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Love and Marriage Poems - 45

To M by Lord Byron

Oh! did those eyes, instead of fire,
With bright, but mild affection shine:
Though they might kindle less desire,
Love, more than mortal, would be thine.

For thou art form'd so heavenly fair,
Howe'er those orbs may wildly beam,
We must admire, but still despair;
That fatal glance forbids esteem.

When Nature stamp'd thy beauteous birth,
So much perfection in thee shone,
She fear'd that, too divine for earth,
The skies might claim thee for their own.

Therefore, to guard her dearest work,
Lest angels might dispute the prize,
She bade a secret lightning lurk,
Within those once celestial eyes.

These might the boldest Sylph appall,
When gleaming with meridian blaze;
Thy beauty must enrapture all;
But who can dare thine ardent gaze?

'Tis said that Berenice's hair,
In stars adorns the vault of heaven;
But they would ne'er permit thee there,
Who wouldst so far outshine the seven.

For did those eyes as planets roll,
Thy sister-lights would scarce appear:
E'en suns, which systems now control,
Would twinkle dimly through their sphere.

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An Elegy on the Lady Markham by Francis Beaumont

As unthrifts groan in straw for their pawn'd beds,
As women weep for their lost maidenheads,
When both are without hope or remedy,
Such an untimely grief I have for thee.
I never saw thy face, nor did my heart
Urge forth mine eyes unto it whilst thou wert;
But being lifted hence, that, which to thee
Was death's sad dart, proved Cupid's shaft to me.
Whoever thinks me foolish that the force
Of a report can make me love a corse,
Know he that when with this I do compare
The love I do a living woman bear,
I find myself most happy: now I know
Where I can find my mistress, and can go
Unto her trimm'd bed, and can lift away
Her grass-green mantle, and her sheet display;
And touch her naked; and though th' envious mold
In which she lies uncover'd, moist, and cold,
Strive to corrupt her, she will not abide
With any art her blemishes to hide,
As many living do, and, know their need;
Yet cannot they in sweetness her exceed,
But make a stink with all their art and skill,
Which their physicians warrant with a bill;
Nor at her door doth heaps of coaches stay,
Footmen and midwives to bar up my way;
Nor needs she any maid or page to keep,
To knock me early from my golden sleep,
With letters that her honour all is gone,
If I not right her cause on such a one.
Her heart is not so hard to make me pay
For every kiss a supper and a play:
Nor will she ever open her pure lips
To utter oaths, enough to drown our ships,
To bring a plague, a famine, or the sword,
Upon the land, though she should keep her word;
Yet, ere an hour be past, in some new vein
Break them, and swear them double o'er again.
Pardon me, that with thy blest memory
I mingle mine own former misery:
Yet dare I not excuse the fate that brought
These crosses on me, for then every thought
That tended to thy love was black and foul,
Now all as pure as a new-baptiz'd soul:
For I protest, for all that I can see,
I would not lie one night in bed with thee;
Nor am I jealous, but could well abide
My foe to lie in quiet by thy side.
You worms, my rivals, whilst she was alive,
How many thousands were there that did strive
To have your freedom? for their sake forbear
Unseemly holes in her soft skin to wear:
But if you must (as what worms can abstain
To taste her tender body?) yet refrain
With your disordered eatings to deface her,
But feed yourselves so as you most may grace her.
First, through her ear-tips see you make a pair
Of holes, which, as the moist inclosed air
Turns into water, may the clean drops take,
And in her ears a pair of jewels make.
Have ye not yet enough of that white skin,
The touch whereof, in times past, would have been
Enough to have ransom'd many a thousand soul
Captive to love? If not, then upward roll
Your little bodies, where I would you have
This Epitaph upon her forehead grave:
'Living, she was young, fair, and full of wit;
Dead, all her faults are in her forehead writ.'

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The Hills of Georgia by Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin

The hills of Georgia are covered by the night;
Ahead Aragva runs through stone,
My feeling's sad and light; my sorrow is bright;
My sorrow is full of you alone,

Of you, of only you... My everlasting gloom
Meets neither troubles nor resistance.
Again inflames and loves my poor heart, for whom
Without love, 'tis no existence.

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Portrait of a Lady by T. S. Eliot

I

Among the smoke and fog of a December afternoon
You have the scene arrange itself--as it will seem to do--
With 'I have saved this afternoon for you';
And four wax candles in the darkened room,
Four rings of light upon the ceiling overhead,
An atmosphere of Juliet's tomb
Prepared for all the things to be said, or left unsaid.
We have been, let us say, to hear the latest Pole
Transmit the Preludes, through his hair and finger-tips.
'So intimate, this Chopin, that I think his soul
Should be resurrected only among friends
Some two or three, who will not touch the bloom
That is rubbed and questioned in the concert room.'
--And so the conversation slips
Among velleities and carefully caught regrets
Through attenuated tones of violins
Mingled with remote cornets
And begins.

'You do not know how much they mean to me, my friends,
And how, how rare and strange it is, to find
In a life composed so much, so much of odds and ends,
(For indeed I do not love it ... you knew? you are not blind!
How keen you are!)
To find a friend who has these qualities,
Who has, and gives
Those qualities upon which friendship lives.
How much it means that I say this to you--
Without these friendships--life, what cauchemar!'
Among the windings of the violins
And the ariettes
Of cracked cornets
Inside my brain a dull tom-tom begins
Absurdly hammering a prelude of its own,
Capricious monotone
That is at least one definite 'false note.'
--Let us take the air, in a tobacco trance,
Admire the monuments
Discuss the late events,
Correct our watches by the public clocks.
Then sit for half an hour and drink our bocks.

II

Now that lilacs are in bloom
She has a bowl of lilacs in her room
And twists one in her fingers while she talks.
'Ah, my friend, you do not know, you do not know
What life is, you should hold it in your hands';
(Slowly(twisting the lilac stalks)
'You let it flow from you, you let it flow,
And youth is cruel, and has no remorse
And smiles at situations which it cannot see.'
I smile, of course,
And go on drinking tea.
'Yet with these April sunsets, that somehow recall
My buried life, and Paris in the Spring,
I feel immeasurably at peace, and find the world
To be wonderful and youthful, after all.'

The voice returns like the insistent out-of-tune
Of a broken violin on an August afternoon:
'I am always sure that you understand
My feelings, always sure that you feel,
Sure that across the gulf you reach your hand.

You are invulnerable, you have no Achilles' heel.
You will go on, and when you have prevailed
You can say: at this point many a one has failed.

But what have I, but what have I, my friend,
To give you, what can you receive from me?
Only the friendship and the sympathy
Of one about to reach her journey's end.

I shall sit here, serving tea to friends....'

I take my hat: how can I make a cowardly amends
For what she has said to me?
You will see me any morning in the park
Reading the comics and the sporting page.
Particularly I remark An English countess goes upon the stage.
A Greek was murdered at a Polish dance,
Another bank defaulter has confessed.
I keep my countenance, I remain self-possessed
Except when a street piano, mechanical and tired
Reiterates some worn-out common song
With the smell of hyacinths across the garden
Recalling things that other people have desired.
Are these ideas right or wrong?

III

The October night comes down; returning as before
Except for a slight sensation of being ill at ease
I mount the stairs and turn the handle of the door
And feel as if I had mounted on my hands and knees.

'And so you are going abroad; and when do you return?
But that's a useless question.
You hardly know when you are coming back,
You will find so much to learn.'
My smile falls heavily among the bric-�-brac.

'Perhaps you can write to me.'
My self-possession flares up for a second;
This is as I had reckoned.

'I have been wondering frequently of late
(But our beginnings never know our ends!)
Why we have not developed into friends.'
I feel like one who smiles, and turning shall remark
Suddenly, his expression in a glass.
My self-possession gutters; we are really in the dark.

'For everybody said so, all our friends,
They all were sure our feelings would relate
So closely! I myself can hardly understand.
We must leave it now to fate.
You will write, at any rate.
Perhaps it is not too late.
I shall sit here, serving tea to friends.'

And I must borrow every changing shape
To find expression ... dance, dance
Like a dancing bear,
Cry like a parrot, chatter like an ape.
Let us take the air, in a tobacco trance--
Well! and what if she should die some afternoon,
Afternoon grey and smoky, evening yellow and rose;
Should die and leave me sitting pen in hand
With the smoke coming down above the housetops;
Doubtful, for quite a while
Not knowing what to feel or if I understand
Or whether wise or foolish, tardy or too soon ...
Would she not have the advantage, after all?
This music is successful with a 'dying fall'
Now that we talk of dying--
And should I have the right to smile?

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Ad Comitissam Rutlandi� by Francis Beaumont

Madam, so may my verses pleasing be,
So may you laugh at them and not at me,
'Tis something to you gladly I would say;
But how to do't I cannot find the way.
I would avoid the common beaten ways
To women used, which are love or praise:
As for the first, the little wit I have
Is not yet grown so near unto the grave,
But that I can, by that dim fading light,
Perceive of what, or unto whom I write.
Let such as in a hopeless, witless rage,
Can sigh a quire, and read it to a page;
Such is do backs of books and windows fill,
With their too furious diamond or quill;
Such as were well resolved to end their days
With a loud laughter blown beyond the seas;
Who are so mortified that they can live
Contemned of all the world, and yet forgive,
Write love to you: I would not willingly
Be pointed at in every company;
As was that little tailor, who till death
Was hot in love with Queen Elizabeth:
And, for the last, in all my idle days
I never yet did living woman praise
In prose or verse: and when I do begin
I'll pick some woman out as full of sin
As you are full of virtue; with a soul
As black as you are white; a face as foul
As you are beautiful: for it shall be
Out of the rules of physiognomy
So far, that I do fear I must displace
The art a little, to let in her face.
It shall att least four faces be below
The devil's; and her parched corpse shall show
In her loose skill as if some sprite she were
Kept in a bag by some great conjurer.
Her breath shall be as horrible and wild
As every word you speak is sweet and mild;
It shall be such a one as will not be
Covered with any art or policy:
But let her take all powders, fumes, and drink,
She shall make nothing but a dearer stink;
She shall have such a foot and such a nose,
She shall not stand in anything but prose;
If I bestow my praises upon such,
'Tis charity, and I shall merit much.
My praise will come to her like a full bowl,
Bestowed at most need on a thirsty soul;
Where, if I sing your praises in my rhyme,
I lose my ink, my paper, and my time;
And nothing add to your o'erflowing store,
And tell you nought, but what you knew before.
Nor do the virtuous-minded (which I swear,
Madam, I think you are) endure to hear
Their own perfections into questions brought,
But stop their ears at them; for if I thought
You took a pride to have your virtues known,
Pardon me, madam, I should think them none.
To what a length is this strange letter grown,
In seeking of a subject, yet finds none!
But your brave thoughts, which I so much respect
Above your glorious titles, shall accept
These harsh disordered lines. I shall ere long
Dress up your virtues new, in a new song;
Yet far from all base praise and flattery,
Although I know whate'er my verses be,
They will like the most servile flattery shew,
If I write truth, and make the subject you.

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