Modern Love III: This Was the Woman

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1. Modern Love XXII: What May the Woman What may the woman labour to confess? There is about her mouth a nervous twitch. ‘Tis something to be told, or hidden: which? I get a glimpse of hell in this mild guess. She has desires of touch, as if to feel That all the household things are things she knew. She stops before the […]...
2. Modern Love XXIX: Am I Failing Am I failing? For no longer can I cast A glory round about this head of gold. Glory she wears, but springing from the mould; Not like the consecration of the Past! Is my soul beggared? Something more than earth I cry for still: I cannot be at peace In having Love upon a’ mortal […]...
3. Modern Love XXI: We Three Are We three are on the cedar-shadowed lawn; My friend being third. He who at love once laughed, Is in the weak rib by a fatal shaft Struck through, and tells his passion’s bashful dawn And radiant culmination, glorious crown, When ‘this’ she said: went ‘thus’: most wondrous she. Our eyes grow white, encountering that we […]...
4. Modern Love VI: It Chanced His Lips Did Meet It chanced his lips did meet her forehead cool. She had no blush, but slanted down her eye. Shamed nature, then, confesses love can die: And most she punishes the tender fool Who will believe what honours her the most! Dead! is it dead? She has a pulse, and flow Of tears, the price of […]...
5. Modern Love XVI: In Our Old Shipwrecked Days In our old shipwrecked days there was an hour, When in the firelight steadily aglow, Joined slackly, we beheld the red chasm grow Among the clicking coals. Our library-bower That eve was left to us: and hushed we sat As lovers to whom Time is whispering. From sudden-opened doors we heard them sing: The nodding […]...
6. Modern Love XII: Not Solely That the Future Not solely that the Future she destroys, And the fair life which in the distance lies For all men, beckoning out from dim rich skies: Nor that the passing hour’s supporting joys Have lost the keen-edged flavour, which begat Distinction in old times, and still should breed Sweet Memory, and Hope, earth’s modest seed, And […]...
7. Modern Love XXXV: It Is No Vulgar Nature It is no vulgar nature I have wived. Secretive, sensitive, she takes a wound Deep to her soul, as if the sense had swooned, And not a thought of vengeance had survived. No confidences has she: but relief Must come to one whose suffering is acute. O have a care of natures that are mute! […]...
8. Modern Love XV: I Think She Sleeps I think she sleeps: it must be sleep, when low Hangs that abandoned arm toward the floor; The face turned with it. Now make fast the door. Sleep on: it is your husband, not your foe. The Poet’s black stage-lion of wronged love, Frights not our modern dames: well if he did! Now will I […]...
9. Modern Love XXXIX: She Yields She yields: my Lady in her noblest mood Has yielded: she, my golden-crownèd rose! The bride of every sense! more sweet than those Who breathe the violet breath of maidenhood. O visage of still music in the sky Soft moon! I feel thy song, my fairest friend! True harmony within can apprehend Dumb harmony without. […]...
10. Modern Love XLI: How Many a Thing How many a thing which we cast to the ground, When others pick it up becomes a gem! We grasp at all the wealth it is to them; And by reflected light its worth is found. Yet for us still ’tis nothing! and that zeal Of false appreciation quickly fades. This truth is little known […]...
11. Modern Love XLIX: He Found Her He found her by the ocean’s moaning verge, Nor any wicked change in her discerned; And she believed his old love had returned, Which was her exultation, and her scourge. She took his hand, and walked with him, and seemed The wife he sought, though shadow-like and dry. She had one terror, lest her heart […]...
12. Modern Love XXXII: Full Faith I Have Full faith I have she holds that rarest gift To beauty, Common Sense. To see her lie With her fair visage an inverted sky Bloom-covered, while the underlids uplift, Would almost wreck the faith; but when her mouth (Can it kiss sweetly? sweetly!) would address The inner me that thirsts for her no less, And […]...
13. A Woman's Love So vast the tide of Love within me surging, It overflows like some stupendous sea, The confines of the Present and To-be; And ‘gainst the Past’s high wall I feel it urging, As it would cry “Thou too shalt yield to me!” All other loves my supreme love embodies; I would be she on whose […]...
14. Modern Love XXXVIII: Give to Imagination Give to imagination some pure light In human form to fix it, or you shame The devils with that hideous human game: Imagination urging appetite! Thus fallen have earth’s greatest Gogmagogs, Who dazzle us, whom we can not revere: Imagination is the charioteer That, in default of better, drives the hogs. So, therefore, my dear […]...
15. Modern Love XLVII: We Saw the Swallows We saw the swallows gathering in the sky, And in the osier-isle we heard them noise. We had not to look back on summer joys, Or forward to a summer of bright dye: But in the largeness of the evening earth Our spirits grew as we went side by side. The hour became her husband […]...
16. Modern Love II: It Ended, and the Morrow It ended, and the morrow brought the task. Her eyes were guilty gates, that let him in By shutting all too zealous for their sin: Each sucked a secret, and each wore a mask. But, oh, the bitter taste her beauty had! He sickened as at breath of poison-flowers: A languid humour stole among the […]...
17. Modern Love XIX: No State Is Enviable No state is enviable. To the luck alone Of some few favoured men I would put claim. I bleed, but her who wounds I will not blame. Have I not felt her heart as ’twere my own Beat thro’ me? could I hurt her? heaven and hell! But I could hurt her cruelly! Can I […]...
18. Modern Love XXVIII: I Must Be Flattered I must be flattered. The imperious Desire speaks out. Lady, I am content To play with you the game of Sentiment, And with you enter on paths perilous; But if across your beauty I throw light, To make it threefold, it must be all mine. First secret; then avowed. For I must shine Envied, I, […]...
19. Modern Love XX: I Am Not of Those I am not of those miserable males Who sniff at vice and, daring not to snap, Do therefore hope for heaven. I take the hap Of all my deeds. The wind that fills my sails Propels; but I am helmsman. Am I wrecked, I know the devil has sufficient weight To bear: I lay it […]...
20. Modern Love XIII: I Play for Seasons, Not Eternities ‘I play for Seasons; not Eternities!’ Says Nature, laughing on her way. ‘So must All those whose stake is nothing more than dust!’ And lo, she wins, and of her harmonies She is full sure! Upon her dying rose, She drops a look of fondness, and goes by, Scarce any retrospection in her eye; For […]...
21. When Man Enters Woman When man, Enters woman, Like the surf biting the shore, Again and again, And the woman opens her mouth with pleasure And her teeth gleam Like the alphabet, Logos appears milking a star, And the man Inside of woman Ties a knot So that they will Never again be separate And the woman Climbs into […]...
22. Modern Love XL: I Bade My Lady Think I bade my Lady think what she might mean. Know I my meaning, I? Can I love one, And yet be jealous of another? None Commits such folly. Terrible Love, I ween, Has might, even dead, half sighing to upheave The lightless seas of selfishness amain: Seas that in a man’s heart have no rain […]...
23. Modern Love IV: All Other Joys of Life All other joys of life he strove to warm, And magnify, and catch them to his lip: But they had suffered shipwreck with the ship, And gazed upon him sallow from the storm. Or if Delusion came, ’twas but to show The coming minute mock the one that went. Cold as a mountain in its […]...
24. Modern Love XLII: I Am to Follow Her I am to follow her. There is much grace In woman when thus bent on martyrdom. They think that dignity of soul may come, Perchance, with dignity of body. Base! But I was taken by that air of cold And statuesque sedateness, when she said ‘I’m going’; lit a taper, bowed her head, And went, […]...
25. Modern Love XLVIII: Their Sense Their sense is with their senses all mixed in, Destroyed by subleties these women are! More brain, O Lord, more brain! or we shall mar Utterly this fair garden we might win. Behold! I looked for peace, and thought it near. Our inmost hearts had opened, each to each. We drank the pure daylight of […]...
26. Modern Love XXXI: This Golden Head This golden head has wit in it. I live Again, and a far higher life, near her. Some women like a young philosopher; Perchance because he is diminutive. For woman’s manly god must not exceed Proportions of the natural nursing size. Great poets and great sages draw no prize With women: but the little lap-dog […]...
27. Modern Love XIV: What Soul Would Bargain What soul would bargain for a cure that brings Contempt the nobler agony to kill? Rather let me bear on the bitter ill, And strike this rusty bosom with new stings! It seems there is another veering fit Since on a gold-haired lady’s eyeballs pure, I looked with little prospect of a cure, The while […]...
28. Modern Love XI: Out in the Yellow Meadows Out in the yellow meadows, where the bee Hums by us with the honey of the Spring, And showers of sweet notes from the larks on wing, Are dropping like a noon-dew, wander we. Or is it now? or was it then? for now, As then, the larks from running rings pour showers: The golden […]...
29. Modern Love XLIV: They Say That Pity They say, that Pity in Love’s service dwells, A porter at the rosy temple’s gate. I missed him going: but it is my fate To come upon him now beside his wells; Whereby I know that I Love’s temple leave, And that the purple doors have closed behind. Poor soul! if in those early days […]...
30. Modern Love XXIV: The Misery Is Greater The misery is greater, as I live! To know her flesh so pure, so keen her sense, That she does penance now for no offence, Save against Love. The less can I forgive! The less can I forgive, though I adore That cruel lovely pallor which surrounds Her footsteps; and the low vibrating sounds That […]...
31. Modern Love XXXIV: Madam Would Speak With Me Madam would speak with me. So, now it comes: The Deluge or else Fire! She’s well, she thanks My husbandship. Our chain on silence clanks. Time leers between, above his twiddling thumbs. Am I quite well? Most excellent in health! The journals, too, I diligently peruse. Vesuvius is expected to give news: Niagara is no […]...
32. Modern Love VIII: Yet It Was Plain She Struggled Yet it was plain she struggled, and that salt Of righteous feeling made her pitiful. Poor twisting worm, so queenly beautiful! Where came the cleft between us? whose the fault? My tears are on thee, that have rarely dropped As balm for any bitter wound of mine: My breast will open for thee at a […]...
33. Primeval my Love for the Woman I Love PRIMEVAL my love for the woman I love, O bride! O wife! more resistless, more enduring than I can tell, the thought of you! Then separate, as disembodied, the purest born, The ethereal, the last athletic reality, my consolation, I ascend-I float in the regions of your love, O man, O sharer of my roving […]...
34. Modern Love XXX: What Are We First What are we first? First, animals; and next Intelligences at a leap; on whom Pale lies the distant shadow of the tomb, And all that draweth on the tomb for text. Into which state comes Love, the crowning sun: Beneath whose light the shadow loses form. We are the lords of life, and life is […]...
35. Modern Love I: By This He Knew She Wept By this he knew she wept with waking eyes: That, at his hand’s light quiver by her head, The strange low sobs that shook their common bed Were called into her with a sharp surprise, And strangled mute, like little gaping snakes, Dreadfully venomous to him. She lay Stone-still, and the long darkness flowed away […]...
36. Of Modern Poetry The poem of the mind in the act of finding What will suffice. It has not always had To find: the scene was set; it repeated what Was in the script. Then the theatre was changed To something else. Its past was a souvenir. It has to be living, to learn the speech of the […]...
37. Modern Love XVII: At Dinner She Is Hostess At dinner, she is hostess, I am host. Went the feast ever cheerfuller? She keeps The Topic over intellectual deeps In buoyancy afloat. They see no ghost. With sparkling surface-eyes we ply the ball: It is in truth a most contagious game: HIDING THE SKELETON, shall be its name. Such play as this the devils […]...
38. Modern Love XXVI: Love Ere He Bleeds Love ere he bleeds, an eagle in high skies, Has earth beneath his wings: from reddened eve He views the rosy dawn. In vain they weave The fatal web below while far he flies. But when the arrow strikes him, there’s a change. He moves but in the track of his spent pain, Whose red […]...
39. Late Leaves THE leaves are falling; so am I; The few late flowers have moisture in the eye; So have I too. Scarcely on any bough is heard Joyous, or even unjoyous, bird The whole wood through. Winter may come: he brings but nigher His circle (yearly narrowing) to the fire Where old friends meet. Let him; […]...
40. Modern Love L: Thus Piteously Love Thus piteously Love closed what he begat: The union of this ever-diverse pair! These two were rapid falcons in a snare, Condemned to do the flitting of the bat. Lovers beneath the singing sky of May, They wandered once; clear as the dew on flowers: But they fed not on the advancing hours: Their hearts […]...