Poetry

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Poetry

Index of Poems

To Jane, Percy Bysshe Shelley

To Celia, Ben Johnson

Sweet, Can I Sing, Arthur Symons

My Love's A Match, Alfred P. Graves

If thou must love me, Elizabeth Barrett Browning

September, Ted Hughes

Sonnet XLIII, Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Meeting at Night, Robert Browning

The First Day, Christina Rossetti

Sonnet 18, William Shakespeare

Love's Philosophy, Percy Bysshe Shelley

One day I wrote her name upon the strand, Edmund Spenser

She walks in beauty, Lord Byron

To Jane

The keen stars were twinkling,

And the fair moon rising among them,

Dear Jane.

The guitar was tinkling,

But the notes were not sweet till you sung them

Again.

As the moon's soft splendour

O'er the faint cold starlight of Heaven

Is thrown,

So your voice most tender

To the strings without soul had then given

It's own.

The stars will awaken,

Though the moon sleep a full hour later,

Tonight;

No leaf will be shaken

Whilst the dews of your melody scatter

Delight.

Though the sound overpowers,

Sing again, with your dear voice revealing

A tone

Of some world far from ours,

Where music and moonlight and feeling

Are one.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

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To Celia

Drink to me only with thine eyes,

And I will pledge with mine;

Or leave a kiss but in the cup

And I'll not look for wine.

The thirst that from the soul doth rise

Doth ask a drink divine;

But might I of Jove's nectar sup,

I would not change for thine.

I set thee late a rosy wreath,

not so much honouring thee

As giving it a hope that there

It could not withered be;

But thou thereon didst only breathe

And sent'st it back to me;

Since when it grows, and smells, I swear

Not of itself but thee!

Ben Johnson

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Sweet, Can I Sing

Sweet, can I sing you the song of your kisses?

How soft is this one, how subtle this is,

How fluttering swift as a bird's kiss that is,

As a bird that taps at a leafy lattice;

How this one clings and how that uncloses

From bud to flowers in the way of roses;

And this through laughter and that through weeping

Swims to the brim where Love lies sleeping;

And this in a point I snatch, and capture

That in the ecstasy of rapture,

When the odorous red-rose petals part

That my lips may find their way to the heart

Of the rose of the world, your lips, my rose.

But no song knows

The way of my heart to the heart of my rose.

Arthur Symons

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My Love's A Match

My Love's a match in beauty

For every flower that blows,

Her little ear's a lilly,

Her velvet cheek a rose;

Her locks are gilly gowans

Hang golden to her knee.

If I were King of Ireland,

My Queen she'd surely be.

Her eyes are fond forget-me-nots,

And no such snow is seen

Upon the heaving hawthorn bush

As crests her bodice green.

The thrushes when she's talking

Sit listening on the tree.

If I were King of Ireland,

My Queen she'd surely be.

Alfred P. Graves

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If thou must love me

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, Beloved, 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.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

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September

We sit late, watching the dark slowly unfold:

No clock counts this.

When kisses are repeated and the arms hold

There is no telling where time is.

It is midsummer: the leaves hang big and still:

Behind the eye a star,

Under the silk of the wrist a sea, tell

Time is nowhere.

We stand; leaves have not timed the summer.

No clock now needs

Tell we have only what we remember:

Minutes uproaring with our heads

Like an unfortunate King's and his Queen's

When the senseless mob rules;

And quietly the trees casting their crowns

Into the pools.

Ted Hughes

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Sonnet XLIII

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

my soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.

I love thee to the level of every day's

Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.

I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;

I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.

I love thee with the passion put to use

In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

With my lost saints, - I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life! - and, if God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death.

Sonnets from the Portuguese

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

(Robert Browning had nicknamed his wife his "little portuguese")

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Meeting at Night

The grey sea and the long black land;

And the yellow half-moon large and low;

And the startled little waves that leap

In fiery ringlets from their sleep,

As I gain the cove with pushing prow,

And quench its speed i' the slushy sand.

Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;

Three fields to cross till a farm appears;

A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch

And blue spurt of a lighted match,

And a voice less loud, through its joys and fears,

Than the two hearts beating each to each!

Robert Browning

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The First Day

I wish I could remember the first day,

First hour, first moment of your meeting me;

If bright or dim the season, it might be

Summer or winter for aught I can say.

So unrecorded did it slip away,

So blind was I to see and to foresee,

So dull to mark the budding of my tree

That would not blossom yet for many a May.

If only I could recollect it! Such

A day of days! I let it come and go

As traceless as a thaw of bygone snow.

It seemed to mean so little, meant so much!

If only now I could recall that touch,

First touch of hand in hand! - Did one but know!

Christina Rossetti

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Sonnet 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou are more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer's lease hath all too short a date:

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimmed;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose pssession of that fair thou owest,

Nor shall death brag thou wanderest in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou growest;

So long as men can breath, or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

William Shakespeare

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Love's Philosophy

The fountains mingle with the river,

And the rivers with the ocean,

The winds of Heaven mix for ever

With a sweet emotion;

Nothing in the world is single:

All things by a law divine

In one spirit meet and mingle.

Why not I with thine?

See the mountains kiss high Heaven

And the waves clasp one another;

No sister flower would be forgiven

If it disdained its brother;

And the sunlight clasps the earth

And the moonbeams kiss the sea;

What is all this sweet work worth

If thou kiss not me?

Percy Bysshe Shelley

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One day I wrote her name upon the strand

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, 'thou do'st in vain assay,

A mortal thing so to immortalize,

For I myself 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 eternize,

And in the heavens write your glorious name,

Where, whenas death shall all the world subdue,

Our love shall live, and later life renew.'

Edmund Spenser

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She walks in beauty

She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

And all that's best of dark and bright

Meet in her aspect and her eyes:

Thus mellowed to that tender light

Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,

Had half impaired the nameless grace

Which waves in every raven tress,

Or softly lightens o'er her face;

Where thoughts serenely sweet express

How pure, how dear their dwelling place.

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,

So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,

The smiles that win, the tints that glow,

But tell the days in goodness spent,

A mind at peace with all below,

A heart whose love is innocent!

Lord Byron

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