Author: Rose Lerner

This Living Hand
by John Keats

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-calm’d—see here it is—
I hold it towards you.

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Keats is another self-centered poet, although you can hardly blame a very young man dying of tuberculosis in the same house as his never-to-be-wife for being bitter, jealous, and self-pitying: “I have two luxuries to brood over in my walks,” he wrote to his girlfriend, Fanny Brawne, “your loveliness and the hour of my death.” Can we say emo? How about creepy?

Because of this kind of talk, poor Fanny was reviled by generations of literary critics and Keats biographers…but her own letters were all burnt on Keats’ death, so it was a very one-sided story. Recent scholarship suggests she probably loved him and did her best (one essay I read said, “She may even had had some appreciation for his poetry,” which cracked me up).

So Keats was not ideal boyfriend material (he was also kind of a misogynist), but I don’t care! I still have a huge crush on him and his poetry is my favorite among the Romantics. This one in particular is intensely powerful and chilling. I love the combination of bitterness and resentment with the offer of forgiveness and reconciliation, the incredible way he’s captured the horror of death and the conflicting impulses of the heart.

Poetry is sexy.

I love the combination of cynicism and sincere passion in this one. Compare “Love is not all: it is not meat or drink” by the same author, brought to my attention by alert reader Cecilia Grant.

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“We Talk of Taxes, and I Call You Friend,” by Edna St. Vincent Millay.

Do you have a favorite pessimistic poem about the beginning of a relationship? (Yes I realize that’s rather specific, but I bet there are lots of them out there.)

“I Heard You Solemn-Sweet Pipes of the Organ,” by Walt Whitman

I heard you solemn-sweet pipes of the organ as last Sunday morn I pass’d the church,
Winds of autumn, as I walk’d the woods at dusk I heard your long-stretch’d sighs up above so mournful,
I heard the perfect Italian tenor singing at the opera, I heard the soprano in the midst of the quartet singing;
Heart of my love! you too I heard murmuring low through one of the wrists around my head,
Heard the pulse of you, when all was still, ringing little bells last night under my ear.

The first time I read the Song of Solomon, when I was about 14, I thought it was weird. But later it grew on me, and now I think it’s one of the sexiest poems out there. I know in some Christian traditions it’s believed to be an allegory of Christ’s love for the Church, but for most Jews it’s a sacred poem celebrating love. A song of verses from it, “Dodi li” (meaning “My beloved is mine”), is often sung at Jewish weddings. Here’s my favorite part (from the King James Version, which is my favorite translation, being an English history and literature geek and all; you can find the rest of the Song in that translation here):

10 How fair is thy love, my sister, my spouse! how much better is thy love than wine! and the smell of thine ointments than all spices!
11 Thy lips, O my spouse, drop as the honeycomb: honey and milk are under thy tongue; and the smell of thy garments is like the smell of Lebanon.
12 A garden inclosed is my sister, my spouse; a spring shut up, a fountain sealed.
13 Thy plants are an orchard of pomegranates, with pleasant fruits; camphire, with spikenard,
14 Spikenard and saffron; calamus and cinnamon, with all trees of frankincense; myrrh and aloes, with all the chief spices:
15 A fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, and streams from Lebanon.
16 Awake, O north wind; and come, thou south; blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out. Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat his pleasant fruits.

A tragic one today, from “In Memoriam A.H.H.” by Tennyson. The whole poem is one of the saddest, most beautiful things I’ve ever read–if you’re interested, you can find the rest of it here.

VII.

Dark house, by which once more I stand
Here in the long unlovely street,
Doors, where my heart was used to beat
So quickly, waiting for a hand,

A hand that can be clasp’d no more–
Behold me, for I cannot sleep,
And like a guilty thing I creep
At earliest morning to the door.

He is not here; but far away
The noise of life begins again,
And ghastly thro’ the drizzling rain
On the bald street breaks the blank day.

Here’s another one that’s not about the poet’s girlfriend at all; rather, it’s a commentary on the folly of hyperbolic poetic comparison. And yet! It makes me swoon.

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Sonnet 130
by William Shakespeare

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.

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And if THAT didn’t make you swoon, listen to Alan Rickman read it:

That background picture is amazing, isn’t it?

“One Art,” by Elizabeth Bishop

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This one was suggested by my friend Ursula on my last post as another example of a love poem that isn’t revealed to be a love poem until the end. I really like it!

One thing I love about Elizabeth Bishop is that her poems often rhyme. I don’t at all require poetry to rhyme, as I’m sure you can tell from my previous selections, but I do really enjoy it when it’s there.

Here’s one that isn’t a love poem at all. But it’s about love, and while it’s sort of gratuitously, melodramatically negative and cynical in the best Byron style, I think it captures something essential to the experience–that hatred and resentment you can only feel for someone you’ve been (or are) in a relationship with.

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto IV, verse CXXV.
by George Gordon, Lord Byron

Few–none–find what they love or could have loved,
Though accident, blind contact, and the strong
Necessity of loving, have removed
Antipathies–but to recur, ere long,
Envenom’d with irrevocable wrong.

Could Have
by Wisława Szymborska
(translated from the Polish by Stanisław Barańczak and Clare Cavanagh)

It could have happened.
It had to happen.
It happened earlier. Later.
Nearer. Farther off.
It happened, but not to you.

You were saved because you were the first.
You were saved because you were the last.
Alone. With others.
On the right. The left.
Because it was raining. Because of the shade.
Because the day was sunny.

You were in luck–there was a forest.
You were in luck–there were no trees.
You were in luck–a rake, a hook, a beam, a brake,
a jamb, a turn, a quarter inch, an instant.
You were in luck–just then a straw went floating by.

As a result, because, although, despite.
What would have happened if a hand, a foot,
within an inch, a hairsbreadth from
an unfortunate coincidence.

So you’re here? Still dizzy from another dodge, close shave, reprieve?
One hole in the net and you slipped through?
I couldn’t be more shocked or speechless.
Listen,
how your heart pounds inside me.

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This is a type of love poem I adore for reasons I don’t totally understand–the love poem that you don’t realize is a love poem at all until the end. Do you know any like that?