I, being born a woman and distressed
By all the needs and notions of my kind,
Am urged by your propinquity to find
Your person fair, and feel a certain zest
To bear your body's weight upon my breast:
So subtly is the fume of life designed,
To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind,
And leave me once again undone, possessed.
Think not for this, however, the poor treason
Of my stout blood against my staggering brain,
I shall remember you with love, or season
My scorn wtih pity, -- let me make it plain:
I find this frenzy insufficient reason
For conversation when we meet again.
Christina Rossetti
In an Artist's Studio
This living hand, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
And in the icy silence of the tomb,
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
That thou wouldst wish thine own heart dry of blood
So in my veins red life might stream again,
And thou be conscience-calmed - see here it is -
I hold it towards you.
Children are dumb to say how hot the day is,
How hot the scent is of the summer rose,
How dreadful the black wastes of evening sky,
How dreadful the tall soldiers drumming by.
But we have speech, to chill the angry day,
And speech, to dull the rose's cruel scent.
We spell away the overhanging night,
We spell away the soldiers and the fright.
There's a cool web of language winds us in,
Retreat from too much joy or too much fear:
We grow sea-green at last and coldly die
In brininess and volubility.
But if we let our tongues lose self-possession,
Throwing off language and its watery clasp
Before our death, instead of when death comes,
Facing the wide glare of the children's day,
Facing the rose, the dark sky and the drums,
We shall go mad no doubt and die that way.
A.D. Hope
Advice to Young Ladies
A.U.C. 334 1: About this date
For a sexual misdemeanor, which she denied,
The vestal virgin 2 Postumia was tried.
Livy records it among affairs of state.
They let her off: it seems she was perfectly pure;
The charge arose because some thought her talk
Too witty for a young girl, her eyes, her walk
Too lively, her clothes too smart to be demure.
The Pontifex Maximus, summing up the case,
Warned her in future to abstain from jokes,
To wear less modish and more pious frocks.
She left the court reprieved, but in disgrace.
What then? With her the annalist is less
Concerned than what the men achieved that year:
Plots, quarrels, crimes, with oratory to spare!
I see Postumia with her dowdy dress,
Stiff mouth and listless step; I see her strive
To give dull answers. She had to knuckle down.
A vestal virgin who scandalized that town
Had fair trial, then they buried her alive.3
Alive, bricked up in suffocating dark,
A ration of bread, a pitcher if she was dry,
Preserved the body they did not wish to die
Until her mind was quenched to the last spark.
How many the black maw has swallowed in its time!
Spirited girls who would not know their place;
Talented girls who found that the disgrace
Of being a woman made genius a crime;
How many others, who would not kiss the rod4
Domestic bullying broke or public shame?
Pagan or Christian, it was much the same:
Husbands, St. Paul declared,5 rank next to God.
Livy and Paul, it may be, never knew
That Rome was doomed; each spoke of her with pride.
Tacitus,6 writing after both had died,
Showed that whole fabric rotten through and through.
Historians spend their lives and lavish ink
Explaining how great commonwealths collapse
From great defects of policy -- perhaps
The cause is sometimes simpler than they think.
It may not seem so grave an act to break
Postumia's spirit as Galileo's,7 to gag
Hypatia as crush Socrates,8 or drag
Joan as Giordano Bruno9 to the stake.
Can we be sure? Have more states perished, then,
For having shackled the inquiring mind,
Than whose who, in their folly not less blind,
Trusted the servile womb to breed free men?
1. Ab Urbe Condita, 'from the founding of the city' - Livy records the incident narrated in the first 3 stanzas.
2. Vestal virgins wer the young priestesses who tended the shrine of Vesta, goddess of the hearth.
3. For breaking her vows of chastity, a vestal virgin could be sentenced to be buried alive.
4. As the symbol of obedience and chastisement.
5. In Ephesians v.22: 'Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.'
6. Roman historian who criticized the three Roman emporers who ruled from 68-69
In 1633, the Italian astronomer was forced by the Church to condemn his own scientific conclusions and was for a time imprisoned
7. In 399bc. Socrates was sentenced to die by poison on account of his supposedly subversive teachings. Hypatia as a lady of Alexandria, Egypt, noted for her learning and beauty; she was murdered in 415 ad. allegedly at the behest of an archbishop.
8. Both were burned at the stake, Joan of Arc in 1431 for heresy and sorcery, Bruno in 1600 for theological and scientific heresies.
Theodore Roethke
I Knew a Woman
I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,
When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;
Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:
The shapes a bright container can contain!
Of her choice virtues only gods should speak,
Or English poets who grew up on Greek
(I'd have them sing in chorus, cheek to cheek).
How well her wishes went! She stroked my chin,
She taught me Turn, and Counter-turn, and Stand;
She taught me Touch, that undulant white skin;
I nibbled meekly from her proffered hand;
She was the sickle; I, poor I, the rake,
Coming behind her for her pretty sake
(But what prodigious mowing we did make).
Love likes a gander, and adores a goose:
Her full lips pursed, the errant note to seize;
She played it quick, she played it light and loose,
My eyes, they dazzled at her flowing knees;
Her several parts could keep a pure repose,
Or one hip quiver with a mobile nose
(She moved in circles, and those circles moved).
Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay:
I'm martyr to a motion not my own;
What's freedom for? To know eternity.
I swear she cast a shadow white as stone.
But who would count eternity in days?
These old bones live to learn her wanton ways:
(I measure time by how a body sways).
Dylan Thomas
Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night1
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
1. The poem was written in May, 1951, during the final illness of Dylan Thomas's father.
Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz
In Which She Satisfies a Fear with the Rhetoric of Tears
This afternoon, my love, speaking to you
since I could see that in your face and walk
I failed in coming close to you with talk,
I wanted you to see my heart. Love, who
supported me in what I longed to do,
conquered the impossible to attain.
Amid my tears that were poured out by pain,
my heart became distilled, was broken through.
Enough, my love. Don't be so stiff. Don't let
maddening jealousies and arrogance
haunt you or let your quiet be upset
by foolish shadows: false signs of a man's
presence; for now you see my heart which met
your touch -- and so is shattered in your hands.
Geoffrey Chaucer
Against Women Unconstant
Madame, for youre newefangelnesse,
Many a servant have ye put out of grace.
I take my leve of your unstedefastnesse,
For wel I woot, whil ye have lives space,
Ye can not love ful half yeer in a place,
To newe thing youre lust is ay so keene;
In stede of blew, thus may ye were al greene.
Right as a mirour nothing may enpresse,
But, lightly as it cometh, so mote it pace,
So fareth youre love, youre werkes bereth witnesse.
Ther is no faith that may your herte enbrace;
But, as a wedercok, that turneth his face
With every wind, ye fare, and this is seene;
In stede of blew, thus may ye were al greene.
Ye might be shrined, for youre brothelnesse,
Bet that Dalida, Criseide or Candace;
For ever in chaunging stant youre sikernesse;
That tache may no wight fro yuor herte arace.
If ye lese oon, ye can wel twain purchace;
Al light for somer, ye woot wel what I mene,
In stede of blew, thus may ye were al greene.
A.E. Housman
When I Watch the Living Meet
When I watch the living meet
If the heats of hate and lust
In the nation that is not
Lovers lying two and two
Edmund Waller (1607-1687)
On a Girdle
That which her slender waist confined,
Shall now my joyful temples bind;
No monarch but would give his crown,
His arms might do what this has done.
It was my heaven's extremest sphere,,
The pale which held that lovely dear;
My joy, my grief, my hope, my love
Did all within this circle move!
A narrow compass! and yet there
Dwelt all that's good, and all that's fair;
Give me but what this ribbon bound,
Take all the rest the sun goes round!
"O Winter! bar thine adamantine doors:
The north is thine; there hast thou built thy dark
Deep-founded habitation. Shake not thy roofs,
Nor bend thy pillars with thine iron car."
He hears me not, but o'er the yawning deep
Rides heavy; his storms are unchain'd, sheathed
In ribbed steel; I dare not lift mine eyes,
For he hath rear'd his sceptre o'er the world.
Lo! now the direful monster, whose skin clings
To his strong bones, strides o'er the groaning rocks:
He withers all in silence, and in his hand
Unclothes the earth, and freezes up frail life.
He takes his seat upon the cliffs, -- the mariner
Cries in vain. Poor little wretch, that deal'st
With storms! -- till heaven smiles, and the monster
Is driv'n yelling to his caves beneath Mount Hecla.
Walter Savage Landor
Death Stands Above Me, Whispering Low
Death stands above me, whispering low
There is delight in singing, though nonehear
Beside the singer; and there is delight
In praising, though the praiser sit alone
And see the praised far off him, far above.
Shakespeare is not our poet, but the world's,
Therefore on him no speech; and short for thee,
Browning! Since Chaucer was alive and hale,
No man hath walked along our roads with step
So active, so inquiring eye, or tongue
So varied in discourse. But warmer climes
Give brighter plumage, stronger wing; the breeze
Of Alpine heights thou playest with, borne on
Beyond Sorrento and Amalfi1, where
The Siren waits thee, singing song for song.
1. Towns near Naples which Browning had visited on his second trip to Itally which figure in some of his early poems. According to legend, the Sirens had drowned themselves in despair when Odysseus escaped the lure of their song.