Desire
Western wind, when wilt thou blow,
The small rain down can rain?
Christ, if my love were in my arms,
And I in my bed again!
ANON.
The wind sounds like a silver wire,
And from beyond the moon a fire
Is poured upon the hills, and nigher
The skies stoop down in their desire;
And isled in sudden seas of light,
My heart, pierced through with fierce delight,
Bursts into blossom in his sight.
My whole soul waiting silently,
All naked in a sultry sky,
Droops blinded with his shining eye:
I will possess him or will die.
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON.
They flee from me that sometime did me seek,
With naked foot stalking within my chamber.
Once have I seen them gentle, tame and meek
That now are wild and do not once remember
That sometimes they have put themselves in danger
To take bread at my hand; but now they range,
Busily seeking in continual change.
Thanked be fortune, it hath been otherwise,
Twenty times better; but once especial:—
In thin array, after a pleasant guise,
When her loose gown did from her shoulders fall,
And she me caught in her arms long and small,
And there withal so sweetly did me kiss,
And softly said, “Dear heart, how like you this?”
It was no dream, for I lay broad awaking.
But all is turned now, through my gentleness,
Into a bitter fashion of forsaking,
And I have leave to go of her goodness,
And she also to use new-fangleness,
But since that I unkindly so am served,
“How like you this?”—what hath she now deserved?
SIR THOMAS WYAT.
O Pandarus! I tell thee, Pandarus—
When I do tell thee, there my hopes lie drowned,
Reply not in how many fathoms deep
They lie indrenched. I tell thee I am mad
In Cressid’s love: thou answer’st, she is fair;
Pour’st in the open ulcer of my heart
Her eyes, her hair, her cheek, her gait, her voice;
Handlest in thy discourse O! that her hand,
In whose comparison all whites are ink,
Writing their own reproach; to whose soft seizure
The cygnet’s down is harsh, and spirit of sense
Hard as the palm of ploughman: this thou tell’st me,
As true thou tell’st me, when I say I love her,
But saying thus, instead of oil and balm,
Thou lay’st in every gash that love hath given me
The knife that made it.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
I do not love thee for that fair,
Rich fan of thy most curious hair,
Though the wires thereof be drawn
Finer than the threads of lawn,
And are softer than the leaves,
On which the subtle spinner weaves.
I do not love thee for those soft
Red coral lips I’ve kissed so oft;
Nor teeth of pearl, the double guard
To speech, whence music still is heard;
Though from these lips a kiss being taken
Would tyrants melt and death awaken.
I do not love thee, O my fairest!
For that richest, for that rarest
Silver pillar which stands under
Thy round head, that globe of wonder;
Though that neck be whiter far
Than towers of polished ivory are.
I do not love thee for those mountains
Hilled with snow, whence milky fountains
(Sugared sweets, as syrup’d berries)
Must one day run, through pipes of cherries:
O how much those breasts do move me!
Yet for them I do not love thee.
I love not for those eyes, nor hair,
Nor cheeks nor lips, nor teeth so rare,
Nor for thy speech, thy neck, nor breast,
Nor for thy belly, nor the rest,
Nor for thy hand, nor foot so small,
But—wouldst thou know, dear sweet?—for all!
THOMAS CAREW.
O loaded curls, release your store
Of warmth and scent, as once before
The tingling hair did, lights and darks
Outbreaking into fiery sparks,
When under curl and curl I pried
After the warmth and scent inside,
Through lights and darks how manifold—
The dark inspired, the light controlled,
As early art embrowns the gold.
ROBERT BROWNING.
Adorables frissons de l’amoureuse fièvre,
Ramiers qui descendez du ciel sur une lèvre,
Baisers âcres et doux,
Chutes du dernier voile, et vous, cascades blondes,
Cheveux d’or inondant un dos brun de vos ondes,
Quand vous connaîtrons-nous?
THÉOPHILE GAUTIER.
She, as a veil down to the slender waist,
Her unadornèd golden tresses wore
Dishevelled, but in wanton ringlets waved,
As the vine curls her tendrils—which implied
Subjection, but required with gentle way,
And by her yielded, by him best received
Yielded, with coy submission, modest pride,
And sweet, reluctant, amorous delay.
JOHN MILTON.
Hair, hair . . . The longer, our fathers unanimously thought, the better. How the heart beat, as the loosened bun uncoiled its component tresses! And if the tresses fell to below the waist, what admiration, what a rush of concupiscence! In many, perhaps in most, young men at the present time, long hair inspires a certain repugnance. It is felt, vaguely, to be rather unhygienic, somehow a bit squalid. Long hair has become, as it were, a non-conductor of desire; no more does it attract the lightning. Men’s amorous reflexes are now otherwise conditioned.
Physical Passion
There are many kinds of intense and unanalysable experiences. A violent sensation, for example; a sudden, overpowering sentiment, say, of inward illumination or conviction. Problem: how are such experiences to be expressed? How rendered in terms of poetry?
Two methods present themselves. The first is the method of direct statement and description. The second is the method of symbolic evocation; the experience is not directly named or described, but implied; the poet makes a series of symbolic statements, whose separate significancies converge, as it were, on a single point outside the poem—that point being the experience which it is desired to render. In practice, poets generally employ both methods simultaneously.
Here are four poetical renderings of the experience of physical passion, the first symbolical in the oriental manner of the Song of Solomon, the other three more or less directly descriptive.
Lament of Ahania
Where is my golden palace,
Where my ivory bed?
Where the joy of my morning hour?
Where the sons of eternity singing
To awake bright Urizen, my king,
To arise to the mountain sport,
To the bliss of eternal valleys;
To awake my king in the morn.
To embrace Ahania’s joy
On the breadth of his open bosom?
From my soft cloud of dew to fall
In showers of life on his harvests,
To the sons of eternal joy,
When he gave my happy soul
When he took the daughters of life
Into my chambers of love.
WILLIAM BLAKE.
A Rapture
I will enjoy thee now, my Celia, come
And fly with me to Love’s Elysium.
The giant Honour, that keeps cowards out,
Is but a masquer, and the servile rout
Of baser subjects only bend in vain
To the vast idol; whilst the nobler train
Of valiant lovers daily sail between
The huge Colossus’ legs, and pass unseen
Unto the blissful shore. Be bold and wise,
And we shall enter; the grim Swiss denies
Only to fools a passage, that not know
He is but form, and only frights in show.
Let duller eyes that look from far, draw near,
And they shall scorn what they were wont to fear.
We shall see how the stalking pageant goes
With borrowed legs, a heavy load to those
That made and bear him; not, as we once thought,
The seed of Gods, but a weak model, wrought
By greedy men that seek to enclose the common
And within private arms impale free woman.
Come, then, and mounted on the wings of love
We’ll cut the fleeting air, and soar above
The monster’s head, and in the noblest seat
Of those blest shades quench and renew our heat.
There shall the Queen of Love and Innocence,
Beauty and Nature, banish all offence
From our close ivy-twines; there I’ll behold
Thy barèd snow and thy unbraided gold;
There my enfranchised hand on every side
Shall o’er thy naked polished ivory slide.
No curtain there, though of transparent lawn.
Shall be before thy virgin treasure drawn;
But the rich mine, to the enquiring eye
Exposed, shall ready still for mintage lie,
And we will coin young Cupids. There a bed
Of roses and fresh myrtles shall be spread,
Under the cooler shade of cypress groves;
Our pillows of the down of Venus’ doves,
Whereon our panting limbs we’ll gently lay
In the faint respites of our amorous play;
That so our slumbers may in dreams have leisure
To tell the nimble fancy our past pleasure,
And so our souls, that cannot be embraced,
Shall the embraces of our bodies taste.
Meanwhile the babbling stream shall court the shore,
The enamoured chirping wood-choir shall adore
In varied tunes the deity of love;
The gentle blasts of western wind shall move
The trembling leaves, and through the close boughs breathe
Still music, while we rest ourselves beneath
Their dancing shade; till a soft murmur, sent
From souls entranced in amorous languishment,
Rouse us and shoot into our veins fresh fire,
Till we in their sweet ecstasy expire.
Then, as the empty bee that lately bore
Into the common treasure all her store,
Flies ’bout the painted field with nimble wing,
Deflowering the fresh virgins of the spring—
So will I rifle all the sweets that dwell
In thy delicious paradise, and swell
My bag with honey, drawn forth by the power
Of fervent kisses from each spicy flower.
I’ll seize the rose-buds in their perfumed bed,
The violet knots, like curious mazes spread
O’er all the garden; taste the ripened cherries,
The warm, firm apple, tipped with coral berries.
Then will I visit with a wandering kiss
The vale of lilies and the bower of bliss;
And where the beautious region doth divide
Into two milky ways, my lip shall slide
Down those smooth alleys, wearing as they go
A track for lovers on the printed snow;
Thence climbing o’er the swelling Apennine,
Retire into the grove of eglantine,
Where I will all those ravished sweets distil
Through Love’s alembic, and with chymic skill
From the mixed mass one sovereign balm derive,
Then bring the great elixir to thy hive.
THOMAS CAREW.
Dixerat et niveis hinc atque hinc diva lactertis
cunctantem amplexu molli fovet. Ille repente
accepit solitam flammam, notusque medullas
intravit calor et labefacta per ossa cucurrit:
non secus atque olim tonitru cum rupta corusco
ignea rima micans percurrit lumine nimbos.
VIRGIL.
We two will rise, and sit, and walk together
Under the roof of blue Ionian
