She work’d for the Poor,
Till her fingers were sore;
This pious Old Woman of Leeds.
Anon.
LOVE
The Janitor’s Boy
Oh I’m in love with the janitor’s boy,
And the janitor’s boy loves me;
He’s going to hunt for a desert isle
In our geography.
A desert isle with spicy trees
Somewhere near Sheepshead Bay;
A right nice place, just fit for two
Where we can live alway.
Oh I’m in love with the janitor’s boy,
He’s busy as he can be;
And down in the cellar he’s making a raft
Out of an old scttee.
He’ll carry me off, I know that he will,
For his hair is exceedingly red;
And the only thing that occurs to me
Is to dutifully shiver in bed.
The day that we sail, I shall leave this brief note,
For my parents I hate to annoy:
‘I have flown away to an isle in the bay
With the janitor’s red-haired boy.’
Nathalia Crane
Romance
I will make you brooches and toys for your delight
Of bird-song at morning and star-shine at night.
I will make a palace fit for you and me,
Of green days in forests and blue days at sea.
I will make my kitchen, and you shall keep your room,
Where white flows the river and bright blows the broom,
And you shall wash your linen and keep your body white
In rainfall at morning and dewfall at night.
And this shall be for music when no one else is near,
The fine song for singing, the rare song to hear!
That only I remember, that only you admire,
Of the broad road that stretches and the roadside fire.
Robert Louis Stevenson
Expecting Visitors
I heard you were coming and
Thrum thrum thrum
Went something in my heart like a
Drum drum drum.
I briskly walked down the
Street street street
To buy lovely food for us to
Eat eat eat.
I cleaned the house and filled it with
Flowers flowers flowers
And asked the sun to drink up the
Showers showers showers.
Steadily purring
Thrum, thrum, thrum
Went the drum in my heart because
You’d come, come, come.
Jenny Joseph
The Twelve Days of Christmas
On the first day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
A partridge in a pear tree
On the second day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
Two turtle doves
and a partridge in a pear tree
On the third day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
Three French hens
Two turtle doves
and a partridge in a pear tree
On the fourth day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
Four calling birds
Three French hens
Two turtle doves
and a partridge in a pear tree
On the fifth day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
Five gold rings
Four calling birds
Three French hens
Two turtle doves
and a partridge in a pear tree
On the sixth day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
Six geese a-laying
Five gold rings
Four calling birds
Three French hens
Two turtle doves
and a partridge in a pear tree
On the seventh day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
Seven swans a-swimming
Six geese a-laying
Five gold rings
Four calling birds
Three French hens
Two turtle doves
and a partridge in a pear tree
On the eighth day of Christmas,
my true love sent to me:
Eight maids a-milking
Seven swans a-swimming
Six geese a-laying
Five gold rings
Four calling birds
Three French hens
Two turtle doves
And a partridge in a pear tree
On the ninth day of Christmas,
my true love sent to me:
Nine ladies dancing
Eight maids a-milking
Seven swans a-swimming
Six geese a-laying
Five gold rings
Four calling birds
Three French hens
Two turtle doves
And a partridge in a pear tree
On the tenth day of Christmas,
my true love sent to me:
Ten lords a-leaping
Nine ladies dancing
Eight maids a-milking
Seven swans a-swimming
Six geese a-laying
Five gold rings
Four calling birds
Three French hens
Two turtle doves
And a partridge in a pear tree
On the eleventh day of Christmas,
my true love sent to me:
Eleven pipers piping
Ten lords a-leaping
Nine ladies dancing
Eight maids a-milking
Seven swans a-swimming
Six geese a-laying
Five gold rings
Four calling birds
Three French hens
Two turtle doves
And a partridge in a pear tree
On the twelfth day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
Twelve drummers drumming
Eleven pipers piping
Ten lords a-leaping
Nine ladies dancing
Eight maids a-milking
Seven swans a-swimming
Six geese a-laying
Five gold rings
Four calling birds
Three French hens
Two turtle doves
and a partridge in a pear tree
Anon.
Dear True Love
Leaping and dancing
Means to-ing and fro-ing;
Drummers and pipers –
Loud banging and blowing;
Even a pear tree
Needs room to grow in.
Goose eggs and gold top
When I’m trying to slim?
And seven swans swimming?
Where could they swim?
Mine is a small house,
Your gifts are grand;
One ring at a time
Is enough for this hand.
Hens, colly birds, doves –
A gastronome’s treat.
But love, I did tell you,
I’ve given up meat.
Your fairy-tale presents
Are wasted on me.
Just send me your love
And set all the birds free.
U. A. Fanthorpe
Indoor Games near Newbury
In among the silver birches,
Winding ways of tarmac wander
And the signs to Bussock Bottom,
Tussock Wood and Windy Brake,
Gabled lodges, tile-hung churches
Catch the lights of our Lagonda
As we drive to Wendy’s party,
Lemon curd and Christmas cake
Rich the makes of motor whirring,
Come up Hupmobile Delage.
Short the way our ch
auffeurs travel,
Crunching over private gravel,
Each from out his warm garáge.
O but Wendy, when the carpet
Yielded to my indoor pumps.
There you stood, your gold hair streaming,
Handsome in the hall light gleaming
There you looked and there you led me
Off into the game of Clumps
Then the new Victrola playing;
And your funny uncle saying
‘Choose your partners for a foxtrot!
Dance until it’s tea o’clock!
Come on, young ’uns, foot it feetly!’
Was it chance that paired us neatly?
I, who loved you so completely.
You, who pressed me closely to you,
Hard against your party frock.
‘Meet me when you’ve finished eating!’
So we met and no one found us.
O that dark and furry cupboard,
While the rest played hide-and-seek.
Holding hands our two hearts beating.
In the bedroom silence round us
Holding hands and hardly hearing
Sudden footstep, thud and shriek
Love that lay too deep for kissing.
‘Where is Wendy? Wendy’s missing!’
Love so pure it had to end.
Love so strong that I was frighten’d
When you gripped my fingers tight.
And hugging, whispered ‘I’m your friend.’
Goodbye Wendy. Send the fairies,
Pinewood elf and larch tree gnome.
Spingle-spangled stars are peeping
At the lush Lagonda creeping
Down the winding ways of tarmac
To the leaded lights of home.
There among the silver birches,
All the bells of all the churches
Sounded in the bath-waste running
Out into the frosty air.
Wendy speeded my undressing.
Wendy is the sheet’s caressing
Wendy bending gives a blessing.
Holds me as I drift to dreamland
Safe inside my slumber-wear.
John Betjeman
A Birthday
My heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a watered shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
Whose boughs are bent with thick-set fruit;
My heart is like a rainbow shell
That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these
Because my love is come to me.
Raise me a dais of silk and down;
Hang it with vair and purple dyes;
Carve it in doves, and pomegranates,
And peacocks with a hundred eyes;
Work it in gold and silver grapes,
In leaves, and silver fleurs-de-lys;
Because the birthday of my life
Is come, my love is come to me.
Christina Rossetti
from The Princess
Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white;
Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk;
Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font:
The fire-fly wakens: waken thou with me.
Now droops the milkwhite peacock like a ghost,
And like a ghost she glimmers on to me.
Now lies the Earth all Danae to the stars,
And all thy heart lies open unto me.
Now slides the silent meteor on, and leaves
A shining furrow, as thy thoughts in me.
Now folds the lily all her sweetness up,
And slips into the bosom of the lake:
So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slip
Into my bosom and be lost in me.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
Come live with me and be my Love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountains yields.
And we will sit upon the rocks
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.
And I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;
A gown made of the finest wool,
Fair linèd slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold;
A belt of straw and ivy buds
With coral clasps and amber studs;
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me and be my Love.
The shepherd swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my Love.
Christopher Marlowe
Love You More
Do I love you
to the moon and back?
No I love you
more than that
I love you to the desert sands
the mountains, stars
the planets and
I love you to the deepest sea
and deeper still
through history
Before beyond I love you then
I love you now
I’ll love you when
The sun’s gone out
the moon’s gone home
and all the stars are fully grown
When I no longer say these words
I’ll give them to the winds, the birds
so that they will still be heard
I love you
James Carter
How Do I Love Thee?
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints – I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! – and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sally in our Alley
Of all the girls that are so smart
There’s none like pretty Sally;
She is the darling of my heart,
And she lives in our alley.
There is no lady in the land
Is half so sweet as Sally;
She is the darling of my heart,
And she lives in our alley.
Her father he makes cabbage-nets,
And through the streets does cry ’em;
Her mother she sells laces long
To such as please to buy ’em.
But sure such folks could ne’er beget
So sweet a girl as Sally!
She is the darling of my heart,
And she lives in our alley.
When she is by, I leave my work,
I love her so sincerely;
My master comes like any Turk,
And bangs me most severely.
But let him bang his bellyful,
I’ll bear it all for Sally;
She is the darling of my heart,
And she lives in our alley.
Of all the days that’s in the week
I dearly love but one day,
&n
bsp; And that’s the day that comes betwixt
A Saturday and Monday;
For then I’m drest all in my best
To walk abroad with Sally;
She is the darling of my heart,
And she lives in our alley.
My master carries me to church,
And often am I blamèd
Because I leave him in the lurch
As soon as text is namèd.
I leave the church in sermon-time
And slink away to Sally;
She is the darling of my heart,
And she lives in our alley.
When Christmas comes about again,
O, then I shall have money;
I’ll hoard it up, and box it all,
I’ll give it to my honey.
I would it were ten thousand pound,
I’d give it all to Sally;