The Penguin Book of English Verse

by Paul Keegan

  And let the draughts come whistling thro’ my hall;

  Come bounding and surrounding me,

  Come buffeting, astounding me,

  Nipping and clipping thro’ my wraps and all.

  I wear my mask for warmth: who ever shows

  His nose to Russian snows

  To be pecked at by every wind that blows?

  You would not peck? I thank you for good will,

  Believe, but leave that truth untested still.

  Spring’s an expansive time: yet I don’t trust

  March with its peck of dust,

  Nor April with its rainbow-crowned brief showers,

  Nor even May, whose flowers

  One frost may wither thro’ the sunless hours.

  Perhaps some languid summer day,

  When drowsy birds sing less and less,

  And golden fruit is ripening to excess,

  If there’s not too much sun nor too much cloud,

  And the warm wind is neither still nor loud,

  Perhaps my secret I may say,

  Or you may guess.

  ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING Lord Walter’s Wife

  I

  ‘But why do you go?’ said the lady, while both sat under the yew,

  And her eyes were alive in their depth, as the kraken beneath the sea-blue.

  II

  ‘Because I fear you,’ he answered; – ‘because you are far too fair,

  And able to strangle my soul in a mesh of your gold-coloured hair.’

  III

  ‘Oh, that,’ she said, ‘is no reason! Such knots are quickly undone,

  And too much beauty, I reckon, is nothing but too much sun.’

  IV

  ‘Yet farewell so,’ he answered; – ‘the sunstroke’s fatal at times.

  I value your husband, Lord Walter, whose gallop rings still from the limes.’

  V

  ‘Oh, that,’ she said, ‘is no reason. You smell a rose through a fence:

  If two should smell it, what matter? who grumbles, and where’s the pretence?’

  VI

  ‘But I,’ he replied, ‘have promised another, when love was free,

  To love her alone, alone, who alone and afar loves me.’

  VII

  ‘Why, that,’ she said, ‘is no reason. Love’s always free, I am told.

  Will you vow to be safe from the headache on Tuesday, and think it will hold?’

  VIII

  ‘But you,’ he replied, ‘have a daughter, a young little child, who was laid

  In your lap to be pure; so I leave you: the angels would make me afraid.’

  IX

  ‘Oh, that,’ she said, ‘is no reason. The angels keep out of the way;

  And Dora, the child, observes nothing, although you should please me and stay.’

  X

  At which he rose up in his anger, – ‘Why, now, you no longer are fair!

  Why, now, you no longer are fatal, but ugly and hateful, I swear.’

  XI

  At which she laughed out in her scorn: ‘These men! Oh, these men overnice,

  Who are shocked if a colour not virtuous is frankly put on by a vice.’

  XII

  Her eyes blazed upon him – ‘And you! You bring us your vices so near

  That we smell them! You think in our presence a thought ’twould defame us to hear!

  XIII

  ‘What reason had you, and what right, – I appeal to your soul from my life, –

  To find me too fair as a woman? Why, sir, I am pure, and a wife.

  XIV

  ‘Is the day-star too fair up above you? It burns you not. Dare you imply

  I brushed you more close than the star does, when Walter had set me as high?

  XV

  ‘If a man finds a woman too fair, he means simply adapted too much

  To use unlawful and fatal. The praise! – shall I thank you for such?

  XVI

  ‘Too fair? – not unless you misuse us! and surely if, once in a while,

  You attain to it, straightway you call us no longer too fair, but too vile.

  XVII

  ‘A moment, – I pray your attention! – I have a poor word in my head

  I must utter, though womanly custom would set it down better unsaid.

  XVIII

  ‘You grew, sir, pale to impertinence, once when I showed you a ring.

  You kissed my fan when I dropped it. No matter! – I’ve broken the thing.

  XIX

  ‘You did me the honour, perhaps, to be moved at my side now and then

  In the senses – a vice, I have heard, which is common to beasts and some men.

  XX

  ‘Love’s a virtue for heroes! – as white as the snow on high hills,

  And immortal as every great soul is that struggles, endures, and fulfils.

  XXI

  ‘I love my Walter profoundly, – you, Maude, though you faltered a week,

  For the sake of… what was it – an eyebrow? or, less still, a mole on a cheek?

  XXII

  ‘And since, when all’s said, you’re too noble to stoop to the frivolous cant

  About crimes irresistible, virtues that swindle, betray and supplant,

  XXIII

  ‘I determined to prove to yourself that, whate’er you might dream or avow

  By illusion, you wanted precisely no more of me than you have now.

  XXIV

  ‘There! Look me full in the face! – in the face. Understand, if you can,

  That the eyes of such women as I am are clean as the palm of a man.

  XXV

  ‘Drop his hand, you insult him. Avoid us for fear we should cost you a scar –

  You take us for harlots, I tell you, and not for the women we are.

  XXVI

  ‘You wronged me: but then I considered… there’s Walter! And so at the end

  I vowed that he should not be mulcted, by me, in the hand of a friend.

  XXVII

  ‘Have I hurt you indeed? We are quits then. Nay, friend of my Walter, be mine!

  Come, Dora, my darling, my angel, and help me to ask him to dine.’

  ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING A Musical Instrument

  What was he doing, the great god Pan,

  Down in the reeds by the river?

  Spreading ruin and scattering ban,

  Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat,

  And breaking the golden lilies afloat

  With the dragon-fly on the river.

  He tore out a reed, the great god Pan,

  From the deep cool bed of the river:

  The limpid water turbidly ran,

  And the broken lilies a-dying lay,

  And the dragon-fly had fled away,

  Ere he brought it out of the river.

  High on the shore sat the great god Pan

  While turbidly flowed the river;

  And hacked and hewed as a great god can,

  With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed,

  Till there was not a sign of the leaf indeed

  To prove it fresh from the river.

  He cut it short, did the great god Pan,

  (How tall it stood in the river!)

  Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man,

  Steadily from the outside ring,

  And notched the poor dry empty thing

  In holes, as he sat by the river.

  ‘This is the way,’ laughed the great god Pan

  (Laughed while he sat by the river),

  ‘The only way, since gods began

  To make sweet music, they could succeed.’

  Then, dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed,

  He blew in power by the river.

  Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan!

  Piercing sweet by the river!

  Blinding sweet, O great god Pan!

  The sun on the hill forgot to die,

  And the lilies revived, and the dra
gon-fly

  Came back to dream on the river.

  Yet half a beast is the great god Pan,

  To laugh as he sits by the river,

  Making a poet out of a man:

  The true gods sigh for the cost and pain, –

  For the reed which grows nevermore again

  As a reed with the reeds in the river.

  GEORGE MEREDITH from Modern Love

  I

  By this he knew she wept with waking eyes:

  That, at his hand’s light quiver by her head,

  The strange low sobs that shook their common bed

  Were called into her with a sharp surprise,

  And strangled mute, like little gaping snakes,

  Dreadfully venomous to him. She lay

  Stone-still, and the long darkness flow’d away

  With muffled pulses. Then, as midnight makes

  Her giant heart of Memory and Tears

  Drink the pale drug of silence, and so beat

  Sleep’s heavy measure, they from head to feet

  Were moveless, looking thro’ their dead black years,

  By vain regret scrawl’d over the blank wall.

  Like sculptured effigies they might be seen

  Upon their marriage-tomb, the sword between;

  Each wishing for the sword that severs all.

  XVII

  At dinner she is hostess, I am host.

  Went the feast ever cheerfuller? She keeps

  The Topic over intellectual deeps

  In buoyancy afloat. They see no ghost.

  With sparkling surface-eyes we ply the ball:

  It is in truth a most contagious game;

  HIDING THE SKELETON shall be its name.

  Such play as this the devils might appal!

  But here’s the greater wonder; in that we,

  Enamour’d of our acting and our wits,

  Admire each other like true hypocrites.

  Warm-lighted glances, Love’s Ephemerae,

  Shoot gaily o’er the dishes and the wine.

  We waken envy of our happy lot.

  Fast, sweet, and golden, shows our marriage-knot.

  Dear guests, you now have seen Love’s corpse-light shine!

  XXXIV

  Madam would speak with me. So, now it comes:

  The Deluge or else Fire! She’s well; she thanks

  My husbandship. Our chain on silence clanks.

  Time leers between, above his twiddling thumbs.

  Am I quite well? Most excellent in health!

  The journals, too, I diligently peruse.

  Vesuvius is expected to give news:

  Niagara is no noisier. By stealth

  Our eyes dart scrutinizing snakes. She’s glad

  I’m happy, says her quivering under-lip.

  ‘And are not you?’ ‘How can I be?’ ‘Take ship!

  For happiness is somewhere to be had.’

  ‘Nowhere for me!’ Her voice is barely heard.

  I am not melted, and make no pretence.

  With commonplace I freeze her, tongue and sense.

  Niagara or Vesuvius is deferred.

  L

  Thus piteously Love closed what he begat:

  The union of this ever-diverse pair!

  These two were rapid falcons in a snare,

  Condemn’d to do the flitting of the bat.

  Lovers beneath the singing sky of May,

  They wander’d once; clear as the dew on flowers:

  But they fed not on the advancing hours:

  Their hearts held cravings for the buried day.

  Then each applied to each that fatal knife,

  Deep questioning, which probes to endless dole.

  Ah, what a dusty answer gets the soul

  When hot for certainties in this our life! –

  In tragic hints here see what evermore

  Moves dark as yonder midnight ocean’s force,

  Thundering like ramping hosts of warrior horse,

  To throw that faint thin line upon the shore!

  ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH The Latest Decalogue

  Thou shalt have one God only; who

  Would be at the expense of two?

  No graven images may be

  Worshipped, except the currency:

  Swear not at all; for for thy curse

  Thine enemy is none the worse:

  At church on Sunday to attend

  Will serve to keep the world thy friend:

  Honour thy parents; that is, all

  From whom advancement may befall:

  Thou shalt not kill; but needst not strive

  Officiously to keep alive:

  Do not adultery commit;

  Advantage rarely comes of it:

  Thou shalt not steal; an empty feat,

  When it’s so lucrative to cheat:

  Bear not false witness; let the lie

  Have time on its own wings to fly:

  Thou shalt not covet; but tradition

  Approves all forms of competition.

  The sum of all is, thou shalt love,

  If any body, God above:

  At any rate shall never labour

  More than thyself to love thy neighbour.

  ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE Free Thought

  What is thought that is not free?

  ’Tis a lie that runs in grooves,

  And by nought and nothing proves

  Three times one is one, not three.

  (1915)

  WILLIAM BARNES Leaves a-Vallèn

  There the ash-tree leaves do vall

  In the wind a-blowèn cwolder,

  An’ my childern, tall or small,

  Since last Fall be woone year wolder;

  Woone year wolder, woone year dearer,

  Till when they do leave my he’th.

  I shall be noo mwore a hearer

  O’ their vaïces or their me’th.

  There dead ash leaves be a-toss’d

  In the wind, a-blowèn stronger,

  An’ our life-time, since we lost

  Souls we lov’d, is woone year longer;

  Woone year longer, woone year wider,

  Vrom the friends that death ha’ took,

  As the hours do teäke the rider

  Vrom the hand that last he shook.