavin Ewart: Creation Myth Haiku
The morning after
Lesleè Newman: Possibly
John Donne: The Sun Rising
Louis Macneice: ‘And love hung still as crystal over the bed’, from Trilogy for X:II
William Shakespeare: ‘Wilt thou be gone? It is not yet near day’, from Romeo and Juliet, III, v
Philip Larkin: Talking in Bed
Liz Lochhead: Morning After
Tennessee Williams: Life Story
William Shakespeare: ‘The expense of spirit in a waste of shame’, Sonnet 129
Elizabeth Bishop: Breakfast Song
Olivia McCannon: Ironing
John Heath-Stubbs: The Unpredicted
Greedily
William Shakespeare: ‘So are you to my thoughts as food to life’, Sonnet 75
Edmund Spenser: ‘Was it a dream, or did I see it plain’, from Amoretti: LXXVII
Robert Herrick: Fresh Cheese and Cream
Edwin Morgan: Strawberries
Helen Dunmore: Wild Strawberries
Christina G. Rossetti: ‘Morning and evening/ Maids heard the goblins cry’, from Goblin Market
John Davies of Hereford: The Author loving these homely meats specially, viz.: Cream, Pancakes, Buttered Pippin-pies (laugh, good people) and Tobacco; writ to that worthy and virtuous gentlewoman, whom he calleth Mistress, as followeth
Gertrude Stein: ‘Kiss my lips. She did’, from Lifting Belly (II)
John Berryman: ‘Filling her compact & delicious body’, from Dream Songs: 4
Paul Durcan: My Belovèd Compares Herself to a Pint of Stout
Truly, madly, deeply
Aphra Behn: Song: ‘O Love! that stronger art than wine’
John Skelton: ‘“Behold,” she sayd, “and se’, from The Tunnyng of Elynour Rummynge
Hugo Williams: Nothing On
Elizabeth Barrett Browning: ‘I think of thee! – my thoughts do twine and bud’, from Sonnets from the Portuguese: XXIX
Dante Gabriel Rossetti: Silent Noon
John Fuller: Valentine
Frank O’Hara: Having a Coke with You
John Milton: from Paradise Lost, Book IV
Thomas Campion: ‘O sweet delight, O more than human bliss’
Adrian Mitchell: Celia Celia
Walt Whitman: When I Heard at the Close of the Day
Wilfred Owen: From My Diary, July 1914
Thomas Hood: ‘It was not in the winter’
Roger McGough: ‘they say the sun shone now and again’, from Summer with Monika: I
Sir Philip Sidney: ‘When to my deadly pleasure’
A. D. Hope: A Blason
William Shakespeare: ‘’Tis strange, my Theseus, that these lovers speak of’, from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, V, i
Thomas Middleton: ‘Love is like a lamb, and love is like a lion’
Piet Hein: What Love Is Like
From a distance
Robert Burns: A Red, Red Rose
E. B. White: Natural History
Edwin Morgan: One Cigarette
John Clare: To Mary
Anonymous: ‘My love is faren in a land’
Anonymous: ‘Westron wind, when will thou blow’
Edmund Spenser: ‘Lacking my love I go from place to place’, from Amoretti: LXXVIII
Matthew Arnold: To Marguerite – Continued
Andrew Marvell: The Definition of Love
Micheal O’Siadhail: Between
John Donne: Air and Angels
Louis MacNeice: Coda
Carol Ann Duffy: Words, Wide Night
Philip Larkin: Broadcast
Amy Lowell: The Letter
Chinua Achebe: Love Song (for Anna)
George MacDonald: The Shortest and Sweetest of Songs
Frances Cornford: The Avenue
With a vow
Elizabeth Garrett: Epithalamium
Sir Edwin Arnold: Destiny
Brian Patten: January Gladsong
W. H. Auden: ‘Carry her over the water’
Francis Quarles: ‘Even like two little bank-dividing brooks’
Alice Oswald: Wedding
Anonymous: ‘I will give my love an apple without e’er a core’
Lemn Sissay: Invisible Kisses
James Fenton: Hinterhof
Joshua Sylvester: ‘Were I as base as is the lowly plain’
E. E. Cummings: ‘i carry your heart with me(i carry it in’
George Chapman: Bridal Song, from The Masque of the Middle Temple and Lincoln’s Inn
Michael Donaghy: The Present
Kate Clanchy: Patagonia
Happily ever after
C. K. Williams Love: Beginnings
Muriel Rukeyser: Looking at Each Other
Ted Hughes: Bride and Groom Lie Hidden for Three Days
William Blake: ‘When a Man has Married a Wife’
John Milton: ‘Thus Eve with count’nance blithe her story told’, from Paradise Lost, Book IX
Alden Nowlan: Parlour Game
William Barnes: Jeäne
Seamus Heaney: Scaffolding
U. A. Fanthorpe: Atlas
Phyllis McGinley: The 5:32
Sharon Olds: True Love
Richard Wilbur: For C.
John Keats: ‘Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art – ’
Treacherously
Thomas Moore: On Taking a Wife
E. E. Cummings: ‘may i feel said he’
Isobel Dixon: You, Me and the Orang-utan
George Gordon, Lord Byron: ‘’Twas midnight – Donna Julia was in bed’, from Don Juan, Canto I: CXXXVI–XLIV
Mary Coleridge: Jealousy
Edward Arlington Robinson: Firelight
Adam O’Riordan: Cheat
Lavinia Greenlaw: Tryst
Julia Copus: In Defence of Adultery
Brutally
Emily Dickinson: ‘He fumbles at your Soul’
George Meredith: ‘He felt the wild beast in him betweenwhiles’, from Modern Love: IX
Amy Lowell: Carrefour
William Shakespeare: ‘The honey fee of parting tendered is’, from Venus and Adonis
Alexander Pope: ‘But when to mischief mortals bend their will’, from The Rape of the Lock, Canto III
W. B. Yeats: Leda and the Swan
D. H. Lawrence: Love on the Farm
Ted Hughes: Lovesong
Isobel Dixon: Truce
Bitterly
Thomas Moore: To ——
Gavin Ewart: Ending
Rosemary Tonks: Orpheus in Soho
Babette Deutsch: Solitude
Percy Bysshe Shelley: ‘When the lamp is shattered’
Thomas
Hardy: Neutral Tones
Charlotte Mew: Rooms
Sylvia Plath: The Other Two
George Meredith: ‘By this he knew she wept with waking eyes’, from Modern Love: I
Don Paterson: The Wreck
Stephen Crane: ‘In the desert’
Finally
Emily Dickinson: ‘My life closed twice before its close – ’
Thomas Hardy: In the Vaulted Way
Katherine Mansfield: The Meeting
Jenny Joseph: Dawn walkers
Henry King: The Surrender
John Donne: The Expiration
Elizabeth Bishop: One Art
James Merrill: A Renewal
Alice Meynell: Renouncement
Brian Patten: I Have Changed the Numbers on My Watch
Tim Liardet: Needle on Zero
Edward Thomas: ‘Go now’
Judith Rodriguez: In-flight Note
Sophie Hannah: The End of Love
Forsaken
Matthew Sweeney: The Bridal Suite
Lady Augusta Gregory: Donal Og (translated from the Irish, anonymous)
Sir Walter Ralegh: ‘As you came from the holy land’
William Soutar: The Tryst
Fleur Adcock: Incident
Anonymous: The Water is Wide
A. E. Housman: ‘He would not stay for me; and who can wonder?’
Jackie Kay: Her
Regretfully
Edna St Vincent Millay: ‘When I too long have looked upon your face’
Matthew Sweeney: Cacti
Dora Sigerson Shorter: ‘I want to talk to thee of many things’
John Clare: How Can I Forget
Linton Kwesi Johnson: Hurricane Blues
T. S. Eliot: La Figlia Che Piange
William Empson: Villanelle
Thomas Hardy: At Castle Boterel
Vikram Seth: Progress Report
Gwen Harwood: Anniversary
Duncan Forbes: Recension Day
Fatally
Sir Henry Wotton: Upon the Death of Sir Albert Morton’s Wife
Oscar Wilde: ‘Yet each man kills the thing he loves‘, from The Ballad of Reading Gaol
William Shakespeare: ‘It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul’, from Othello, V, ii
Robert Browning: Porphyria’s Lover
Alfred Noyes: The Highwayman
Oliver Goldsmith: ‘When lovely woman stoops to folly’, from The Vicar of Wakefield
Alfred, Lord Tennyson: The Lady of Shalott
Vicki Feaver: Lily pond