‘I am half sick of shadows,’ said
The Lady of Shalott.
PART III
A bow-shot from her bower-eaves,
He rode between the barley-sheaves,
The sun came dazzling thro’ the leaves,
And flamed upon the brazen greaves
Of bold Sir Lancelot.
A red-cross knight for ever kneel’d
To a lady in his shield,
That sparkled on the yellow field,
Beside remote Shalott.
The gemmy bridle glitter’d free,
Like to some branch of stars we see
Hung in the golden Galaxy.
The bridle bells rang merrily
As he rode down to Camelot:
And from his blazon’d baldric slung
A mighty silver bugle hung,
And as he rode his armour rung,
Beside remote Shalott.
All in the blue unclouded weather
Thick-jewell’d shone the saddle-leather,
The helmet and the helmet-feather
Burn’d like one burning flame together,
As he rode down to Camelot.
As often thro’ the purple night,
Below the starry clusters bright,
Some bearded meteor, trailing light,
Moves over still Shalott.
His broad clear brow in sunlight glow’d;
On burnish’d hooves his war-horse trode;
From underneath his helmet flow’d
His coal-black curls as on he rode,
As he rode down to Camelot.
From the bank and from the river
He flash’d into the crystal mirror,
‘Tirra lirra,’ by the river
Sang Sir Lancelot.
She left the web, she left the loom,
She made three paces thro’ the room,
She saw the water-lily bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She look’d down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror crack’d from side to side;
‘The curse is come upon me,’ cried
The Lady of Shalott.
PART IV
In the stormy east-wind straining,
The pale yellow woods were waning,
The broad stream in his banks complaining,
Heavily the low sky raining
Over tower’d Camelot;
Down she came and found a boat
Beneath a willow left afloat,
And round about the prow she wrote
The Lady of Shalott.
And down the river’s dim expanse
Like some bold seër in a trance,
Seeing all his own mischance –
With a glassy countenance
Did she look to Camelot.
And at the closing of the day
She loosed the chain, and down she lay;
The broad stream bore her far away,
The Lady of Shalott.
Lying, robed in snowy white
That loosely flew to left and right –
The leaves upon her falling light –
Thro’ the noises of the night
She floated down to Camelot:
And as the boat-head wound along
The willowy hills and fields among,
They heard her singing her last song,
The Lady of Shalott.
Heard a carol, mournful, holy,
Chanted loudly, chanted lowly,
Till her blood was frozen slowly,
And her eyes were darken’d wholly,
Turn’d to tower’d Camelot.
For ere she reach’d upon the tide
The first house by the water-side,
Singing in her song she died,
The Lady of Shalott.
Under tower and balcony,
By garden-wall and gallery,
A gleaming shape she floated by,
Dead-pale between the houses high,
Silent into Camelot.
Out upon the wharfs they came,
Knight and burgher, lord and dame,
And round the prow they read her name,
The Lady of Shalott.
Who is this? and what is here?
And in the lighted palace near
Died the sound of royal cheer;
And they cross’d themselves for fear,
All the knights at Camelot:
But Lancelot mused a little space;
He said, ‘She has a lovely face;
God in his mercy lend her grace,
The Lady of Shalott.’
VICKI FEAVER
Lily pond
Thinking of new ways to kill you
and bring you back from the dead,
I try drowning you in the lily pond –
holding your head down
until every bubble of breath
is squeezed from your lungs
and the flat leaves and spiky flowers
float over you like a wreath.
I sit on the stones until I’m numb,
until, among reflections of sky,
water-buttercups, spears of iris,
your face rises to the surface –
a face that was always puffy
and pale, so curiously unchanged.
A wind rocks the waxy flowers, curls
the edges of the leaves. Blue dragonflies
appear and vanish like ghosts.
I part the mats of yellow weed
and drag you to the bank, covering
your green algae-stained corpse
with a white sheet. Then, I lift the edge
and climb underneath –
thumping your chest,
breathing into your mouth.
ANNE FINCH, COUNTESS OF WINCHILSEA
La Passion Vaincue
On the banks of the Severn, a desperate maid
(Whom some shepherd, neglecting his vows, had betrayed),
Stood resolving to banish all sense of the pain,
And pursue, thro’ her death, a revenge on the swain.
‘Since the gods and my passion at once he defies;
Since his vanity lives, while my character dies;
No more’, did she say, ‘will I trifle with fate,
But commit to the waves both my love and my hate.’
And now to comply with that furious desire,
Just ready to plunge, and alone to expire,
Some reflections on death and its terrors untried,
Some scorn for the shepherd, some flashings of pride
At length pulled her back, and she cried, ‘Why this strife,
Since the swains are so many, and I’ve but one life?’
Indifferently
WENDY COPE
Loss
The day he moved out was terrible –
That evening she went through hell.
His absence wasn’t a problem
But the corkscrew had gone as well.
SIR THOMAS WYATT
Farewell Love, and all thy laws for ever!
Thy baited hooks shall tangle me no more:
Senec and Plato call me from thy lore,
To perfect wealth my wit for to endeavour.
In blind error when I did persever,
Thy sharp repulse, that pricketh aye so sore,
Hath taught me to set in trifles no store,
And ’scape forth, since liberty is liever.
Therefore farewell! Go trouble younger hearts,
And in me claim no more authority;
With idle youth go use thy property,
And thereon spend thy many brittle darts:
For hitherto though I have lost all my time,
Me lusteth no longer rotten boughs to climb.
EDITH NESBIT
Villeggiature
My window, framed in pear-tree bloom,
White-curtained shone, and softly lighted:
So, by the pear-tree, to my room
Your ghost last night climbed uninvited.
Your solid self, long leagues away,
Deep in dull books, had hardly missed me;
And yet you found this Romeo’s way,
And through the blossom climbed and kissed me.
I watched the still and dewy lawn,
The pear-tree boughs hung white above you;
I listened to you till the dawn,
And half forgot I did not love you.
Oh, dear! what pretty things you said,
What pearls of song you threaded for me!
I did not – till your ghost had fled –
Remember how you always bore me!
HENRY KING
The Double Rock
Since thou hast view’d some Gorgon, and art grown
A solid stone:
To bring again to softness thy hard heart
Is past my art.
Ice may relent to water in a thaw;
But stone made flesh Love’s Chemistry ne’re saw.
Therefore by thinking on thy hardness, I
Will petrify;
And so within our double Quarries’ Womb,
Dig our Love’s Tomb.
Thus strangely will our difference agree;
And, with our selves, amaze the world, to see
How both Revenge and Sympathy consent
To make two Rocks each others Monument.
A. E. HOUSMAN
from A Shropshire Lad
XVIII
Oh, when I was in love with you,
Then I was clean and brave,
And miles around the wonder grew
How well did I behave.
And now the fancy passes by,
And nothing will remain,
And miles around they’ll say that I
Am quite myself again.
GEOFFREY CHAUCER
from Merciles Beaute
III [ESCAPE]
Sin I fro Love escaped am so fat,
I never thenk to ben in his prison lene;
Sin I am free, I counte him not a bene.
He may answere, and seye this or that;
I do no fors, I speke right as I mene.
Sin I fro Love escaped am so fat,
I never thenk to ben in his prison lene.
Love hath my name ystrike out of his sclat,
And he is strike out of my bokes clene
For ever-mo; ther is non other mene.
Sin I fro Love escaped am so fat,
I never thenk to ben in his prison lene;
Sin I am free, I counte him not a bene.
STEPHEN DUNN
Each from Different Heights
That time I thought I was in love
and calmly said so
was not much different from the time
I was truly in love
and slept poorly and spoke out loud
to the wall
and discovered the hidden genius
of my hands.
And the times I felt less in love,
less than someone,
were, to be honest, not so different
either.
Each was ridiculous in its own way
and each was tender, yes,
sometimes even the false is tender.
I am astounded
by the various kisses we’re capable of.
Each from different heights
diminished, which is simply the law.
And the big bruise
from the longer fall looked perfectly white
in a few years.
That astounded me most of all.
CHARLOTTE MEW
I So Liked Spring
I so liked Spring last year
Because you were here; –
The thrushes too –
Because it was these you so liked to hear –
I so liked you –
This year’s a different thing, –
I’ll not think of you –
But I’ll like Spring because it is simply Spring
As the thrushes do.
DEREK WALCOTT
Love after Love
The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
After death
ELAINE FEINSTEIN
Hands
We first recognised each other as if we were siblings,
and when we held hands your touch
made me stupidly happy.
Hold my hand, you said in the hospital.
You had big hands, strong hands, gentle
caressing the head of a child.
Hold my hand, you said. I feel
I won’t die while you are here.
You took my hand on our first aeroplane
and in opera houses, or watching
a video you wanted me to share.
Hold my hand, you said. I’ll fall asleep
and won’t even know you’re not there.
R. S. THOMAS
A Marriage
We met
under a shower
of bird-notes.
Fifty years passed,
love’s moment
in a world in
servitude to time.
She was young;
I kissed with my eyes
closed and opened
them on her wrinkles.
‘Come,’ said death,
choosing her as his
partner for
the last dance. And she,
who in life
had done everything
with a bird’s grace,
opened her bill now
for the shedding
of one sigh no
heavier than a feather.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory –
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.
Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the belovèd’s bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.
WILLIAM MORRIS
Summer Dawn
Pray but one prayer for me ’twixt thy closed lips,
Think but one thought of me up in the stars.
The summer night waneth, the morning light slips,
Faint and grey ’twixt the leaves of the aspen, betwixt the
cloud-bars,
That are patiently waiting there for the dawn:
Patient and colourless, though Heaven’s gold
Waits to float through them along with the sun.
Far out in the meadows, above the young corn,
The heavy elms wait, and restless and cold
The uneasy wind rises; the roses are dun;
Through the long twilight they pray for the dawn,
Round the lone house in the midst of the corn.
Speak but one word to me over the corn,
Over the tender, bow’d locks of the corn.
THOMAS HARDY
The Voice
Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,
Saying that now you are not as you were
When you had changed from the one who w
as all to me,
But as at first, when our day was fair.
Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then,
Standing as when I drew near to the town
Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then,
Even to the original air-blue gown!
Or is it only the breeze, in its listlessness
Travelling across the wet mead to me here,
You being ever dissolved to wan wistlessness,
Heard no more again far or near?
Thus I; faltering forward,
Leaves around me falling,
Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward,
And the woman calling.
DOUGLAS DUNN
Reincarnations
The kitten that befriends me at its gate
Purrs, rubs against me, until I say goodbye,
Stroking its coat, and asking ‘Why? Why? Why?’
For now I know the shame of being late
Too late. She waits for me at home
Tonight, in the house-shadows. And I must mourn
Until Equator crawls to Capricorn
Or murder in the sun melts down
The Arctic and Antarctica. When bees collide
Against my study’s windowpane, I let them in.
She nurtures dignity and pride;
She waters in my eye. She rustles in my study’s palm;
She is the flower on the geranium.
Our little wooden train runs by itself
Along the windowsill, each puff-puff-puff