(who are so perfectly alive)my shame:
lady through whose profound and fragile lips
the sweet small clumsy feet of April came
into the ragged meadow of my soul.
e. e. cummings, 1926
Next | TOC> What Lips My Lips> Auden
Lullaby
Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.
Soul and body have no bounds:
To lovers as they lie upon
Her tolerant enchanted slope
In their ordinary swoon,
Grave the vision Venus sends
Of supernatural sympathy,
Universal love and hope;
While an abstract insight wakes
Among the glaciers and the rocks
The hermit's carnal ecstasy.
Certainty, fidelity
On the stroke of midnight pass
Like vibrations of a bell
And fashionable madmen raise
Their pedantic boring cry:
Every farthing of the cost,
All the dreaded cards foretell,
Shall be paid, but from this night
Not a whisper, not a thought,
Not a kiss nor look be lost.
Beauty, midnight, vision dies:
Let the winds of dawn that blow
Softly round your dreaming head
Such a day of welcome show
Eye and knocking heart may bless,
Find our mortal world enough;
Noons of dryness find you fed
By the involuntary powers,
Nights of insult let you pass
Watched by every human love.
W. H. Auden, 1937
Next | TOC> What Lips My Lips> Frost
A Line-Storm Song
The line-storm clouds fly tattered and swift.
The road is forlorn all day,
Where a myriad snowy quartz-stones lift,
And the hoofprints vanish away.
The roadside flowers, too wet for the bee,
Expend their bloom in vain.
Come over the hills and far with me,
And be my love in the rain.
The birds have less to say for themselves
In the wood-world's torn despair
Than now these numberless years the elves,
Although they are no less there:
All song of the woods is crushed like some
Wild, easily shattered rose.
Come, be my love in the wet woods, come,
Where the boughs rain when it blows.
There is the gale to urge behind
And bruit our singing down,
And the shallow waters aflutter with wind
From which to gather your gown.
What matter if we go clear to the west,
And come not through dry-shod?
For wilding brooch, shall wet your breast
The rain-fresh goldenrod.
Oh, never this whelming east wind swells
But it seems like the sea's return
To the ancient lands where it left the shells
Before the age of the fern;
And it seems like the time when, after doubt,
Our love came back amain.
Oh, come forth into the storm and rout
And be my love in the rain.
Robert Frost, 1913
Next | TOC> What Lips My Lips> Browning R
The Lost Mistress
All's over, then: does truth sound bitter
As one at first believes?
Hark, 'tis the sparrows' good-night twitter
About your cottage eaves!
And the leaf-buds on the vine are woolly,
I noticed that, today;
One day more bursts them open fully
—You know the red turns gray.
Tomorrow we meet the same then, dearest?
May I take your hand in mine?
Mere friends are we—well, friends the merest
Keep much that I resign:
For each glance of the eye so bright and black.
Though I keep with heart's endeavor—
Your voice, when you wish the snowdrops back,
Though it stay in my soul for ever!
Yet I will but say what mere friends say,
Or only a thought stronger;
I will hold your hand but as long as all may,
Or so very little longer!
Robert Browning, 1845
Next | TOC> What Lips My Lips> Browning E
If thou must love me, let it
be for naught
If thou must love me, let it be for naught
Except for love's sake only. Do not say,
"I love her for her smile—her look—her way
Of speaking gently,—for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day"—
For these things in themselves, Belovèd, may
Be changed, or change for thee—and love,
so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry:
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love's sake, that evermore
Thou mayst love on, through love's eternity.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1850
Next | TOC> What Lips My Lips> Teasdale
I Am Not Yours
I am not yours, not lost in you,
Not lost, although I long to be
Lost as a candle lit at noon,
Lost as a snowflake in the sea.
You love me, and I find you still
A spirit beautiful and bright,
Yet I am I, who long to be
Lost as a light is lost in light.
Oh plunge me deep in love—put out
My senses, leave me deaf and blind,
Swept by the tempest of your love,
A taper in a rushing wind.
Sara Teasdale, 1914
Next | TOC> What Lips My Lips> Johnson G
I want to die while you love me
I want to die while you love me,
While yet you hold me fair,
While laughter lies upon my lips
And lights are in my hair.
I want to die while you love me,
And bear to that still bed,
Your kisses turbulent, unspent,
To warm me when I'm dead.
I want to die while you love me,
Oh! who would care to live
Till love has nothing more to ask,
And nothing more to give!
I want to die while you love me
And never, never see
The glory of this perfect day,
Grow dim or cease to be.
Georgia Douglas Johnson, 1925
Next | TOC> What Lips My Lips> Browning R
My Last Duchess
FERRARA
That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf's hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will't please you sit and look at her? I said
"Frà Pandolf" by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
&nbs
p; And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 'twas not
Her husband's presence only, called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhaps
Frà Pandolf chanced to say, "Her mantle laps
Over my lady's wrist too much," or "Paint
Must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat": such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy. She had
A heart—how shall I say?—too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
Sir, 'twas all one! My favor at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace—all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least. She thanked men—good!
but thanked
Somehow—I know not how—as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
In speech—which I have not—to make your will
Quite clear to such a one, and say, "Just this
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
Or there exceed the mark"—and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,
—E'en then would be some stooping; and I choose
Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew;
I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together. There she
stands
As if alive. Will't please you rise? We'll meet
The company below, then. I repeat,
The Count your master's known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretence
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!
Robert Browning, 1842
Next | TOC> What Lips My Lips> Wilbur
Playboy
High on his stockroom ladder like a dunce
The stock boy sits, and studies like a sage
The subject matter of one glossy page,
As lost in curves as Archimedes once.
Sometimes, without a glance, he feeds himself.
The left hand, like a mother bird in flight,
Brings him a sandwich for a sidelong bite,
And then returns it to a dusty shelf.
What so engrosses him? The wild décor
Of this pink-papered alcove into which
A naked girl has stumbled, with its rich
Welter of pelts and pillows on the floor,
Amidst which, kneeling in a supple pose,
She lifts a goblet in her farther hand,
As if about to toast a flower stand
Above which hovers an exploding rose
Fired from a long-necked crystal vase that rests
Upon a tasseled and vermilion cloth
One taste of which would shrivel up a moth?
Or is he pondering her perfect breasts?
Nothing escapes him of her body's grace
Or of her floodlit skin, so sleek and warm
And yet so strangely like a uniform,
But what now grips his fancy is her face,
And how the cunning picture holds her still
At just that smiling instant when her soul,
Grown sweetly faint, and swept beyond control,
Consents to his inexorable will.
Richard Wilbur, 1968
Next | TOC> What Lips My Lips> Hope
Request
Give me yourself one hour; I do not crave
For any love, or even thought, of me.
Come as a Sultan may caress a slave
And then forget forever, utterly.
Come! as west winds, that passing, cool and wet,
O'er desert places, leave them fields in flower,
And all my life, for I shall not forget,
Will keep the fragrance of that perfect hour!
Laurence Hope, 1902
Next | TOC> What Lips My Lips> Dowson
Non sum qualis eram bonæ sub
regno Cynaræ
Last night, ah, yesternight, betwixt her lips
and mine
There fell thy shadow, Cynara! thy breath
was shed
Upon my soul between the kisses and the wine;
And I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, I was desolate and bowed my head:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara!
in my fashion.
All night upon mine heart I felt her warm
heart beat,
Night-long within mine arms in love and sleep
she lay;
Surely the kisses of her bought red mouth
were sweet;
But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara!
in my fashion.
I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind,
Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng,
Dancing, to put thy pale, lost lilies out of mind;
But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, all the time, because the dance was long:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara!
in my fashion.
I cried for madder music and for stronger wine,
But when the feast is finished and the
lamps expire,
Then falls thy shadow, Cynara! the night is thine;
And I am desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, hungry for the lips of my desire:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara!
in my fashion.
Ernest Dowson, 1891
Next | TOC> What Lips My Lips> Shakespeare
Shall I compare thee to a
Summer's day
Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And Summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course
untrimmed:
But thy eternal Summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
William Shakespeare, 1594
Next | TOC> What Lips My Lips> Shakespeare
Some glory in their birth, some
in their skill
Some glory in their birth, some in their skill,
Some in their wealth, some in their body's force,
Some in their garments, though new-fangled ill,
Some in their hawks and hounds, some in their
horse;
And every humor hath his adjunc
t pleasure,
Wherein it finds a joy above the rest,
But these particulars are not my measure,
All these I better in one general best.
Thy love is better than high birth to me,
Richer than wealth, prouder than garments' cost,
Of more delight than hawks or horses be;
And having thee, of all men's pride I boast:
Wretched in this alone, that thou mayst take
All this away and me most wretched make.
William Shakespeare, 1594
Next | TOC> What Lips My Lips> Shakespeare
When, in disgrace with Fortune
and men's eyes
When, in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends
possessed,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising—
Haply I think on thee: and then my state,
Like to the Lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at Heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such
wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state
with Kings.
William Shakespeare, 1594
Next | TOC> What Lips My Lips> Shakespeare
Not marble, nor the gilded
monuments
Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme;
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone, besmeared with
sluttish time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry,
Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.
'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still