A breath of secret, sacred stuff.
I feel her goodness breathe, my Lady Christ.
Her treasured stories mourn her on their shelf,
In spirit-air, that watchful poltergeist.
JOHN MILTON
Methought I saw my late espousèd saint
Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave,
Whom Jove’s great son to her glad husband gave.
Rescued from death by force though pale and faint.
Mine as whom washed from spot of childbed taint.
Purification in the old Law did save,
And such, as yet once more I trust to have
Full sight of her in Heaven without restraint,
Came vested all in white, pure as her mind:
Her face was veiled, yet to my fancied sight,
Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person shined
So clear, as in no face with more delight.
But O as to embrace me she inclined
I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
from Antony and Cleopatra, V, ii
CLEOPATRA:
I dreamt there was an emperor Antony.
O, such another sleep, that I might see
But such another man!
DOLABELLA: If it might please ye –
CLEOPATRA:
His face was as the heavens, and therein stuck
A sun and moon, which kept their course and lighted
The little O o’th’earth.
DOLABELLA: Most sovereign creature –
CLEOPATRA:
His legs bestrid the ocean; his reared arm
Crested the world; his voice was propertied
As all the tunèd spheres, and that to friends;
But when he meant to quail and shake the orb,
He was as rattling thunder. For his bounty,
There was no winter in’t; an Antony it was
That grew the more by reaping. His delights
Were dolphin-like; they showed his back above
The element they lived in. In his livery
Walked crowns and crownets; realms and islands were
As plates dropped from his pocket.
DOLABELLA: Cleopatra –
CLEOPATRA:
Think you there was or might be such a man
As this I dreamt of?
DOLABELLA: Gentle madam, no.
CLEOPATRA:
You lie, up to the hearing of the gods.
But if there be nor ever were one such,
It’s past the size of dreaming. Nature wants stuff
To vie strange forms with fancy, yet t’imagine
An Antony were nature’s piece ’gainst fancy,
Condemning shadows quite.
WILLIAM BARNES
The Wife A-Lost
Since I noo mwore do zee your feäce,
Up steäirs or down below,
I’ll zit me in the lwonesome pleäce,
Where flat-bough’d beech do grow;
Below the beeches’ bough, my love,
Where you did never come,
An’ I don’t look to meet ye now,
As I do look at hwome.
Since you noo mwore be at my zide,
In walks in zummer het,
I’ll goo alwone where mist do ride,
Drough trees a-drippen wet;
Below the raïn-wet bough, my love,
Where you did never come,
An’ I don’t grieve to miss ye now,
As I do grieve at hwome.
Since now bezide my dinner-bwoard
Your vaïce do never sound,
I’ll eat the bit I can avvword,
A-yield upon the ground;
Below the darksome bough, my love,
Where you did never dine,
An’ I don’t grieve to miss ye now,
Since I do miss your vaïce an’ feäce
In praÿer at eventide,
I’ll praÿ wi’ woone sad vaïce vor greäce
To goo where you do bide;
Above the tree an’ bough, my love,
Where you be gone avore,
An’ be a-waïten vor me now,
To come vor evermwore.
EDGAR ALLAN POE
Annabel Lee
It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee:
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than love –
I and my Annabel Lee –
With a love that the wingèd seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.
And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.
The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me –
Yes! – that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.
But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we –
Of many far wiser than we –
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee:
For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling – my darling – my life and my bride,
In her sepulchre there by the sea –
In her tomb by the sounding sea.
HENRY KING
from The Exequy
So close the ground, and ’bout her shade
Black curtains draw; my bride is laid.
Sleep on, my love, in thy cold bed
Never to be disquieted!
My last goodnight! Thou wilt not wake
Till I thy fate shall overtake:
Till age, or grief, or sickness must
Marry my body to that dust
It so much loves; and fill the room
My heart keeps empty in thy tomb.
Stay for me there; I will not fail
To meet thee in that hollow vale.
And think not much of my delay;
I am already on the way,
And follow thee with all the speed
Desire can make, or sorrows breed.
Each minute is a short degree,
And ev’ry hour a step towards thee.
At night when I betake to rest,
Next morn I rise nearer my west
Of life, almost by eight hours’ sail,
Than when sleep breathed his drowsy gale.
Thus from the sun my bottom steers,
And my day’s compass downward bears:
Nor labour I to stem the tide
Through which to thee I swiftly glide.
Thou like the van first took’st the field,
And gotten hast the victory
In thus adventuring to die
Before me, whose more years might crave
A just precedence in the grave.
But hark! My pulse like a s
oft drum
Beats my approach, tells thee I come;
And slow howe’er my marches be,
I shall at last sit down by thee.
The thought of this bids me go on,
And wait my dissolution
With hope and comfort. Dear (forgive
The crime) I am content to live
Divided, with but half a heart,
Till we shall meet and never part.
Eternally
MARGARET ATWOOD
Sunset II
Sunset, now that we’re finally in it
is not what we thought.
Did you expect this violet black
soft edge to outer space, fragile as blown ash
and shuddering like oil, or the reddish
orange that flows into
your lungs and through your fingers?
The waves smooth mouthpink light
over your eyes, fold after fold.
This is the sun you breathe in,
pale blue. Did you
expect it to be this warm?
One more goodbye,
sentimental as they all are.
The far west recedes from us
like a mauve postcard of itself
and dissolves into the sea.
Now there’s a moon,
an irony. We walk
north towards no home,
joined at the hand.
I’ll love you forever,
I can’t stop time.
This is you on my skin somewhere
in the form of sand.
EDMUND SPENSER
from Amoretti
LXXV
One day I wrote her name upon the strand,
but came the waves and washed it away;
again I wrote it with a second hand,
but came the tide, and made my pains his prey.
Vain man, said she, that dost in vain assay
a mortal thing so to immortalize
for I my self shall like to this decay,
and eek my name be wiped out likewise.
Not so, (quoth I) let baser things devise
to die in dust, but you shall live by fame:
my verse your virtues rare shall eternise,
and in the heavens write your glorious name:
Where, whenas death shall all the world subdue,
Our love shall live, and later life renew.
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
from Sonnets from the Portuguese
XIV
If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love’s sake only. Do not say
‘I love her for her smile… her look… her way
Of speaking gently,… for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day’ –
For these things in themselves, Belovèd, may
Be changed, or change for thee, – and love, so wrought
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity’s wiping my cheeks dry, –
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love’s sake, that evermore
Thou may’st love on, through love’s eternity.
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
If I were loved, as I desire to be,
What is there in this great sphere of earth,
And range of evil between death and birth,
That I should fear, – if I were loved by thee?
All the inner, all the outer world of pain
Clear love would pierce and cleave, if thou wert mine,
As I have heard that, somewhere in the main,
Fresh-water springs come up through bitter brine.
’Twere joy, not fear, clasped hand in hand with thee,
To wait for death – mute – careless of all ills,
Apart upon a mountain, though the surge
Of some new deluge from a thousand hills
Flung leagues of roaring foam into the gorge
Below us, as far on as eye could see.
EMILY DICKINSON
I have no Life but this –
To lead it here –
Nor any Death – but lest
Dispelled from there –
Nor tie to Earths to come,
Nor Action new
Except through this Extent
The love of you.
LEONARD COHEN
Dance Me to the End of Love
Dance me to your beauty
with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic
till I’m gathered safely in
Lift me like an olive branch
and be my homeward dove
Dance me to the end of love
Let me see your beauty
when the witnesses are gone
Let me feel you moving
like they do in Babylon
Show me slowly what I only
know the limits of
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the wedding now
dance me on and on
Dance me very tenderly and
dance me very long
We’re both of us beneath our love
we’re both of us above
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the children
who are asking to be born
Dance me through the curtains
that our kisses have outworn
Raise a tent of shelter now
though every thread is torn
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to your beauty
with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic
till I’m gathered safely in
Touch me with your naked hand
touch me with your glove
Dance me to the end of love
Acknowledgements
I owe my thanks and the promised chocolate heart to the following people for sharing their favourite love poems with me and also, in many cases, for their kind support and practical help: Claire Allfree, Ellah Allfrey, Ronald Asprey, Jo Baker, Diane Bourke, Tricia Bovis, Stephen Brown, Chloe Campbell, Isobel Dixon, Edward Docx, Amber Dowell, Sasha Dugdale, Ben Faccini, William Fiennes, Jamie Glazebrook, Anouchka Grose, Catherine Hall, Judith Heale, Denis Hirson, Robbie Hudson, Kevin Jackson, Clive James, Reina James, Philip Gwyn Jones, Kapka Kassabova, Paul Kingsnorth, Ian Knapp, Sarah Knight, Deborah Landau, Hilary Laurie, Molly Mackey, Anne Marsella, Hannah Marshall, Olivia McCannon, Richard Meier, Juliette Mitchell, Victoria Moore, Parashkev Nachev, Adriana Natcheva, Raj Patel, Lindsay Paterson, Alex Peake-Tomkinson, Michal Shavit, Anna Stein, Andrea Stuart, Hugh Warwick, Louis Watt, Joanna Weinberg, and Thomas Wright.
And at Penguin, thanks to Adam Freudenheim, Rachel Love, Elisabeth Merriman, Coralie Bickford-Smith, and Kristina Blagojevitch.
I dedicate this volume to my parents John and Susan Barber, and to my sister Florence, gratefully and always.
CHINUA ACHEBE: ‘Love Song (for Anna)’ from Collected Poems (Carcanet, 2005). Copyright © 1971, 1973, 2004, 2005, Chinua Achebe. Reprinted by permission of the Wylie Agency. All rights reserved.
FLEUR ADCOCK: ‘Incident’ from Poems 1960–2000 (Bloodaxe Books, 2000), reprinted by permission of the publisher.
MONIZA ALVI: ‘A Bowl of Warm Air’ from Split World: Poems 1990–2005 (Bloodaxe Books, 2008), reprinted by permission of the publisher.
MAYA ANGELOU: ‘Come. And Be My Baby’ from Oh Pray My Wings Are Gonna Fit Me Well (Random House, Inc, 1975). Copyright © 1975 by Maya Angelou. Reprinted by permission of the publisher. Also in The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou (Virago, 1994), reprinted by permission of the publisher.
SIMON ARMITAGE: ‘Let me put it this way’ from Book of Matches (Faber and Faber, 2001), reprinted by permission of the publisher.
MARGARET
ATWOOD: ‘Sunset II’ from Eating Fire: Selected Poetry 1965–95 (Virago, 1998). Copyright © Margaret Atwood, 1997. Reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown Group Ltd, London, on behalf of Margaret Atwood.
W. H. AUDEN: ‘Carry her over the water’ and ‘Lullaby’ from W. H. Auden: Collected Shorter Poems (Faber and Faber, 1966). Copyright © W. H. Auden, 1966. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
SIMON BARRACLOUGH: ‘Los Alamos Mon Amour’ from Los Alamos Mon Amour (Salt, 2008). Copyright © Simon Barraclough, 2008. Reprinted by permission of the author.
CONNIE BENSLEY: ‘A Friendship’ from Central Reservations: New and Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, 1990), reprinted by permission of the publisher.
JOHN BERRYMAN: Song 4 from 77 Dream Songs by John Berryman (Faber and Faber, 1964). Copyright © 1959, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968. 1969 the Estate of John Berryman. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
ELIZABETH BISHOP: ‘Invitation to Miss Marianne Moore’ and ‘One Art’ from The Complete Poems 1927–1979 by Elizabeth Bishop. Copyright © 1979, 1983 by Alice Helen Methfessel. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC; ‘Breakfast Song’ from Edgar Allan Poe & the Juke-Box, edited and annotated by Alice Quinn (Farrar, Straus & Giroux and Carcanet, 2006). Copyright © 2006 by Alice Helen Methfessel. Reprinted by permission of the publishers.
JEAN ‘BINTA’ BREEZE: ’Dubwise’ from Riddym Ravings & Other Poems, (Race Today Pubs, 1988) reprinted by permission of 57 Productions on behalf of the author.
KATE CLANCHY: ‘Patagonia’ from Slattern (Picador, 2001). Copyright © Kate Clanchy, 2001. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
JOHN CLARE: ‘Song – I hid my love when young till I’, ‘To Mary’ and ‘How Can I Forget’ by John Clare, reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown Group Ltd, London, on behalf of Eric Robinson. Copyright © Eric Robinson, 1984.
AUSTIN CLARKE: ‘The Planter’s Daughter’ from Collected Poems, edited by R. Dardis Clarke (Carcanet and The Bridge Press, 2008), reprinted by permission of R. Dardis Clarke, 17 Oscar Square, Dublin 8.