Love Poetry Out Loud (10 page)

He was her man
.

An' he done her wrong

—Mississippi John Hurt, “Frankie”

ROSES WITH THORNS

Sometimes there's just no good way to break it off. In these poems, Rita Dove and Aphra Behn let the raw edges show, as they try to maintain their composure in the face of empty gestures by ex-lovers
.

 

Nothing Gold

Chrysanthemum gets its name from the Greek
(gold), and beneath the showy red-gold flowers its prickly stems make handling it uncomfortable. An appropriate flower, perhaps, for an unpleasant breakup
.

Rita Dove

I
should have known if you gave me flowers

They would be chrysanthemums.

The white spikes singed my fingers.

I cried out; they spilled from the green tissue

And spread at my feet in a pool of soft fire.

If I begged you to stay, what good would it do me?

In the bed, you would lay the flowers between us.

I will pick them up later, arrange them with pincers.

All night from the bureau they'll watch me, their

Plumage as proud, as cocky as firecrackers.

Aphra Behn

B
y Heaven 'tis false, I am not vain;

And rather would the subject be

Of your indifference, or disdain,

Than wit or raillery.

Take back the trifling praise you give,

And pass it on some other fool,

Who may the injuring wit believe,

That turns her into ridicule.

Tell her, she's witty, fair, and gay,

With all the charms that can subdue:

Perhaps she'll credit what you say;

But curse me if I do.

If your diversion you design,

Or my good-nature you have prest:

Or if you do intend it mine,

You have mistook the jest.

 

Secret Agent

Aphra Behn was an English spy in the seventeenth century, so she knew deceit when she saw it. Espionage was not very remunerative, though, and to pay her debts she turned to writing plays, poems, and novels, becoming the first woman in England to earn a living with her pen
.

Raillery =
Loud joking
.

Diversion =
Amusement
.

Prest =
Imposed upon
.

 

TOGETHER AND APART

Many famous love affairs have been conducted through the mail or over the wire, spanning oceans and continents. But in general, distance and separation do not make for satisfying relationships. Here are two poets contemplating separation, one by distance and one by time
.

 

Pass mildly away =
Die
.

Floods … tempests =
Showy conventions of Petrarchan love poetry
.

Laity =
The uninitiated
.

Moving =
Earthquakes
.

Spheres =
The concentric spheres that make up the Ptolemaic universe
.

Sublunary =
Those who live beneath the moon—ordinary humans
.

Elemented =
Compounded from elements
.

John Donne

A
s virtuous men pass mildly away,

And whisper to their souls, to go,

Whilst some of their sad friends do say,

The breath goes now, and some say, no:

So let us melt, and make no noise,

No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move,

'Twere profanation of our joys

To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears,

Men reckon what it did and meant,

But trepidation of the spheres,

Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers' love

(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit

Absence, because it doth remove

Those things which elemented it.

But we by a love, so much refined,

That our selves know not what it is,

Inter-assured of the mind,

Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,

Though I must go, endure not yet

A breach, but an expansion,

Like gold to aery thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so

As stiff twin compasses are two,

Thy soul the fixed foot, makes no show

To move, but doth, if th' other do.

And though it in the centre sit,

Yet when the other far doth roam,

It leans, and hearkens after it,

And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must

Like th' other foot, obliquely run;

Thy firmness makes my circle just,

And makes me end, where I begun.

 

Elements of a Good-bye

A valediction is a good-bye, as any high school valedictorian will probably tell you. How to say good-bye, though, is not something you learn in school. “This isn't good-bye.” one lover says. But separation often means the end of love. Donne protests here that such is not the case, that absence only takes the elemental gold of love and makes it thinner, finer, more delicate
.

Miss =
It's not a specific part that's missed
.

Compasses =
Two-pronged instruments used to draw circles or measure intervals
.

Just =
A perfect circle
.

 

Gonne Again

The famous Irish beauty Maud Gonne was long the object of W. B. Yeats's adoration indeed, she's the focus of all three Yeats poems in this book. She mostly kept him at arm's length, though, and later married a “drunken vainglorious lout” (Yeats's words) active in the Irish independence movement. In this poem by the young Yeats, the poet seems to sense that no happy ending awaits, and imagines his love old and alone in years to come
.

Love … crowd of stars =
How idealized love banished earthly, “real” love
.

W. B. Yeats

W
hen you are old and grey and full of sleep,

And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,

And loved your beauty with love false or true,

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

And loved the sorrows of your changing face.

And bending down beside the glowing bars,

Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled

And paced upon the mountains overhead

And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

Grace Hazard Conkling

I
will not give thee all my heart

For that I need a place apart

To dream my dreams in, and I know

Few sheltered ways for dreams to go:

But when I shut the door upon

Some secret wonder—still, withdrawn —

Why does thou love me even more,

And hold me closer than before?

When I of love demand the least,

Thou biddest him to fire and feast:

When I am hungry and would eat,

There is no bread, though crusts were sweet.

If I with manna may be fed,

Shall I go all uncomforted?

Nay! Howsoever dear thou art,

I will not give thee all my heart.

A PROPER RESERVE

Society teaches us to hold back something of ourselves, but what's not said between two lovers can become more important than what is. The next two poems are portraits of reserve, one before it becomes a problem, the other one after
.

 

Manna =
Heavenly food that sustained the Israelites in the wilderness when they had no bread
.

 

Seduced and Abandoned?

As a means of self-preservation, the speaker in Conkling's poem resists the urge to give herself up entirely to her lover, whom she suspects will discard her as soon as he “solves” her mystery
.

 

Bad Sun Rising

Imagine this setting near a lovely pond, with green leaves, birds singing, and light in the lovers' eyes, and you can perhaps imagine the deception that Hardy mentions here—the way in which he saw what he wanted then, and now sees it for what it was
.

Chidden of =
Scolded by
.

More by our love =
This is tricky to read; it helps if you pause between “by” and “our.” so that the sense of the line is that their love deteriorated further because of the words exchanged
.

Thomas Hardy

W
e stood by a pond that winter day,

And the sun was white, as though chidden of God,

And a few leaves lay on the starving sod;

— They had fallen from an ash, and were gray.

Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove

Over tedious riddles of years ago;

And some words played between us to and fro

On which lost the more by our love.

The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing

Alive enough to have strength to die;

And a grin of bitterness swept thereby

Like an ominous bird a-wing. …

Since then, keen lessons that love deceives,

And wrings with wrong, have shaped to me

Your face, and the God-curst sun, and a tree,

And a pond edged with grayish leaves.

James Joyce

I
hear an army charging upon the land,

And the thunder of horses plunging, foam about their knees:

Arrogant, in black armor, behind them stand,

Disdaining the reins, with fluttering whips, the charioteers.

They cry unto the night their battle-name:

I moan in sleep when I hear afar their whirling laughter.

They cleave the gloom of dreams, a blinding flame,

Clanging, clanging upon the heart as upon an anvil.

They come shaking in triumph their long green hair:

They come out of the sea and run shouting by the shore.

My heart, have you no wisdom thus to despair?

My love, my love, my love, why have you left me alone?

 

SOUND AND SILENCE

Heavy metal rock ballads excepted, loud noises and harsh sounds aren't generally associated with tender sentiments. Here are two poems in which the sound echoes the sense
.

 

Bad Dreams

Dreams are often silent. Not this one. James Joyce gained fame as a novelist, but also published two little-known books of verse that are notable for their delicate evocation of sound and spirit. Listen to the sounds of the words in this poem from
Chamber Music
and to how they reflect the sounds of a nightmare
.

 

Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name

Oscar Wilde, famed as a glib conversationalist and witty raconteur, writes in this poem about being struck dumb by love. With good reason. He had to keep his homosexuality “in the closet.” When he was publicly “outed.” he was put on trial under sensational circumstances, convicted, imprisoned, and ruined financially
.

Silentium Amoris =
The Silence of Love
.

Oscar Wilde

A
s often-times the too resplendent sun

Hurries the pallid and reluctant moon

Back to her sombre cave, ere she hath won

A single ballad from the nightingale,

So doth thy Beauty make my lips to fail,

And all my sweetest singing out of tune.

And as at dawn across the level mead

On wings impetuous some wind will come,

And with its too harsh kisses break the reed