Waubonsee Community College

A book of love poetry, edited with an introduction by Jon Stallworthy

eng

index present

non fiction

A book of love poetry

13947691

edited with an introduction by Jon Stallworthy

Overview: From the civilization of the Lower Nile to that of the Lower Hudson, more poets have written more convincingly, more poignantly about love than about any other subject. Jon Stallworthy has here selected some of the most moving, funny, shameless, and erotic love poems in the English language. Representing the work of more than 190 poets, from Sappho to Byron and Browning, from Rossetti to Wordsworth and E.E. Cummings, he offers a startling collection of love poetry down through the ages. Arranged thematically, beginning with the first drawings of young love and ending with the "long look back" of the aged, and revealing love in all its different aspects and perversities, this anthology demonstrates vividly man's changeless responses to the changing seasons of the heart

Introduction -- Commission / Ezra Pound -- Intimations: -- Sisters / Roy Campbell -- Milkmaid / Laurie Lee -- Milkmaid's epithalamium / Thomas Randolph -- Brown penny / W B Yeats -- Myfanwy / Sir John Betjeman -- She walked unaware / Patrick MacDonogh -- Two rural sisters / Charles Cotton -- Wishes to his supposed mistress / Richard Crashaw -- Penal law / Austin Clarke -- Symptoms of love / Robert Graves -- Declarations: -- Go, ill-sped book, and whisper to her or / John Berryman -- First love / John Clare -- First day / Christina Rossetti -- Sonnet xliii, from the Portuguese: How do I love thee? Let me count the ways / Elizabeth Barret Browning -- Zong: O Jenny, don't sobby! vor I shall be true / William Barnes -- Song: O whistle, and I'll come to ye, my lad / Robert Burns -- Sally in our alley / Henry Carey -- Going the rounds: a sort of love poem / Anthony Hecht -- Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? / William Shakespeare -- One day I wrote her name upon the strand / Edmund Spenser -- Not marble nor the gilded monuments? / Archibald MacLeish -- Drinking song / W B Yeats -- To Celia / Ben Jonson -- To Helen / Edgar Allan Poe -- She walks in beauty / Lord Byron -- Elizabeth of Bohemia / Sir Henry Wotton -- Cherry-ripe / Thomas Campion -- To Cloris / Sir Charles Sedley -- My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun / William Shakespeare -- from Merciless beauty / Geoffrey Chaucer -- Ode: at her fair hands how have I grace entreated / Walter Davison -- I cry your mercy-pity-love! -aye, love! / John Keats -- Iambicum Trimetrum / Edmund Spenser -- Vobiscum est Iope / Thomas Campion -- I loved you; even now I may confess / Alexander Pushkin -- Love without hope / Robert Graves -- To- / Percy Bysshe Shelley -- That time of year thou may'st in me behold / William Shakespeare -- Dedication to my wife / T S Eliot -- Persuasions: -- To the virgins, to make much of time / Robert Herrick -- Love's emblems / John Fletcher -- Of beauty / Sir Richard Fanshawe -- Corinna in Vendome / Pierre de Ronsard -- Go, lovely Rose / Edmund Waller -- Feste's song from Twelfth night / William Shakespeare -- Ruth / Thomas Hood -- Love's philosophy / Percy Bysshe Shelley -- To his coy mistress / Andrew Marvell -- Argument / Thomas Moore -- Flea / John Donne -- Written in a lady's prayer book / John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester -- Passionate shepherd to his love / Christopher Marlowe -- Her reply / Sir Walter Ralegh -- Come, live with me and be my love / Cecil Day Lewis -- For X / Louis MacNeice -- This living hand, now warm and capable / John Keats -- To his lute / Sir Thomas Wyatt -- Beggar's serenade / John Heath-Stubbs -- Piazza piece / John Crowe Ransom -- Author apologizes to a lady for his being a little man / Christopher Smart -- Lyce / William Walsh -- To his mistress going to bed / John Donne -- Celebrations: -- from The song of Solomon: chapter 2 -- Sick love / Robert Graves -- Upon a gloomy night / St John of the Cross -- Meeting at night / Robert Browning -- Question / F T Prince -- Sudden light / Dante Gabriel Rossetti -- Plucking the rushes / Anon -- Subaltern's love-song / Sir John Betjeman -- My ghostly father, I me confess / Charles of Orleans -- Alas! Madam, for stealing of a kiss / Sir Thomas Wyatt -- Kiss / Coventry Patmore -- Did not / Thomas Moore -- Doing, a filthy pleasure is, and short / Petronius Arbiter -- Keep your eyes open when you kiss: do: when / John Berryman -- from In a gondola / Robert Browning -- Lips of the one I love are my perpetual pleasure / Hafiz -- Some kisses from The Kama Sutra / Hugo Williams -- Came to me / Rudaki -- Drunk as drunk on turpentine / Pablo Neruda -- from The princess / Alfred Lord Tennyson -- New Year's Eve / D H Lawrence -- She / Theodore Roethke -- Elegy 5 / Ovid -- In the orchard / Algernon Charles Swinburne -- Our Sunday morning when dawn-priests were applying / John Berryman -- Down, Wanton, down! / Robert Graves -- I gently touched her hand: she gave / Anon -- May I feel said he / E E Cummings -- On the marriage of T K and C C the morning stormy / Thomas Carew -- Epithalamion / Edmund Spenser -- From pent-up, aching rivers / Walt Whitman -- Gateway / A D Hope -- Daybreak / Stephen Spender -- Geranium / Richard Brinsley Sheridan -- Dialogue: after enjoyment / Abraham Cowley -- On the happy Corydon and Phyllis / Sir Charles Sedley -- Phyllis Corydon clutched to him / Catullus -- Note on Propertius I-5 / Fleur Adcock -- After the fiercest pangs of hot desire / Richard Duke -- Song: whilst Alexis lay pressed / John Dryden -- I like my body when it is with your / E E Cummings -- Ectasy / John Donne -- Under the willow-shades / William Davenant -- Hops / Boris Pasternak -- Net / W R Rodgers -- Love and sleep / Algernon Charles Swinburne -- Lay your sleeping head, my love / W H Auden -- Lullaby / W B Yeats -- In Bloemfontein / Alan Ross -- She tells her love while half asleep / Robert Graves -- Winter love / Elizabeth Jennings -- Sun rising / John Donne -- Good morrow / John Donne -- Alicante / Jacques Prevert -- Fish in the unruffled lakes / W H Auden -- Unpredicted / John Heath-Stubbs -- Good God, what a night that was / Petronius Arbiter -- This unimportant morning / Lawrence Durrell -- Quiet glades of Eden / Robert Graves -- Away above a harborful / Lawrence Ferlinghetti -- Bride / Harry Fainlight -- On the street / C P Cavafy -- Way / Robert Creeley -- Man and wife / Robert Lowell -- Author to his wife, of a woman's eloquence / Sir John Harington -- Madrigal: my love in her attire doth show her wit / Anon -- Touch / Octavio Paz -- Jewels / Charles Baudelaire -- Dread / J M Synge -- September / Ted Hughes -- Mirabeau bridge / Guillaume Apollinaire -- Dead still / Andrei Voznesensky -- Somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond / E E Cummings -- Once as methought fortune me kissed / Sir Thomas Wyatt -- My true love hath my heart, and I have his / Sir Philip Sidney -- In love for long / Edwin Muir -- Hour with thee / Sir Walter Scott -- Anniversary / John Donne -- I knew a woman / Theodore Roethke -- Song of a young lady to her ancient lover / John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester -- So, we'll go no more a-roving / Lord Byron -- Last love / Fydor Tyutchev -- John Anderson my Jo / Robert Burns -- Last confession / W B YeatsAberrations: -- Song: Pious Selinda goes to prayers / William Congreve -- Fragment of a song on the beautiful wife of Dr John Overall, Dean of St Paul's / Anon -- Of an heroical answer of a great Roman lady to her husband / Sir John Harington -- Faithless wife / Federico Garcia Lorca -- Honour / Abraham Cowley -- Imperfect enjoyment / John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester -- Ruined maid / Thomas Hardy -- Phyllis / Thomas Randolph -- Chaste Florimel / Matthew Prior -- Two or three: a recipe to make a cuckold / Alexander Pope -- To his mistress / Ovid -- Temperaments / Ezra Pound -- Filling her compact & delicious body / John Berryman -- Juliet / Hilaire Belloc -- Womanisers / John Press -- I, being born a woman and distressed / Edna St Vincent Millay -- Robene and Makyne / Robert Henryson -- Lover's resolution / George Wither -- Oh, when I was in love with you / A E Housman -- In former days we'd both agree / Bharthari -- Thieves / Robert Graves -- Welcome / Abraham Cowley -- Out upon it, I have loved / Sir John Suckling -- Love and life / John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester -- Scrutiny / Richard Lovelace -- Lycoris darling, once I burned for you / Martial -- Indifferent / John Donne -- Intimates / D H Lawrence -- She who is always in my thoughts prefers / Bhartrhari -- You smiled, you spoke, and I believed / Walter Savage Landor -- Elizabeth in Italy / Richard Weber -- Song: Absent from thee, I languish still / John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester -- Slice of wedding cake / Robert Graves -- Separations: -- Walking in a meadow green / Anon -- Carnal knowledge / Thom Gunn -- She lay all naked in her bed / Anon -- Anbade / Anon -- Song: Sweetest love, I do not go / John Donne -- Red red rose / Robert Burns -- Carrier letter / Hart Crane -- It may not always be so; and I say / E E Cummings -- Postscript: for Gweno / Alun Lewis -- Dear, though the night is gone / W H Auden -- Last ride together / Robert Browning -- Lost mistress / Robert Browning -- Since there's no help, come let up kiss and part / Michael Drayton -- Valediction / Ernest Dowson -- Farewell / Coventry Patmore -- Goodbye / Alun Lewis -- On his mistress / John Donne -- Sweet William's farewell to black-eyed Susan / John Gay -- Song: Ae fond kiss, and then we sever / Robert Burns -- My life closed twice before its close / Emily Dickinson -- Like the touch of rain / Edward Thomas -- Terrible door / Harold Monro -- In the vaulted way / Thomas Hardy -- I wrung my hands under my dark veil / Anna Akhmatova -- Party piece / Brian Patten -- Pity, we were such a good invention / Yehuda Amichai -- When we two parted / Lord Byron -- Renouncement / Alice Meynell -- I turn you out of doors / Alain Chartier -- Epistle to Miss Blount, on her leaving the town, after the coronation / Alexander Pope -- What news / Walter Savage Landor -- River-merchants's wife: a letter / Li Po [Rihaku] -- Wife's complaint / Anon -- Exile / Ernest Dowson -- Thousand years, you said / Lady Heguri -- Remember / Christina Rossetti -- Song: When I am dead, my dearest / Christina Rossetti -- Inseparable / Philip Bourke Marston -- If I should sleep with a lady called death / E E Cummings -- Huesca / John Cornford -- Surrender / Henry King -- Your love is dead, lady, your love is dead / R S Thomas -- Dear gentle soul, who went so soon away / Luis de Camoens -- Epitaph on the monument of Sir William Dyer at Colmworth, 1641 / Lady Catherine Dyer -- Exequy on his wife / Henry King -- Methought I saw my late espoused saint / John Milton -- Upon the death of Sir Albert Morton's wife / Sir Henry Wotton -- Desolations: -- Mother, I cannot mind my wheel / Sappho -- With how sad steps, o moon, thou climb'st the skies! / Sir Philip Sidney -- Doubt of martyrdom / Sir John Suckling -- To marguerite-continued / Matthew Arnold -- Definition of love / Andrew Marvell -- Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind / Petrarch -- I abide and abide and better abide / Sir Thomas Wyatt -- Kind are her answers / Thomas Campion -- Lesbia loads me night & day with her curses / Catullus -- Busy with lobe, the bumble bee / Meleager -- My pretty rose tree / William Blake -- Love and jealousy / William Walsh -- Song: Why so pale and wan, fond lover? / Sir John Suckling -- Apologue / Tony Connor -- In Bertram's garden / Donald Justice -- Christina / Louis MacNeice -- Song: When lovely woman stoops to folly / Oliver Goldsmith -- Farewell ungrateful traitor / John Dryden -- Oh! The time that is past / Anon -- Damned women / Charles Baudelaire -- When I was one-and-twenty / A E Housman -- Never give the heart / W B Yeats -- Mirage / Christina Rossetti -- Banks o' Doon / Robert Burns -- Sick rose / William Blake -- Farewell to false love / Sir Walter Ralegh -- Quick and bitter / Yehuda Amichai -- from The house of life: severed selves / Dante Gabriel Rossetti -- No use / W D Snodgrass -- O wha's the bride? / Hugh MacDiarmid -- Farmer's bride / Charlotte Mew -- Les Sylphides / Louis MacNeice -- Considered reply to a child / Jonathan Price -- Talking in bed / Philip Larkin -- You, Helen / Edward Thomas -- from Modern love / George Meredith -- Mammon-marriage / George MacDonald -- Call it a good marriage / Robert Graves -- Newcomer's wife / Thomas Hardy -- Bonny Barbara Allan / Anon -- My true love hath my heart and I have his' / Mary Coleridge -- Bereft / Thomas Hardy -- Night has a thousand eyes / Francis William Bourdillon -- Reverberations: -- When you are old / W B Yeats -- Song: It was upon a lammas night / Robert Burns -- Curfew / Paul Eluard -- Whence had they come? / W B Yeats -- Never such love / Robert Graves -- Love's night & a lamp / Meleager -- Seduced girl / Hedylos -- What she said / Maturai Eruttalan Centamputan -- Rondel of love / Alexander Scott -- Love / George Granville, Baron Lansdowne -- False though she be to me and love / William Congreve -- Walsingham / Sir Walter Ralegh -- Old song ended / Dante Gabriel Rossetti -- Old lady's lament for her youth / Francois Villon -- Crazy Jane talks with the bishop / W B Yeats -- Young bloods come round less often now / Horace -- When I was fair and young and favour graced me / Queen Elizabeth -- As birds are fitted to the boughs / Louis Simpson -- from Lessons of the war: judging distance / Henry Reed -- Under the waterfall / Thomas Hardy -- Strawberries / Edwin Morgan -- Thunderstorm in town / Thomas Hardy -- Farewell to Juliet / Wilfrid Blunt -- I remember / Stevie Smith -- White heliotrope / Arthur Symons -- Chosen W B Yeats -- We did it / Yehuda Amichai -- Custom of the world / Louis Simpson -- Trysting place / William Soutar -- At the dark hour / Paul Dehn -- Silent love / Sir Edward Dyer -- Song of the master and boatswain / W H Auden -- Ballad-singer / Thomas Hardy -- What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why / Edna St Vincent Millay -- Girls in their seasons / Derek Mahon -- Disabled debauchee / John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester -- Remembrance / Sir Thomas Wyatt -- Wreath / Robert Graves -- Remember thee! Remember thee! / Lord Byron -- Tune / Arthur Symons -- Non sum quails eram bonae sub regno Cynarae / Ernest Dowson -- Rainy Pleiads wester / A E Housman -- Western wind, when will thou blow / Anon -- After long silence / W B Yeats -- Time passing, beloved / Donald Davie -- Marriage ring / George Crabbe -- Funeral / John Donne -- Old flame / Robert Lowell -- While the leaves of the bamboo rustle / Anonymous frontier guard -- Two lips / Thomas Hardy -- She dwelt among the untrodden ways / William Wordsworth -- Wife-a-lost / William Barnes -- Remembrance / Emily Bronte -- You would have understood me, had you waited / Paul Verlaine -- To one in paradise / Edgar Allan Poe -- Surprised by joy-impatient as the wind / William Wordsworth -- Sonnet: In every dream thy lovely features rise / William Barnes -- To Mary: It is the evening hour / John Clare -- In the valley of Cauteretz / Alfred Lord Tennyson -- Voice / Thomas Hardy -- Oh! that 'twere possible / Alfred Lord Tennyson -- Rose Aylmer / WalterSavage Landor -- Echo / Christina Rossetti -- Tonight I can write the saddest lines / Pablo Neruda -- To remain / C P Cavafy -- In my craft or sullen art / Dylan Thomas -- In time of 'the breaking of nations' / Thomas Hardy -- Index of poets and translators -- Index of titles and first lines