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Some have won a wild delight,

By daring wilder sorrow;

Could I gain thy love to-night,

I'd hazard death to-morrow. (Passion by Charlotte Bronte – Lines 1-4)

Poems selected for

UNAB Poetry course

by professors

Erika de la Barra

and Jorge Comte.

Santiago, Chile, 2011.

All poems and images are used for educational purposes only and no profit has been or will ever be made

from this booklet and its content.

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1: The Nature of Love (Pages 4-6)

The Most Generous Passion – John Wilmont, Earl

of Rochester

Love – Emily Dickinson

Love‟s Trinity – Alfred Austin

Of Love. A Sonnet – Robert Herrick

The Fume of Sighs – William Shakespeare

The Word – Alden Nowlan

Love is Not All – Edna St. Vincent Millay

Chapter 2: In Praise of the Beloved (Pages 7-9)

A Red, Red Rose – Robert Burns

Shall I Compare Thee? – William Shakespeare

She Walks In Beauty – George Gordon, Lord

Byron

No Loathsomeness in Love – Robert Herrick

Sonnet 130 – William Shakespeare

Chapter 3: Unrequited Love (Pages 10-12)

Love‟s Philosophy – Percy Bysshe Shelley

No One So Much As You – Edward Thomas

Mediocrity In Love Rejected – Thomas Carew

IS / NOT – Margaret Atwood

Love That Never Told Can Be – William Blake

Sometimes With One I Love – Walt Whitman

Chapter 4: Persuasion and Dishonour (Pages 13-15)

To His Coy Mistress – Andrew Marvell

The Flea – John Donne

A Coy Heart – Aphra Behn

To the Virgins to Make Much of Time – Robert

Herrick

To A Lady Making Love – Lady Mary Wortley

Montagu

A Maid‟s Lament – Aphra Behn

Chapter 5: Love’s Tyranny (Pages 16-18)

Give All To Love – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Love in Fantastick Triumph Sat – Aphra Behn

Freedom – Jan Struther

Love, That Doth Reign and Live Within My

Thought – Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey

To the Ladies – Lady Mary Chudleigh

Chapter 6: The Pain of Love (Pages 19-22)

Woman‟s Faith – Sir Walter Scott

She Weeps over Rahoon – James Joyce

My Pretty Rose Tree – William Blake

“Proud of My Broken Heart. . .” – Emily

Dickinson

“Heart, We Will Forget Him!” – Emily Dickinson

Personal Column – Basil Bunting

Annabel Lee – Edgar Allan Poe

from To Woman – George Gordon, Lord Byron

The Old Stoic – Emily Brontë

Thou Didst Say Me – Miriam Waddington

The Sorrow of Love – William Butler Yeats

Light of Love – Dorothy Parker

Chapter 7: Ever-Lasting Love (Pages 23-25)

To My Dear and Loving Husband – Anne

Bradstreet

Sonnet LXXV – Edmund Spenser

Sonnet 116 – William Shakespeare

Wife to Husband – Fleur Adcock

A Valediction Forbidding Mourning – John

Donne

Passionate Sheepheard to His Love – Christopher

Marlowe

Chapter 8: Self-Esteem and Love (Pages 26-29)

Hanging Fire – Audre Lorde

Face Lift – Sylvia Plath

Wanda Why Aren‟t You Dead – Wanda Coleman

Barbie Doll – Marge Piercy

The Rights of Woman – Anna Laetitia Barbauld

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The Most Generous Passion by John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester

Love, the most generous passion of the mind,

The softest refuge innocence can find;

The safe director of misguided youth,

Fraught with kind wishes, and secur‟d by truth;

The cordial drop heaven in our cup has thrown;

To make the nauseous draught of life go down;

On which one only blessing God might raise,

In lands of atheists, subsidies of praise;

For none did e‟er so dull and stupid prove,

But felt a god, and bless‟d his power in love. Love’s Trinity

by Alfred Austin

Soul, heart, and body, we thus singly name,

Are not in love divisible and distinct,

But each with each inseparably link‟d.

One is not honour, and the other shame,

But burn as closely fused as fuel, heat, and flame.

They do not love who give the body and keep

The heart ungiven; nor they who yield the soul,

And guard the body. Love doth give the whole;

Its range being high as heaven, as ocean deep,

Wide as the realms of air or planet‟s curving sweep.

Love by Emily Dickinson

Love is anterior to life,

Posterior to death,

Initial of creation, and

The exponent of breath.

Of Love. A Sonnet by Robert Herrick

How love came in, I do not know,

Whether by th‟eye, or ear, or no:

Or whether with the soul it came

(At first) infused with the same:

Whether in part ‟tis here or there,

Or, like the soul, whole everywhere:

This troubles me: but I as well

As any other, this can tell;

That when from hence she does depart,

The out-let then is from the heart.

The Fume of Sighs from Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs,

Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers‟ eyes,

Being vexed, a sea nourished with lovers‟ tears.

What is it else? a madness, most discreet,

a choking gall, and a preserving sweet.

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The Word by Alden Nowlan

Though I have the gift of tongues

and can move mountains,

my words are nothing

compared with yours,

though you only

look up from my arms

and whisper my name.

This is not pride

because I know

it is not

my name that you whisper

but a sign

between us,

like the word

that was spoken

at the beginning

of the world

and will be spoken again

only when the world ends.

This is not that word

but the other

that must be spoken

over and over

while the world lasts.

Tears,

laughter,

a lifetime!

All in one word!

The word you whisper

when you look up

from my arms

and seem to say my name.

Love is Not All by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink

Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;

Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink

And rise and sink and rise and sink again;

Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,

Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;

Yet many a man is making friends with death

Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.

It well may be that in a difficult hour,

Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,

Or nagged by want past resolution‟s power,

I might be driven to sell your love for peace,

Or trade the memory of this night of food.

It well may be. I do not think I would.

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Shall I Compare Thee? by William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer‟s day?

Thou art 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 by eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession 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 breathe, or eyes can see,

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

A Red, Red, Rose by Robert Burns

O my Luve‟s like a red, red rose,

That‟s newly sprung in June;

O my luve‟s like the melodie

That‟s sweetly played in tune.-

As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,

So deep in luve am I;

And I will love thee still, my dear,

Till a‟ the seas gang dry.-

Till a‟ the seas gang dry, my dear,

And the rocks melt wi‟ the sun:

O I will love thee still, my dear,

While the sands o‟ life shall run.-

And fare thee weel, my only Luve,

And fare the weel awhile!

And I will come again, my Luve,

Though it were ten thousand mile!

She Walks In Beauty by George Gordon, Lord Byron

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 of days in goodness spent,

A mind at peace with all below,

A heart whose love is innocent!

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Sonnet 130 by William Shakespeare

My Mistres eyes are nothing like the sunne.

Curral is farre more red, then her lips red,

If snow be white, why then her brests are dun:

If haires be wiers, black wiers grow on her head:

I have seen Roses damaskt, red and white,

But no such Roses see I in her cheekes,

And in some perfumes is there more delight,

Then in the breath that from my Mistres reekes.

I love to heare her speak, yet well I know,

That musicke hath a farre more pleasing sound:

I graunt I never saw a goddesse goe,

My Mistres when shee walkes treads on the ground.

And yet by heaven I think my love as rare,

As any she beli‟d with false compare.

No Loathsomeness in Love by Robert Herrick

What I fancy, I approve,

No dislike there is in love:

Be my mistress short or tall,

And distorted therewithal:

Be she likewise one of those,

That an acre hath of nose:

Be her forehead, and her eyes

Full of incongruities:

Be her cheeks so shallow too,

As to shew her tongue wag through:

Be her lips ill hung, or set,

And her grinders black as jet;

Has she thin hair, hath she none,

She‟s to me a paragon.

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Love’s Philosophy by Percy Bysshe Shelley

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?

No One So Much As You by Edward Thomas

No one so much as you

Loves this my clay,

Or would lament as you

Its dying day.

You know me through and through

Though I have not told,

And though with what you know

You are not bold.

None ever was so fair

As I thought you:

Not a word can I bear

Spoken against you.

All that I ever did

For you seemed coarse

Compared with what I hid

Nor put in force.

My eyes scarce dare meet you

Lest they should prove

I but respond to you

And do not love.

We look and understand,

We cannot speak

Except in trifles and

Words the most weak.

For I at most accepts

Your love, regretting

That is all: I have kept

Only a fretting.

That I could not return

All that you gave

And could not ever burn

With the love you have,

Till sometimes it did seem

Better it were

Never to see you more

Than linger here.

With only gratitude

Instead of love –

A pine in solitude

Cradling a dove.

Mediocrity In Love Rejected by Thomas Carew

Give me more love, or more disdain;

The torrid, or the frozen zone

Bring equal ease unto my pain;

The temperate affords me none:

Either extreme, of love, or hate,

Is sweeter than a calm estate.

Give me a storm; if it be love,

Like Danaë in that golden shower

I swim in pleasure; if it prove

Disdain, that torrent will devour

My vulture-hopes; and he‟s possessed

Of heaven, That‟s but from hell released:

Then crown my joys, or cure my pain;

Give me more love, or more disdain.

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Love That Never Told Can Be by William Blake

Never seek to tell thy love,

Love that never told can be;

For the gentle wind doth move

Silently, invisibly.

I told my love, I told my love,

I told her all my heart;

Trembling, cold, in ghastly fears.

Ah! She did depart!

Soon after she was gone from me,

A traveller came by,

Silently, invisibly:

He took her with a sigh.

Sometimes With One I Love by Walt Whitman

Sometimes with one I love I fill myself with rage for fear I effuse

unreturn‟d love,

But now I think there is no unreturn‟d love, the pay is certain

one way or another,

(I loved a certain person ardently and my love was not return‟d,

Yet out of that I have written these songs.)

IS / NOT by Margaret Atwood

Love is not a profession

genteel or otherwise

sex is not dentistry

the slick filling of aches and cavities

you are not my doctor

you are not my cure,

nobody has that

power, you are merely a fellow/traveller.

Give up this medical concern,

buttoned, attentive,

permit yourself anger

and permit me mine

which needs neither

your approval nor your surprise

which does not need to be made legal

which is not against a disease

but against you,

which does not need to be understood

or washed or cauterized,

which need instead

to be said and said.

Permit me the present tense.

I am not a saint or a cripple,

I am not a wound; now I will see

whether I am a coward.

I dispose of my good manners,

you don‟t have to kiss my wrists.

This is a journey, not a war,

There is no outcome,

I renounce predictions

and aspirins, I resign the future

as I would resign an expired passport:

picture and signature are gone

along with holidays and safe returns.

We‟re stuck here

on this side of the border

in this country of thumbed streets and stale buildings

where there is nothing spectacular

to see and the weather is ordinary

where love occurs in its pure form only

on the cheaper of the souvenirs

where we must walk slowly,

where we may not get anywhere

or anything, where we keep going,

fighting our ways, our way

not out but through.

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The Flea by John Donne

Marke but this flea, and marke in this,

How little that which thou deny‟st me is;

It suck‟d me first, and now sucks thee,

And in this flea, our two bloods mingled bee;

Thou know‟st that this cannot be said

A sinne, nor shame, nor losse of maidenhead,

Yet this enjoyes before it wooe,

And pamper‟d swells with one blood made of two

And this, alas, is more than wee would doe.

Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare,

Where wee almost, yea more than maryed are.

This flea is you and I, and this

Our mariage bed, and mariage temple is;

Though parents grudge, and you, w‟are met,

And cloysterd in these living walls of Jet.

Though use make you apt to kill mee,

Let not to that, selfe murder added bee,

And sacrilege, three sinnes in killing three.

Cruell and sodaine, hast thou since

Purpled thy naile, in blood of innocence?

Wherein could this flea guilty bee,

Except in that drop which it suckt from thee?

Yet thou triumph‟st, and saist that thou

Find‟st not ty selfe, nor mee the weaker now;

‟Tis true, then learne how false, feares bee;

Just so much honor, when thou yeeld‟st to mee,

Will wast, as this flea‟s death tooke life from thee.

To His Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvell

Had we but World enough, and Time,

This coyness Lady were no crime.

We would sit down, and think which way

To walk, and pass our long Loves Day.

Thou by the Indian Ganges side

Should‟st Rubies find: I by the Tide

Of Humber would complain. I would

Love you ten years before the Flood:

And you should, if you please, refuse

Till the Conversion of the Jews.

My vegetable Love should grow

Vaster than Empires, and more slow.

An hundred years should go to praise

Thine Eyes, and on thy Forehead Gaze.

Two hundred to adore each Breast:

But thirty thousand to the rest.

An Age at last to every part,

And the last Age should show your Heart.

For Lady you deserve this State;

Nor would I love at lower rate.

But at my back I alwaies hear,

Times winged Charriot hurrying near:

And yonder all before us lye

Deserts of vast Eternity.

Thy Beauty shall no more be found;

Nor, in thy marble Vault, shall sound

My ecchoing Song: then Worms shall try

That long preserv‟d Virginity:

And your quaint Honour turn to dust;

And into ashes all my Lust.

The Grave‟s a fine and private place,

But none I think do there embrace

Now therefore, while the youthful hew

Sits on thy skin like morning glew,

and while thy willing Soul transpires

At every pore with instant Fires,

Now let us sport us while we may;

And now, like am‟rous birds of prey,

Rather at once our Time devour,

Than languish in his slow-chapt pow‟r.

Let us roll all our Strength, and all

Our sweetness, up into one Ball:

And tear our Pleasures with rough strife,

Thorough the Iron gates of Life.

Thus, tough we cannot make our Sun

Stand still, yet we will make him run.

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A Coy Heart by Aphra Behn

O what pleasure ‟tis to find

A coy heart melt by slow degrees!

When to yielding ‟tis inclined,

Yet her fear a ruin sees;

When her tears do kindly flow

And her sighs do come and go.

O how charming ‟tis to meet

Soft resistance from the fair,

When her pride and wishes meet

And by turns increase her care;

O how charming ‟tis to know

She would yield but can‟t tell how!

O how pretty is her scorn

When, confused ‟twixt love and

shame,

Still refusing, tho‟ she burn,

The soft pressures of my flame!

Her pride in her denial lies

And mine is in my victories.

To the Virgins to Make Much of Time by Robert Herrick

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,

Old Time is still a-flying;

And this same flower that smiles today

Tomorrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,

The higher he's a-getting,

The sooner will his race be run,

And nearer he's to setting.

That age is best which is the first,

When youth and blood are warmer;

But being spent, the worse, and worst

Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,

And while ye may, go marry;

For having lost but once your prime,

You may forever tarry.

To A Lady Making Love by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

Good madam, when ladies are willing,

A man must needs look like a fool;

For me I would not give a shilling

For one who would love out of rule.

You should leave us to guess by your blushing,

And not speak the matter so plain;

‟Tis ours to write and be pushing,

‟Tis yours to affect disdain.

That you‟re in a terrible taking,

By all these sweet oglings I see,

But the fruit that can fall without shaking,

Indeed is too mellow for me.

A Maid’s Lament by Aphra Behn

Ah, false Amyntas, can that hour

So soon forgotten be

When first I yielded up my power

To be betrayed by thee?

God knows with how much innocence

I did my heart resign,

Unto thy faithless eloquence,

And gave thee what was mine.

I had not reserve in store,

But at thy feet I laid

Those arms which conquered heretofore,

Tho‟ now thy trophies made,

Thy eyes in silence told their tale,

Of love in such a way,

That ‟twas as easy to prevail,

As after to betray.

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Love in fantastick Triumph Sat by Aphra Behn

Love in fantastick Triumph sat,

Whilst bleeding Hearts around him flow‟d,

For whom fresh Pains he did create,

And strange Tyrannick Pow‟r he shew‟d;

From thy bright Eyes he took his Fires,

Which round about in sport he hurl‟d;

But ‟twas from mine he took Desires,

Enough t‟undo the amorous World.

From me he took his Sighs and Tears,

From thee his Pride and Cruelty;

From me his Languishments and Fears,

And ev‟ry killing Dart from thee:

Thus thou, and I, the God have arm‟d,

And set him up a Diety;

But my poor Heart alone is harm‟d,

Whilst thine the Victor is, and free.

Give All to Love by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Give all to love;

Obey thy heart;

Friends, kindred, days,

Estate, good fame,

Plans, credit, and the Muse –

Nothing refuse.

‟Tis a brave master;

Let it have scope:

Follow it utterly,

Hope beyond hope:

High and more high

It dives into noon,

With wing unspent,

Untold intent;

But it is a god,

Knows its own path,

And the outlets of the sky.

It was never for the mean;

It requireth courage stout,

Souls above doubt,

Valour unbending:

Such ‟twill reward; –

They shall return

More than they were,

And ever ascending.

Leave all for love;

Yet, hear me, yet,

One word more thy heart beloved,

One pulse more of firm endeavour –

Keep thee to-day,

To-morrow, for ever,

Free as an Arab

Of thy beloved.

Cling with life to the maid;

But when the surprise,

First vague shadow of surmise,

Flits across her bosom young,

Of a joy apart from thee,

Free be she, fancy-free;

Nor thou detain her vesture‟s hem,

Nor the palest rose she flung

From her summer diadem.

Though thou loved her as thyself,

As a self of purer clay;

Though her parting dims the day,

Stealing grace from all alive;

Heartily know,

When half-gods go

The gods arrive.

Freedom by Jan Struther

Now heaven be thanked. I am out of love again!

I have been long a slave, and now am free:

I have been tortured, and am eased of pain:

I have been blind, and now my eyes can see:

I have been lost, and now my way lies plain:

I have been caged, and now I hold the key:

I have been mad, and now at last am sane:

I am wholly I that was but half of me.

So a free man, my dull proud path I plod,

Who tortured, blind, mad, caged, was once a God.

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Love, That Doth Reign and Live Within My Thought by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey

Love, that doth reign and live within my thought,

And built his seat within my captive breast,

Clad in the arms wherein with me he fought,

Oft in my face he doth his banner rest.

But she that taught me love and suffer pain,

My doubtful hope and eke my hot desire

With shamefast look to shadow and refrain,

Her smiling grace converteth straight to ire.

And coward Love, then, to the heart apace

Taketh his flight, where he doth lurk and plain,

His purpose lost, and dare not show his face.

For my lord‟s guilt thus faultless bide I pain,

Yet from my lord shall not my foot remove:

Sweet is the death that taketh end by love.

To the Ladies by Lady Mary Chudleigh

Wife and servant are the same,

But only differ in the name:

For when that fatal knot is tied,

Which nothing, nothing can divide,

When she the word Obey has said,

And man by law supreme has made,

Then all that‟s kind is laid aside,

And nothing left but state and pride.

Fierce as an eastern prince he grows,

And all his innate rigour shows:

Then but to look, to laugh, or speak,

Will the nuptial contract break.

Like mutes, she signs alone must make,

And never any freedom take,

But still governed by a nod,

And fear her husband as her god:

Him still must serve, him still obey,

And nothing act, and nothing say,

But what her haughty lord thinks fit,

Who, with the power, has all the wit.

Then shun, oh! shun that wretched state,

And all the fawning faltterers hate.

Value yourselves, and men despise:

You must be proud, if you‟ll be wise.

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Woman’s Faith by Sir Walter Scott

Woman‟s faith, and woman‟s trust –

Write the characters in dust;

Stamp them on the running stream,

Print them on the moon‟s pale beam,

And each evanescent letter

Shall be clearer, firmer, better,

And more permanent, I ween,

Than the thing those letters mean.

I have strained the spider‟s thread

‟Gainst the promise of a maid;

I have weighed a grain of sand

‟Gainst her plight of heart and hand;

I told my true love of the token,

How her faith proved light, and her word was broken:

Again her word and truth she plight,

And I believed them again ere night.

“Proud of My Broken Heart. . .” by Emily Dickinson

Proud of my broken heart since thou didst break it,

Proud of the pain I did not feel till thee.

Proud of my night since thou with moons dost slake it,

Not to partake thy passion, my humility.

“Heart,We Will Forget Him!” by Emily Dickinson

Heart, we will forget him!

You and I, to-night!

You may forget the warmth he gave,

I will forget the light.

She Weeps over Rahoon by James Joyce

Rain on Rahoon falls softly, softly falling,

Where my dark lover lies.

Sad is his voice that calls me, sadly calling,

At grey moonrise.

Love, hear thou

How soft, how sad his voice is ever calling.

Ever unanswered and the dark rain falling,

Then as now.

Dark too out hearts, O love, shall lie and cold

As his sad heart has lain

Under the moongrey nettles, the black mould

And muttering rain.

Personal Column by Basil Bunting

. . . As to my heart, that may as well be forgotten

or labelled: Owner will dispose of same

to a good home, refs. exchgd., h.&c.,

previous experience desired but not essential

or let on a short lease to suit convenience.

My Pretty Rose Tree by William Blake

A flower was offered to me,

Such a flower as May never bore;

But I said „I‟ve a pretty rose-tree,‟

And I passed the sweet flower o‟er.

Then I went to my pretty rose-tree,

To tend her by day and by night;

But my rose turned away with jealousy,

And her thorns were my only delight.

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from To Woman by George Gordon, Lord Byron

Woman! experience might have told me,

That all must love thee who behold thee:

Surely experience might have taught

Thy finest promises are nought:

But, placed in all thy charms before me,

All I forget but to adore thee.

Oh memory! thou choicest blessing

When joined with hope, when still possessing;

But how much cursed by every lover

When hope is fled and passion‟s over.

And every gentle air that dallied.

Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe

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;

I was a child and she was a child,

In this kingdom by the sea;

But we loved with a love which was more than love-

I and my Annabel Lee;

With a love that the winged 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 ll men know,

In this kingdom by the sea)

That the wind came out of a 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 that we-

Of many far wiser than we-

And neither the angels of 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 the sepulchre there by the sea,

In her tomb by the sounding sea.

The Old Stoic by Emily Brontë

Riches I hold in light esteem;

And Love I laugh to scorn;

And lust of fame was but a dream

That vanished with the morn:

And if I pray, the only prayer

That moves my lips from me

Is, „Leave the heart that now I bear,

And give me liberty!‟

Yes, as my swift days near their goal,

‟Tis all that I implore;

In life and death, a chainless soul,

With courage to endure.

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Thou Didst Say Me by Miriam Waddington

Late as last summer

Thou didst say me, love

I choose you, you, only you.

oh the delicate del-

icate serpent of your lips

the golden lie bedazzled

me with wish and flash

of joy and I was fool.

I was fool, bemused

bedazed by summer, still

bewitched and wandering

in murmur hush in green-

ly sketched-in fields

I was, I was, so sweet

I was, so honied with

your gold of love and love

and still again more love.

late as last autumn

thou didst say me, dear

my doxy, I choose you and

always you, thou didst pledge

me love and through the red-

plumed weeks and soberly

I danced upon your words

and garlanded these

tender dangers.

year curves to ending now

and thou dost say me, wife

I choose another love, and oh

the delicate del-

icate serpent of your mouth

stings deep, and bitter

iron cuts and shapes

my death, I was so fool.

The Sorrow of Love by William Butler Yeats

The brawling of a sparrow in the caves,

The brilliant moon and all the milky sky,

And all that famous harmony of leaves,

Had blotted out man‟s image and his cry.

A girl arose that had red mournful lips

And seemed the greatness of the world in tears,

Doomed like Odysseus and the labouring ships

And proud as Priam murdered with his peers;

Arose, and on the instant clamorous eaves,

A climbing moon upon an empty sky,

And all that lamentation of the leaves,

Could but compose man‟s image and his cry.

Light of Love by Dorothy Parker

Joy stayed with me a night --

Young and free and fair --

And in the morning light

He left me there.

Then Sorrow came to stay,

And lay upon my breast

He walked with me in the day.

And knew me best.

I'll never be a bride,

Nor yet celibate,

So I'm living now with Pride --

A cold bedmate.

He must not hear nor see,

Nor could he forgive

That Sorrow still visits me

Each day I live.

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24

To My Dear and Loving Husband by Anne Bradstreet

If ever two were one, then surely we.

If ever man were loved by wife, then thee;

If ever wife was happy in a man,

Compare with me, ye woman, if you can.

I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold

Or all the riches that East doest hold.

My love is such that rivers cannot quench,

Nor ought but love from thee, give recompense.

Thy love is such I can no way repay,

The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray.

Then while we live, in love let‟s so persevere

That when we live no more, we may live ever.

Sonnet LXXV by Edmund Spenser

One day I wrote her name upon the strand,

but came the waves and washed it away:

agayne I wrote it with a second hand,

but came the tyde, and made my paynes his pray.

“Vayne man,” sayd she, “that dost in vaine assay,

a mortall thing so to immortalize,

for I my selue shall lyke to this decay,

and eek my name bee wyped out lykwize.”

“Not so,” (quod I) “let baser things devize

to dy in dust, but you shall live by fame:

my verse your vertues rare shall eternize,

and in the hevens wryte your glorious name.

Where whenas death shall all the world subdew,

our loue shall live, and later life renew.”

Sonnet 116

byWilliam Shakespeare

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments, love is not love

Which alters when it alteration findes,

Or bends with the remover to remove.

O no, it is an ever fixed marke

That lookes on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering barke,

Whose worths unkowne, although his higth be taken.

Lov‟s not Times foole, though rosie lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickles compasse come,

Love alters not with his breefe houres and weekes,

But beares it out even to the edge of doome:

If this be error and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Wife to Husband byFleur Adcock

From anger into the pit of sleep

You go with a sudden skid. On me

Stillness falls gradually, a soft

Snowfall, a light to cover to keep

Numb for a time the twitching nerves.

Your head on the pillow is turned away;

My face is hidden. But under snow

Shoots uncurl, the green thread curves

Instinctively upwards. Do not doubt

That sense of purpose in mindless flesh:

Between our bodies a warmth grows;

Your back touches my breast, our thighs

Turn to find their accustomed place.

Your mouth is moving over my face:

Do we dare, now, to open our eyes?

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The Passionate Sheepheard to His Love by Christopher Marlowe

Come live with mee, and be my love,

And we will all the pleasures prove,

That Vallies, groves, hills and fieldes,

Woods, or steepie mountaine yeeldes.

And wee will sit upon the Rocks,

Seeing the Sheepheards feede theyr flocks,

By shallow Rivers, to whose falls,

Melodious byrds sing Madrigalls.

And I will make thee beds of Roses,

And a thousand fragrant poesies,

A cap of flowers, and a kirtle,

Imbroydred all with leaves of Mirtle.

A gowne made of the finest wooll,

Which from our pretty Lambes we pull,

Fayre lined slippers for the cold:

With buckles of the purest gold.

A belt of straw, and Ivie buds,

With Corall clasps and Amber studs,

And if these pleasures may thee move,

Come live with mee, and be my love.

The sheepheards Swaines shall daunce and sing,

For thy delight each May-morning.

If these delights thy minde may move;

Then live with mee, and be my love.

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning by John Donne

As virtuous men passe mildly away,

And whisper to their soules, to goe,

Whilst some of their sad friends doe say,

The breath goes now, and some say, no:

So let us melt, and make no noise,

No teare-floods, nor sigh-tempests move,

T‟were prophanation of our joyes

To tell the layetie our love.

Moving of th‟earth brings harmes and feares,

Men reckon what it did and meant,

But trepidation of the spheares,

Though greater farre, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers love

(Whose soule is sense) cannot admit

Absence, because it doth remove

Those things which elemented it.

But we by a love; so much refin‟d,

That our selves know not what it is,

Inter-assured of the mind,

Care lesse, eyes, lips, and hands to misse.

Our two soules therefore, which are one,

Though I must goe, endure not yet

A breach, but an expansion,

Like gold to ayery thinnesse beate.

If they be two, they are two so

As stiffe twin compasses are two,

Thy soule the fixt foot, makes no show

To move, but doth, if th‟other doe.

And though it in the center sit,

Yet when the other far doth rome,

It leanes, and hearkens after it,

And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou to be to mee, who must

Like th‟other foot, obliquely runne;

Thy firmnes drawes my circle just,

And makes me end, where I begunne.

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27

Face Lift by Sylvia Plath

You bring me good news from the clinic,

Whipping off your silk scarf, exhibiting the tight white

Mummy-cloths, smiling: I‟m all right.

When I was nine, a lime-green anaesthetist

Fed me a banana gas through a frog-mask. The nauseous

vault

Boomed with bad dreams and the Jovian voices of

surgeons.

Then mother swam up, holding a tin basin.

O I was sick.

They‟ve changed all that. Travelling

Nude as Cleopatra in well-boiled hospital shift,

Fizzy with sedatives and unusually humorous,

I roll to an anteroom where a kind man

Fists my fingers for me. He makes me feel something

precious

Is leaking from the finger-vents. At the count of two

Darkness wipes me out like chalk on a blackboard. . .

I don‟t know a thing.

For five days I lie in secret,

Tapped like a cask, the years draining into my pillow.

Even my best friend thinks I‟m in the country.

Skin doesn‟t have roots, it peels away easy as paper.

When I grin, the stitches tauten. I grow backward. I‟m

twenty.

Broody and in long skirts on my first husband‟s sofa, my

fingers

Buried in the lambswool of the dead poodle;

I hadn‟t a cat yet.

Now she‟s done for, the dewlapped lady

I watched settle, line by line, in a mirror–

Old sock-face, sagged on a darning egg.

They‟ve trapped her in some laboratory jar.

Let her die there, or wither incessantly for the next fifty

years,

Nodding and rocking and fingering her thin hair.

Mother to myself, I wake swaddled in gauze,

Pink and smooth as a baby.

Hanging Fire by Audre Lorde

I am fourteen

and my skin has betrayed me

the boy I cannot live without

still sucks his thumb

in secret

how come my knees are

always so ashy

what if I die

before morning

and momma‟s in the bedroom

with the door closed.

I have to learn how to dance

in time for the next party

my room is too small for me

suppose I die before graduation

they will sing sad melodies

but finally

tell the truth about me

There is nothing I want to do

and too much

that has to be done

and momma‟s in the bedroom

with the door closed.

Nobody even stops to think

about my side of it

I should have been on Math Team

my marks were better than his

why do I have to be

the one

wearing braces

I have nothing to wear tomorrow

will I live long enough

to grow up

and momma‟s in the bedroom

with the door closed.

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Barbie Doll by Marge Piercy

This girlchild was born as usual

and presented dolls that did pee-pee

and miniature GE stoves and irons

and wee lipsticks the color of cherry candy.

Then in the magic of puberty, a classmate said:

You have a great big nose and fat legs.

She was healthy, tested intelligent,

possessed strong arms and back,

abundant sexual drive and manual dexterity.

She went to and fro apologizing.

Everyone saw a fat nose on thick legs.

She was advised to play coy,

exhorted to come on hearty,

exercise, diet, smile and wheedle.

Her good nature wore out

like a fan belt.

So she cut off her nose and her legs

and offered them up.

In the casket displayed on satin she lay

with the undertaker‟s cosmetics painted on,

a turned-up putty nose,

dressed in a pink and white nightie.

Doesn‟t she look pretty? everyone said.

Consummation at last.

To every woman a happy ending.

Wanda Why Aren’t You Dead by Wanda Coleman

wanda when are you gonna wear your hair down

wanda. that‟s a whore‟s name

wanda why ain‟t you rich

wanda you know no man in his right mind want a

ready-made family

why don‟t you lose weight

wanda why are you so angry

how come your feet are so goddamn big

can‟t you afford to move out of this hell hole

if I were you were you were you

wanda what is it like being black

i hear you don‟t like black men

tell me you‟re ac/dc. tell me you‟re a nympho. tell me you‟re

into chains

wanda i don‟t think you really mean that

you‟re joking. girl, you crazy

wanda what makes you so angry

wanda i think you need this

wanda you have no humor in you you too serious

wanda i didn‟t know i was hurting you

that was an accident

wanda i know what you‟re thinking

wanda i don‟t think they‟ll take that off of you

wanda why are you so angry

i‟m sorry i didn‟t remember that that that

that that that was so important to you

wanda you‟re ALWAYS on the attack

wanda wanda wanda i wonder

why ain‟t you dead

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The Rights of Woman by Anna Laetitia Barbauld

Yes, injured Woman! rise, assert thy right!

Woman! too long degraded, scorned, opprest;

O born to rule in partial Law‟s despite,

Resume thy native empire o‟er the breast!

Go forth arrayed in panoply divine;

That angel pureness which admits no stain;

Go, bid proud Man his boasted rule resign,

And kiss the golden sceptre of thy reign.

Go, gird thyself with grace; collect thy store

Of bright artillery glancing from afar;

Soft melting tones thy thundering cannon‟s roar,

Blushes and fears thy magazine of war.

Thy rights are empire: urge no meaner claim,-

Felt, not defined, and if debated, lost;

Like sacred mysteries, which withheld from fame,

shunning discussion, are revered the most.

Try all that wit and art suggest to bend

Of thy imperial foe the stubborn knee;

Make treacherous Man thy subject, not thy friend;

Thou mayst command, but never canst be free.

Awe the licentious, and restrain the rude;

Soften the sullen, clear the cloudy brow:

Be, more than princes‟ gifts, thy favours sued;-

She hazards all, who will the least allow.

But hope not, courted idol of mankind,

On this proud eminence secure to stay;

Subdued, thou soon shalt find

Thy coldness soften, and thy pride give way.

Then, then, abandon, each ambitious thought;

Conquest or rule thy heart shall feebly move,

In Nature‟s school, by her soft maxims taught,

That separate rights are lost in mutual love.

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