Stallworthy, Jon (ed.);
A book of love poetry
Oxford University Press US, 1986, 416 pages [gbook]
ISBN 0195042328, 9780195042320
topics: | poetry | romance | anthology
Turn from page to page, from Hafiz to Betjeman. Love never goes stale, I guess.
Burn Ovid with the rest. Lovers will find A hedge-school for themselves and learn by heart All that the clergy banish from the mind, When hands are joined and head bows in the dark
(tr. from Persian : Peter Avery and John Heath-Stubbs) The lips of the one I love are my perpetual pleasure: The Lord be praised, for my heart's desire is attained. O Fate, cherish my darling close to your breast: Present now the golden wine-cup, now the rubies of those lips. They talk scandal about us, and say we are drunks - The silly old men, the elders lost in their error. But we have done pennance on the pious man's behalf, And ask God's pardon for what the religious do. O my dear, how can I speak of being apart from you? The eyes know a hundred tears, and the soul has a hundred sighs. I'd not have even an infidel suffer the torment of your beauty has caused To the cypress which envies your body, and the moon that's outshone by your face. Desire for your lips has stolen from Hafiz' thought His evening lectionary, and reciting the Book at dawn. p.108-109
[Bhartrhari] (John Brough) She who is always in my thoughts prefers Another man, and does not think of me. Yet he seeks for another's love, not hers; And some poor girl is grieving for my sake. Why then, the devil take Both her and him; and love; and her; and me. p. 218
In former days we'd both agree That you were me, and I was you. What has now happened to us two, That you are you, and I am me? p.211
Drunk as drunk on turpentine From your open kisses, Your wet body wedged Between my wet body and the strake Of our boat that is made of flowers, Feasted, we guide it - our fingers Like tallows adorned with yellow metal - Over the sky's hot rim, The day's last breath in our sails. Pinned by the sun between solstice And equinox, drowsy and tangled together We drifted for months and woke With the bitter taste of land on our lips, Eyelids all sticky, and we longed for lime And the sound of a rope Lowering a bucket down its well. Then, We came by night to the Fortunate Isles, And lay like fish Under the net of our kisses. (tr. Christopher Logue)
I have loved you; even now I may confess, Some embers of my love their fire retain but do not let it cause you more distress, I do not want to sadden you again. Hopeless and tonguetied, yet, I loved you dearly With pangs the jealous and the timid know; So tenderly I loved you- so sincerely; I pray God grant another love you so. (tr. Reginald Mainwaring Hewitt)
O Jenny, don't sobby! vor I shall be true; Noo might under heaven shall peart me vrom you. My heart will be cwold, Jenny, when I do slight The zwell o' thy bosom, the eyes' sparklen light. My kinsvo'k would fain zee me teake for my meate A maid that ha' wealth, but a maid I should heate; But I'd sooner leabour wi' thee vor my bride, Than live lik' a squier wi' any bezide. Vor all busy kinsvo'k, my love will be still A-zet upon thee lik' the vir in the hill; An' though they mid worry, an' dreaten, an' mock, My head's in the storm, but my root's in the rock. Zoo, Jenny, don't sobby! vor I shall be true; Noo might under heaven shall peart me vrom you. My heart will be cwold, Jenny, when I do slight The zwell o' thy bosom, thy eyes' sparklen light. [William Barnes wrote many poems in the Dorset dialect.]
Some people cannot endure Looking down from the parapet atop the Empire State Or the Statue of Liberty–they go limp, insecure, The vertiginous height hums to their numbered bones Some homily on Fate; Neither virtue past nor vow to be good atones To the queasy stomach, the quick, Involuntary softening of the bowels. “What goes up must come down,” it hums: the ultimate, sick Joke of Fortuna. The spine, the world vibrates With terse, ruthless avowals From “The Life of More”, “A Mirror For Magistrates.” And there are heights of spirit. And one of these is love. From way up here, I observe the puny view, without much merit, Of all my days. High on the house are nailed Banners of pride and fear. And that small wood to the west, the girls I have failed. It is, on the whole, rather glum: The cyclone fence, the tar-stained railroad ties, With, now and again, surprising the viewer, some Garden of selflessness or effort. And, as I must, I acknowledge on this high rise The ancient metaphysical distrust. But candor is not enough, Nor is it enough to say that I don’t deserve Your gentle, dazzling love, or to be in love. That goddess is remorseless, watching us rise In all our ignorant nerve, And when we have reached the top, putting us wise. My dear, in spite of this, And the moralized landscape down there below, Neither of which might seem the ground for bliss, Know that I love you, know that you are most dear To one who seeks to know How, for your sake, to confront his pride and fear.
The praisers of women in their proud and beautiful poems,
Naming the grave mouth and the hair and the eyes,
Boasted those they loved should be forever remembered:
These were lies.
The words sound but the face in the Istrian sun is forgotten.
The poet speaks but to her dead ears no more.
The sleek throat is gone -- and the breast that was troubled to listen:
Shadow from door.
Therefore I will not praise your knees nor your fine walking
Telling you men shall remember your name as long
As lips move or breath is spent or the iron of English
Rings from a tongue.
I shall say you were young, and your arms straight, and your mouth scarlett:
I shall say you will die and none will remember you:
Your arms change, and none remember the swish of your garments,
Nor the click of your shoe.
Not with my hand's strength, not with difficult labor
Springing the obstinate words to the bones of your breast
And the stubborn line to your young stride and the breath to your breathing
And the beat to your haste
Shall I prevail on the hearts of unborn men to remember.
(What is a dead girl but a shadowy ghost
Or a dead man's voice but a distant and vain affirmation
Like dream words most)
Therefore I will not speak of the undying glory of women.
I will say you were young and straight and your skin fair
And you stood in the door and the sun was a shadow of leaves on your shoulders
And a leaf on your hair --
I will not speak of the famous beauty of dead women:
I will say the shape of a leaf lay once on your hair.
Till the world ends and the eyes are out and the mouths broken
Look! It is there!
(tr. Basil Bunting, 1900-1985) Came to me – Who? She. When? In the dawn, afraid. What of? Anger. Whose? Her father’s. Confide! I kissed her twice. Where? On her moist mouth. No. What then? Cornelian. How was it? Sweet. [cornelian is a red stone. what does it stand for, I wonder.] [Persian poet Mohammad Rudaki (Rudagi or Rudhagi), (858-941), court poet to the Samanid ruler Nasr II (914-943) in Bukhara, but the king was ousted and he may have been blinded; died in poverty. ]
(tr. Christopher Marlowe) In summer's heat, and mid-time of the day, To rest my limbs upon a bed I lay; One window shut, the other open stood, Which gave such light as twinkles in a wood, Like twilight glimpse at setting of the sun, Or night being past, and yet not day begun. Such light to shamefaced maidens must be shown, Where they may sport, and seem to be unknown. Then came Corinna in a long loose gown, Her white neck hid with tresses hanging down, Resembling fair Semiramis going to bed Or Lais of a thousand wooers sped. I snatched her gown: being thin, the harm was small, Yet strived she to be covered there withal. And striving thus, as one that would be cast, Betrayed herself, and yielded at the last. Stark naked as she stood before mine eye, Not one wen in her body could I spy. What arms and shoulders did I touch and see! How apt her breasts were to be pressed by me! How smooth a belly under her waist saw I, How large a leg, and what a lusty thigh! To leave the rest, all liked me passing well, I clinged her naked body, down she fell: Judge you the rest; being tired she bade me kiss; Jove send me more such afternoons as this!
i like my body when it is with your body. It is so quite new a thing. Muscles better and nerves more. i like your body. i like what it does, i like its hows. i like to feel the spine of your body and its bones, and the trembling -firm-smoothness which i will again and again and again kiss, i like kissing this and that of you, i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes over parting flesh… And eyes big love-crumbs, and possibly i like the thrill of under me you so quite new edward estlin cummings (1894-1962) born in Cambridge, Massachusetts,USA, son of a pastor. his mother encouraged him from an early age to write verse and keep a journal. graduated magna cum laude in Greek and English from Harvard (A.B. in 1915, M.A. in 1916). inducted into world war I, spent time in paris as ambulance assistant. imprisoned for being a possible spy. a number of inmates were kept in a large room - wrote the enormous room - where he describes the inmates in his room - many of whom were imprisoned just because they couldn't speak the language, and many others who were outright insane. experimented radically with form, punctuation, spelling and syntax, abandoning traditional techniques and structures to create a new, highly idiosyncratic means of poetic expression.
Introduction 19 (10) Ezra Pound : Commission 29 (4)
Roy Campbell: The Sisters 33
Laurie Lee: Milkmaid 34
Thomas Randolph: The Milkmaid's Epithalamium 34
W. B. Yeats: Brown Penny 36
Sir John Betjeman: Myfanwy 36
Patrick MacDonogh: She Walked Unaware 38
Charles Cotton: Two Rural Sisters 39
Richard Crashaw: Wishes to His Supposed Mistress 40
Austin Clarke: Penal Law 44
Robert Graves: Symptoms of Love 45
John Berryman: Go, ill-sped book, and whisper to her or 49
John Clare: First Love 49
Christina Rossetti: The First Day 50
Elizabeth Barrett Browning: How do I love thee? Let me
count the Ways (Sonnet xliii, from the Portuguese) 51
William Barnes: A Zong: O Jenny, don't sobby!
vor I shall be true 51
Robert Burns: Song: O whistle, and I'll come to ye, my lad 52
Henry Carey: Sally in our Alley 53 (2)
Anthony Hecht: Going the Rounds: A Sort of Love Poem 55
William Shakespeare: Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? 56
Edmund Spenser: One day I wrote her name upon the strand 57
Archibald Macleish: `Not Marble nor the Gilded Monuments' 57
W.B. Yeats: A Drinking Song 59
Ben Jonson: To Celia 59
Edgar Allan Poe: To Helen 60
Lord Byron: She Walks in Beauty 61
Sir Henry Wotton: Elizabeth of Bohemia 61
Thomas Campion: Cherry-Ripe 62
Sir Charles Sedley: To Cloris 63
William Shakespeare: My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun 64
Geoffrey Chaucer: from Merciless Beauty 64
Walter Davison Ode: At her fair hands how have
I grace entreated 65
John Keats: I cry your mercy - pity - love! - aye, love! 66
Edmund Spenser: Iambicum Trimetrum 67
Thomas Campion: Vobiscum est Iope 68
Alexander Pushkin: I loved you; even now I may confess 68
Robert Graves: Love Without Hope 69
Percy Bysshe Shelley: To--- 69
William Shakespeare: That time of year thou
may'st in me behold 70
T.S. Eliot: A Dedication to My Wife 70
Robert Herrick: To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time 75
John Fletcher: Love's Emblems 75
Sir Richard Fanshawe: Of Beauty 76
Pierre De Ronsard: Corinna in Vendome 77
Edmund Waller: Go, lovely Rose 77
William Shakespeare: Feste's Song from Twelfth Night 78
Thomas Hood: Ruth 79
Percy Bysshe Shelley: Love's Philosophy 80
Andrew Marvell: To His Coy Mistress 80
Thomas Moore: An Argument 82
John Donne: The Flea 82
John Wilmot: Written in a Lady's Prayer Book 83
Christopher Marlowe: The Passionate Shepherd to His Love 84
Sir Walter Ralegh: Her Reply 85
Cecil Day Lewis: Come, live with me and be my love 86
Louis MacNeice: For X 87
John Keats: This living hand, now warm and capable 88
Sir Thomas Wyatt: To His Lute 88
John Heath-Stubbs: Beggar's Serenade 90
John Crowe Ransom: Piazza Piece 90
Christopher Smart: The Author Apologizes to a Lady
for His Being a Little Man 91
William Walsh: Lyce 92
John Donne: To His Mistress Going to Bed 93
Robert Graves: from The Song of Solomon: Chapter 2 97
St John of the Cross: Upon a gloomy night 99
Robert Browning: Meeting at Night 100
F.T. Prince: The Question 101
Dante Gabriel Rossetti: Sudden Light 102
Anon: Plucking the Rushes 102
Sir John Betjeman: A Subaltern's Love-song 103
Charles of Orleans: My ghostly father, I me confess 105
Sir Thomas Wyatt: Alas! madam, for stealing of a kiss 105
Coventry Patmore: The Kiss 106
Thomas Moore: Did Not 106
Petronius Arbiter: Doing, a filthy pleasure is, and short 107
John Berryman: Keep your eyes open when you kiss: do: when 107
Robert Browning: from In a Gondola 108
Hafiz: The lips of the one I love are my perpetual pleasure 108
Hugo Williams: Some Kisses from The Kama Sutra 109
Rudaki: Came to me 110
Pablo Neruda: Drunk as Drunk on turpentine 111
Alfred Lord Tennyson: from The Princess 112
D.H. Lawrence: New Year's Eve 112
Theodore Roethke: She 113
Ovid: Elegy 5 115
Algernon Charles Swinburne: In the Orchard 115
John Berryman: Our Sunday morning when dawn-priests
were applying 117
Robert Graves: Down, Wanton, Down! 117
Anon: I gently touched her hand: she gave 118
e.e. cummings: may i feel said he 119
Thomas Carew: On the Marriage of T.K. and C.C.
the Morning Stormy 120
Edmund Spenser: Epithalamion 121 (14)
Walt Whitman: From pent-up, aching rivers 135
A.D. Hope: The Gateway 138
Stephen Spender: Daybreak 138
Richard Brinsley Sheridan: The Geranium 139
Abraham Cowley: Dialogue: After Enjoyment 141
Sir Charles Sedley: On the happy Corydon and Phyllis 143
Catullus: Phyllis Corydon clutched to him 145
Fleur Adcock: Note on Propertius 1.5 146
Richard Duke: After the fiercest pangs of hot desire 147
John Dryden: Song: Whilst Alexis lay pressed 147
e.e. cummings: i like my body when it is with your 148
John Donne: The Ecstasy 149 (3)
William Davenant: Under the Willow-Shades 152
Boris Pasternak: Hops 152
W.R. Rodgers: The Net 153
Algernon Charles Swinburne: Love and Sleep 154
W.H. Auden: Lay your sleeping head, my love 155
W.B. Yeats: Lullaby 156
Alan Ross: In Bloemfontein 157
Robert Graves: She Tells Her Love While Half Asleep 158
Elizabeth Jennings: Winter Love 159
John Donne: The Sun Rising 159
John Donne: The Good Morrow 160
Jacques Prevert: Alicante 161
W.H. Auden: Fish in the unruffled lakes 161
John Heath-Stubbs: The Unpredicted 162
Petronius Arbiter: Good God, what a night that was 163
Lawrence Durrell: This Unimportant Morning 163
Robert Graves: The Quiet Glades of Eden 164
Lawrence Ferlinghetti: Away Above a Harborful 165
Harry Fainlight: A Bride 166
C.P. Cavafy: On the Street 167
Robert Creeley: The Way 167
Robert Lowell: Man and Wife 168
Sir John Harington: The Author to His Wife, of a
Woman's Eloquence 169
Anon Madrigal: My Love in her attire doth show her wit 169
Octavio Paz: Touch 170
Charles Baudelaire: The Jewels 170
J.M. Synge: Dread 171
Ted Hughes: September 172
Guillaume Apollinaire: The Mirabeau Bridge 173
Andrei Voznesensky: Dead Still 174
e.e. cummings: Somewhere i have never travelled,
gladly beyond 175
Sir Thomas Wyatt: Once as methought Fortune me kissed 175
Sir Philip Sidney: My true love hath my heart, and I
have his 177
Edwin Muir: In Love for Long 177
Sir Walter Scott: An Hour with Thee 179
John Donne: The Anniversary 180
Theodore Roethke: I Knew a Woman 181
John Wilmot: A Song of a Young Lady to Her Ancient Lover 182
Lord Byron: So, we'll go no more a-roving 183
Fyodor Tyutchev: Last Love 183
Robert Burns: John Anderson my Jo 184
W.B. Yeats: A Last Confession 185
William Congreve: Song: Pious Selinda goes to prayers 189
Anon: Fragment of a Song on the Beautiful Wife of Dr
John Overall, Dean of St Paul's 189
Sir John Harington: Of an Heroical Answer of a Great Roman
Lady to Her Husband 190
Federico Garcia Lorca: The Faithless Wife 190
Abraham Cowley: Honour 192
John Wilmot: The Imperfect Enjoyment 193
Thomas Hardy: The Ruined Maid 195
Thomas Randolph: Phyllis 196
Matthew Prior: Chaste Florimel 197
Alexander Pope: Two or Three: a Recipe to make a Cuckold 198
Ovid: To His Mistress 199 (3)
Ezra Pound: The Temperaments 202
John Berryman: Filling her compact & delicious body 202
Hilaire Belloc: Juliet 203
John Press: Womanisers 203
Edna St Vincent Millay: I, being born a woman and distressed 204
Robert Henryson: Robene and Makyne 205 (5)
George Wither: A Lover's Resolution 210
A.E. Housman: Oh, when I was in love with you 211
Bhartrhari: In former days we'd both agree 211
Robert Graves: The Thieves 212
Abraham Cowley: The Welcome 212
Sir John Suckling: Out upon it, I have loved 214
John Wilmot: Love and Life 214
Richard Lovelace: The Scrutiny 215
Martial: Lycoris darling, once I burned for you 216
John Donne: The Indifferent 216
D.H. Lawrence: Intimates 217
Bhartrhari: She who is always in my thoughts prefers 218
Walter Savage Landor: You smiled, you spoke, and I believed 218
Richard Weber: Elizabeth in Italy 219
John Wilmot: A Song: Absent from thee, I languish still 220
Robert Graves: A Slice of Wedding Cake 220
Anon: Walking in a meadow green 225
Thom Gunn: Carnal Knowledge 226
Anon: She lay all naked in her bed 228
Anon: Anbade 229
John Donne: Song: Sweetest love, I do not go 229
Robert Burns: A Red Red Rose 231
Hart Crane: Carrier Letter 232
e.e. cummings: it may not always be so; and i say 232
Alun Lewis: Postscript: For Gweno 233
W.H. Auden: Dear, though the night is gone 233
Robert Browning: The Last Ride Together 234 (4)
Robert Browning: The Lost Mistress 238
Michael Drayton: Since there's no help, come let us
kiss and part 239
Ernest Dowson: A Valediction 239
Coventry Patmore: A Farewell 240
Alun Lewis: Goodbye 241
John Donne: On His Mistress 242
John Gay: Sweet William's Farewell to Black-eyed Susan 244
Robert Burns: Song: Ae fond kiss, and then we sever 246
Emily Dickinson: My life closed twice before its close 247
Edward Thomas: Like the Touch of Rain 247
Harold Monro: The Terrible Door 248
Thomas Hardy: In the Vaulted Way 248
Anna Akhmatova: I wrung my hands under my dark veil 249
Brian Patten: Party Piece 250
Yehuda Amichai: A Pity. We Were Such a Good Invention 250
Lord Byron: When we two parted 251
Alice Meynell: Renouncement 252
Alain Chartier: I turn you out of doors 253
Alexander Pope: Epistle to Miss Blount, on her Leaving
the Town, after the Coronation 254
Walter Savage Landor: What News 255
Li Po [Rihaku: The Wife's Complaint 257
The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter 256
Anon: The Wife's Complaint 257
Ernest Dowson: Exile 259
Lady Heguri: A thousand years, you said 260
Christina Rossetti: Remember 260
Christina Rossetti: Song: When I am dead, my dearest 261
Philip Bourke Marston: Inseparable 262
e.e. cummings: if i should sleep with a lady called death 263
John Cornford: Huesca 264
Henry King: The Surrender 265
R.S. Thomas: Madrigal: Your love is dead, lady, your
love is dead 266
Luis de Camoens: Dear gentle soul, who went so soon away 266
Lady Catherine Dyer: Epitaph on the Monument of Sir
William Dyer at Colmworth, 1641 267
Henry King: Exequy on His Wife 268 (3)
John Milton: Methought I saw my late espoused saint 271
Sir Henry Wotton: Upon the Death of Sir Albert
Morton's Wife 272
Sappho: Mother, I cannot mind my wheel 275
Sir Philip Sidney: With how sad steps, O moon, thou
climb'st the skies! 275
Sir John Suckling: A Doubt of Martyrdom 276
Matthew Arnold: To Marguerite -- Continued 277
Andrew Marvell: The Definition of Love 278
Petrarch: Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind 279
Sir Thomas Wyatt: I abide and abide and better abide 280
Thomas Campion: Kind are her answers 280
Catullus: Lesbia loads me night & day with her curses 281
Meleager: Busy with love, the bumble bee 281
William Blake: My Pretty Rose Tree 282
William Walsh: Love and Jealousy 282
Sir John Suckling: Song: Why so pale and wan, fond lover? 282
Tony Connor: Apologue 283
Donald Justice: In Bertram's Garden 284
Louis MacNeice: Christina 284
Oliver Goldsmith: Song: When lovely woman stoops to folly 285
John Dryden: Farewell ungrateful traitor 286
Anon: Oh! the time that is past 287
Charles Baudelaire: Damned Women 288 (4)
A.E. Housman: When I was one-and-twenty 292
W.B. Yeats: Never Give All the Heart 292
Christina Rossetti: Mirage 293
Robert Burns: The Banks o'Doon 293
William Blake: The Sick Rose 294
Sir Walter Ralegh: A Farewell to False Love 295
Yehuda Amichai: Quick and Bitter 296
Dante Gabriel Rossetti: from The House of Life: Severed Selves 297
W.D. Snodgrass: No Use 297
Hugh MacDiarmid: O Wha's the Bride? 298
Charlotte Mew: The Farmer's Bride 299
Louis MacNeice: Les Sylphides 301
Jonathan Price: A Considered Reply to a Child 302
Philip Larkin: Talking in Bed 303
Edward Thomas: And You, Helen 303
George Meredith: from Modern Love 304
George MacDonald: A Mammon-Marriage 305
Robert Graves: Call It a Good Marriage 307
Thomas Hardy: The Newcomer's Wife 308
Anon: Bonny Barbara Allan 309
Mary Coleridge: `My True Love Hath My Heart and I Have His' 310
Thomas Hardy: Bereft 311
Francis William Bourdillon: The night has a thousand eyes 312 (3)
W.B. Yeats: When You Are Old 315
Robert Burns: Song: It was upon a Lammas night 315
Paul Eluard: Curfew 317
W.B. Yeats: Whence Had They Come? 317
Robert Graves: Never Such Love 318
Meleager: Love's night & a lamp 319
Hedylos: Seduced Girl 319
Maturai Eruttalan Centamputan: What She Said 320
Alexander Scott: A Rondel of Love 320
George Granville Baron Lansdowne: Love 321
William Congreve: False though she be to me and love 322
Sir Walter Ralegh: Walsingham 322
Dante Gabriel Rossetti: An Old Song Ended 324
Francois Villon: The Old Lady's Lament for Her Youth 325 (3)
W.B. Yeats: Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop 328
Horace: The young bloods come round less often now 328
Queen Elizabeth: When I was fair and young and favour
graced me 329
Louis Simpson: As birds are fitted to the boughs 330
Henry Reed: from Lessons of the War: Judging Distance 331
Thomas Hardy: Under the Waterfall 332
Edwin Morgan: Strawberries 334
Thomas Hardy: A Thunderstorm in Town 335
Wilfrid Blunt: Farewell to Juliet 336
Stevie Smith: I Remember 336
Arthur Symons: White Heliotrope 337
W.B. Yeats: Chosen 337
Yehuda Amichai: We Did It 338
Louis Simpson: The Custom of the World 339
William Soutar: The Trysting Place 340
Paul Dehn: At the Dark Hour 341
Sir Edward Dyer: A Silent Love 341
W.H. Auden: Song of the Master and Boatswain 342
Thomas Hardy: The Ballad-Singer 343
Edna St Vincent Millay: What lips my lips have kissed, and
where, and why 343
Derek Mahon: Girls in Their Seasons 344
John Wilmot: The Disabled Debauchee 345
Sir Thomas Wyatt: Remembrance 347
Robert Graves: The Wreath 348
Lord Byron: Remember thee! remember thee! 348
Arthur Symons: A Tune 349
Ernest Dowson: Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae 349
A.E. Housman: The rainy Pleiads wester 350
Anon: Western wind, when will thou blow 350
W.B. Yeats: After Long Silence 351
Donald Davie: Time Passing, Beloved 351
George Crabbe: A Marriage Ring 352
John Donne: The Funeral 352
Robert Lowell: The Old Flame 353
Anonymous Frontier Guard: While the leaves of the
bamboo rustle 355
Thomas Hardy: Two Lips 355
William Wordsworth: She dwelt among the untrodden ways 355
William Barnes: The Wife A-Lost 356
Emily Bronte: Remembrance 357
Paul Verlaine: You would have understood me, had you waited 358
Edgar Allan Poe: To One in Paradise 360
William Wordsworth: Surprised by joy -- impatient as the wind 361
William Barnes: Sonnet: In every dream thy lovely features rise 361
John Clare: To Mary: It Is the Evening Hour 362
Alfred Lord Tennyson: In the Valley of Cauteretz 363
Thomas Hardy: The Voice 363
Alfred Lord Tennyson: Oh! that 'twere possible 364 (3)
Walter Savage Landor: Rose Aylmer 367
Christina Rossetti: Echo 368
Pablo Neruda: Tonight I can write the saddest lines 369
C.P. Cavafy: To Remain 370
Dylan Thomas: In My Craft or Sullen Art 371
Thomas Hard: In Time of `The Breaking of Nations' 372
Index of Poets and Translators 373 (6)
Index of Titles and First Lines 379
"Stallworthy's book of love poetry, ranging across more than twenty centuries of writing about love 'till the stars have run away' establishes beyond the eye-shadow of a doubt that love is, has been and always will be blind."--Christian Science Monitor "A very thorough job...eccentric and entertaining."--Times Literary Supplement