A book of love poetry

Introduction

Commission / Ezra Pound

Intimations:

Sisters / Roy Campbell

Milkmaid / Laurie Lee

Milkmaid's epithalamium / Thomas Randolph

Brown penny / W B Yeats

Myfanwy / Sir John Betjeman

She walked unaware / Patrick MacDonogh

Two rural sisters / Charles Cotton

Wishes to his supposed mistress / Richard Crashaw

Penal law / Austin Clarke

Symptoms of love / Robert Graves

Declarations:

Go, ill-sped book, and whisper to her or / John Berryman

First love / John Clare

First day / Christina Rossetti

Sonnet xliii, from the Portuguese: How do I love thee? Let me count the ways / Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Zong: O Jenny, don't sobby! vor I shall be true / William Barnes

Song: O whistle, and I'll come to ye, my lad / Robert Burns

Sally in our alley / Henry Carey

Going the rounds: a sort of love poem / Anthony Hecht

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? / William Shakespeare

One day I wrote her name upon the strand / Edmund Spenser

Not marble nor the gilded monuments? / Archibald MacLeish

Drinking song / W B Yeats

To Celia / Ben Jonson

To Helen / Edgar Allan Poe

She walks in beauty / Lord Byron

Elizabeth of Bohemia / Sir Henry Wotton

Cherry-ripe / Thomas Campion

To Cloris / Sir Charles Sedley

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun / William Shakespeare

from Merciless beauty / Geoffrey Chaucer

Ode: at her fair hands how have I grace entreated / Walter Davison

I cry your mercy-pity-love! -aye, love! / John Keats

Iambicum Trimetrum / Edmund Spenser

Vobiscum est Iope / Thomas Campion

I loved you; even now I may confess / Alexander Pushkin

Love without hope / Robert Graves

To- / Percy Bysshe Shelley

That time of year thou may'st in me behold / William Shakespeare

Dedication to my wife / T S Eliot

Persuasions:

To the virgins, to make much of time / Robert Herrick

Love's emblems / John Fletcher

Of beauty / Sir Richard Fanshawe

Corinna in Vendome / Pierre de Ronsard

Go, lovely Rose / Edmund Waller

Feste's song from Twelfth night / William Shakespeare

Ruth / Thomas Hood

Love's philosophy / Percy Bysshe Shelley

To his coy mistress / Andrew Marvell

Argument / Thomas Moore

Flea / John Donne

Written in a lady's prayer book / John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester

Passionate shepherd to his love / Christopher Marlowe

Her reply / Sir Walter Raleighh

Come, live with me and be my love / Cecil Day Lewis

For X / Louis MacNeice

This living hand, now warm and capable / John Keats

To his lute / Sir Thomas Wyatt

Beggar's serenade / John Heath-Stubbs

Piazza piece / John Crowe Ransom

Author apologizes to a lady for his being a little man / Christopher Smart

Lyce / William Walsh

To his mistress going to bed / John Donne

Celebrations:

from The song of Solomon: chapter 2

Sick love / Robert Graves

Upon a gloomy night / St John of the Cross

Meeting at night / Robert Browning

Question / F T Prince

Sudden light / Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Plucking the rushes / Anon

Subaltern's love-song / Sir John Betjeman

My ghostly father, I me confess / Charles of Orleans

Alas! Madam, for stealing of a kiss / Sir Thomas Wyatt

Kiss / Coventry Patmore

Did not / Thomas Moore

Doing, a filthy pleasure is, and short / Petronius Arbiter

Keep your eyes open when you kiss: do: when / John Berryman

from In a gondola / Robert Browning

Lips of the one I love are my perpetual pleasure / Hafiz

Some kisses from The Kama Sutra / Hugo Williams

Came to me / Rudaki

Drunk as drunk on turpentine / Pablo Neruda

from The princess / Alfred Lord Tennyson

New Year's Eve / D H Lawrence

She / Theodore Roethke

Elegy 5 / Ovid

In the orchard / Algernon Charles Swinburne

Our Sunday morning when dawn-priests were applying / John Berryman

Down, Wanton, down! / Robert Graves

I gently touched her hand: she gave / Anon

May I feel said he / E E Cummings

On the marriage of T K and C C the morning stormy / Thomas Carew

Epithalamion / Edmund Spenser

From pent-up, aching rivers / Walt Whitman

Gateway / A D Hope

Daybreak / Stephen Spender

Geranium / Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Dialogue: after enjoyment / Abraham Cowley

On the happy Corydon and Phyllis / Sir Charles Sedley

Phyllis Corydon clutched to him / Catullus

Note on Propertius I-5 / Fleur Adcock

After the fiercest pangs of hot desire / Richard Duke

Song: whilst Alexis lay pressed / John Dryden

I like my body when it is with your / E E Cummings

Ectasy / John Donne

Under the willow-shades / William Davenant

Hops / Boris Pasternak

Net / W R Rodgers

Love and sleep / Algernon Charles Swinburne

Lay your sleeping head, my love / W H Auden

Lullaby / W B Yeats

In Bloemfontein / Alan Ross

She tells her love while half asleep / Robert Graves

Winter love / Elizabeth Jennings

Sun rising / John Donne

Good morrow / John Donne

Alicante / Jacques Prevert

Fish in the unruffled lakes / W H Auden

Unpredicted / John Heath-Stubbs

Good God, what a night that was / Petronius Arbiter

This unimportant morning / Lawrence Durrell

Quiet glades of Eden / Robert Graves

Away above a harborful / Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Bride / Harry Fainlight

On the street / C P Cavafy

Way / Robert Creeley

Man and wife / Robert Lowell

Author to his wife, of a woman's eloquence / Sir John Harington

Madrigal: my love in her attire doth show her wit / Anon

Touch / Octavio Paz

Jewels / Charles Baudelaire

Dread / J M Synge

September / Ted Hughes

Mirabeau bridge / Guillaume Apollinaire

Dead still / Andrei Voznesensky

Somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond / E E Cummings

Once as methought fortune me kissed / Sir Thomas Wyatt

My true love hath my heart, and I have his / Sir Philip Sidney

In love for long / Edwin Muir

Hour with thee / Sir Walter Scott

Anniversary / John Donne

I knew a woman / Theodore Roethke

Song of a young lady to her ancient lover / John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester

So, we'll go no more a-roving / Lord Byron

Last love / Fydor Tyutchev

John Anderson my Jo / Robert Burns

Last confession / W B Yeats. Aberrations:

Song: Pious Selinda goes to prayers / William Congreve

Fragment of a song on the beautiful wife of Dr John Overall, Dean of St Paul's / Anon

Of an heroical answer of a great Roman lady to her husband / Sir John Harington

Faithless wife / Federico Garcia Lorca

Honour / Abraham Cowley

Imperfect enjoyment / John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester

Ruined maid / Thomas Hardy

Phyllis / Thomas Randolph

Chaste Florimel / Matthew Prior

Two or three: a recipe to make a cuckold / Alexander Pope

To his mistress / Ovid

Temperaments / Ezra Pound

Filling her compact & delicious body / John Berryman

Juliet / Hilaire Belloc

Womanisers / John Press

I, being born a woman and distressed / Edna St Vincent Millay

Robene and Makyne / Robert Henryson

Lover's resolution / George Wither

Oh, when I was in love with you / A E Housman

In former days we'd both agree / Bharthari

Thieves / Robert Graves

Welcome / Abraham Cowley

Out upon it, I have loved / Sir John Suckling

Love and life / John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester

Scrutiny / Richard Lovelace

Lycoris darling, once I burned for you / Martial

Indifferent / John Donne

Intimates / D H Lawrence

She who is always in my thoughts prefers / Bhartrhari

You smiled, you spoke, and I believed / Walter Savage Landor

Elizabeth in Italy / Richard Weber

Song: Absent from thee, I languish still / John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester

Slice of wedding cake / Robert Graves

Separations:

Walking in a meadow green / Anon

Carnal knowledge / Thom Gunn

She lay all naked in her bed / Anon

Anbade / Anon

Song: Sweetest love, I do not go / John Donne

Red red rose / Robert Burns

Carrier letter / Hart Crane

It may not always be so; and I say / E E Cummings

Postscript: for Gweno / Alun Lewis

Dear, though the night is gone / W H Auden

Last ride together / Robert Browning

Lost mistress / Robert Browning

Since there's no help, come let up kiss and part / Michael Drayton

Valediction / Ernest Dowson

Farewell / Coventry Patmore

Goodbye / Alun Lewis

On his mistress / John Donne

Sweet William's farewell to black-eyed Susan / John Gay

Song: Ae fond kiss, and then we sever / Robert Burns

My life closed twice before its close / Emily Dickinson

Like the touch of rain / Edward Thomas

Terrible door / Harold Monro

In the vaulted way / Thomas Hardy

I wrung my hands under my dark veil / Anna Akhmatova

Party piece / Brian Patten

Pity, we were such a good invention / Yehuda Amichai

When we two parted / Lord Byron

Renouncement / Alice Meynell

I turn you out of doors / Alain Chartier

Epistle to Miss Blount, on her leaving the town, after the coronation / Alexander Pope

What news / Walter Savage Landor

River-merchants's wife: a letter / Li Po [Rihaku]

Wife's complaint / Anon

Exile / Ernest Dowson

Thousand years, you said / Lady Heguri

Remember / Christina Rossetti

Song: When I am dead, my dearest / Christina Rossetti

Inseparable / Philip Bourke Marston

If I should sleep with a lady called death / E E Cummings

Huesca / John Cornford

Surrender / Henry King

Your love is dead, lady, your love is dead / R S Thomas

Dear gentle soul, who went so soon away / Luis de Camoens

Epitaph on the monument of Sir William Dyer at Colmworth, 1641 / Lady Catherine Dyer

Exequy on his wife / Henry King

Methought I saw my late espoused saint / John Milton

Upon the death of Sir Albert Morton's wife / Sir Henry Wotton

Desolations:

Mother, I cannot mind my wheel / Sappho

With how sad steps, o moon, thou climb'st the skies! / Sir Philip Sidney

Doubt of martyrdom / Sir John Suckling

To marguerite-continued / Matthew Arnold

Definition of love / Andrew Marvell

Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind / Petrarch

I abide and abide and better abide / Sir Thomas Wyatt

Kind are her answers / Thomas Campion

Lesbia loads me night & day with her curses / Catullus

Busy with lobe, the bumble bee / Meleager

My pretty rose tree / William Blake

Love and jealousy / William Walsh

Song: Why so pale and wan, fond lover? / Sir John Suckling

Apologue / Tony Connor

In Bertram's garden / Donald Justice

Christina / Louis MacNeice

Song: When lovely woman stoops to folly / Oliver Goldsmith

Farewell ungrateful traitor / John Dryden

Oh! The time that is past / Anon

Damned women / Charles Baudelaire

When I was one-and-twenty / A E Housman

Never give the heart / W B Yeats

Mirage / Christina Rossetti

Banks o' Doon / Robert Burns

Sick rose / William Blake

Farewell to false love / Sir Walter Raleighh

Quick and bitter / Yehuda Amichai

from The house of life: severed selves / Dante Gabriel Rossetti

No use / W D Snodgrass

O wha's the bride? / Hugh MacDiarmid

Farmer's bride / Charlotte Mew

Les Sylphides / Louis MacNeice

Considered reply to a child / Jonathan Price

Talking in bed / Philip Larkin

You, Helen / Edward Thomas

from Modern love / George Meredith

Mammon-marriage / George MacDonald

Call it a good marriage / Robert Graves

Newcomer's wife / Thomas Hardy

Bonny Barbara Allan / Anon

My true love hath my heart and I have his' / Mary Coleridge

Bereft / Thomas Hardy

Night has a thousand eyes / Francis William Bourdillon

Reverberations:

When you are old / W B Yeats

Song: It was upon a lammas night / Robert Burns

Curfew / Paul Eluard

Whence had they come? / W B Yeats

Never such love / Robert Graves

Love's night & a lamp / Meleager

Seduced girl / Hedylos

What she said / Maturai Eruttalan Centamputan

Rondel of love / Alexander Scott

Love / George Granville, Baron Lansdowne

False though she be to me and love / William Congreve

Walsingham / Sir Walter Raleighh

Old song ended / Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Old lady's lament for her youth / Francois Villon

Crazy Jane talks with the bishop / W B Yeats

Young bloods come round less often now / Horace

When I was fair and young and favour graced me / Queen Elizabeth

As birds are fitted to the boughs / Louis Simpson

from Lessons of the war: judging distance / Henry Reed

Under the waterfall / Thomas Hardy

Strawberries / Edwin Morgan

Thunderstorm in town / Thomas Hardy

Farewell to Juliet / Wilfrid Blunt

I remember / Stevie Smith

White heliotrope / Arthur Symons

Chosen W B Yeats

We did it / Yehuda Amichai

Custom of the world / Louis Simpson

Trysting place / William Soutar

At the dark hour / Paul Dehn

Silent love / Sir Edward Dyer

Song of the master and boatswain / W H Auden

Ballad-singer / Thomas Hardy

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why / Edna St Vincent Millay

Girls in their seasons / Derek Mahon

Disabled debauchee / John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester

Remembrance / Sir Thomas Wyatt

Wreath / Robert Graves

Remember thee! Remember thee! / Lord Byron

Tune / Arthur Symons

Non sum quails eram bonae sub regno Cynarae / Ernest Dowson

Rainy Pleiads wester / A E Housman

Western wind, when will thou blow / Anon

After long silence / W B Yeats

Time passing, beloved / Donald Davie

Marriage ring / George Crabbe

Funeral / John Donne

Old flame / Robert Lowell

While the leaves of the bamboo rustle / Anonymous frontier guard

Two lips / Thomas Hardy

She dwelt among the untrodden ways / William Wordsworth

Wife-a-lost / William Barnes

Remembrance / Emily Bronte

You would have understood me, had you waited / Paul Verlaine

To one in paradise / Edgar Allan Poe

Surprised by joy-impatient as the wind / William Wordsworth

Sonnet: In every dream thy lovely features rise / William Barnes

To Mary: It is the evening hour / John Clare

In the valley of Cauteretz / Alfred Lord Tennyson

Voice / Thomas Hardy

Oh! that 'twere possible / Alfred Lord Tennyson

Rose Aylmer / Walter Savage Landor

Echo / Christina Rossetti

Tonight I can write the saddest lines / Pablo Neruda

To remain / C P Cavafy

In my craft or sullen art / Dylan Thomas

In time of 'the breaking of nations' / Thomas Hardy

Index of poets and translators

Index of titles and first lines