Modern Love XI: Out in the Yellow Meadows

Related poetry:

1. Modern Love III: This Was the Woman This was the woman; what now of the man? But pass him. If he comes beneath a heel, He shall be crushed until he cannot feel, Or, being callous, haply till he can. But he is nothing: nothing? Only mark The rich light striking out from her on him! Ha! what a sense it is […]...
2. 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 […]...
3. Nature rarer uses Yellow Nature rarer uses Yellow Than another Hue. Saves she all of that for Sunsets Prodigal of Blue Spending Scarlet, like a Woman Yellow she affords Only scantly and selectly Like a Lover’s Words....
4. 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 […]...
5. 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 […]...
6. Modern Love XLV: It Is the Season It is the season of the sweet wild rose, My Lady’s emblem in the heart of me! So golden-crownèd shines she gloriously, And with that softest dream of blood she glows: Mild as an evening heaven round Hesper bright! I pluck the flower, and smell it, and revive The time when in her eyes I […]...
7. 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 […]...
8. 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. […]...
9. 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 […]...
10. 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 […]...
11. 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, […]...
12. 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 […]...
13. 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 […]...
14. A lane of Yellow led the eye A lane of Yellow led the eye Unto a Purple Wood Whose soft inhabitants to be Surpasses solitude If Bird the silence contradict Or flower presume to show In that low summer of the West Impossible to know...
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. SYMPHONY IN YELLOW An omnibus across the bridge Crawls like a yellow butterfly And, here and there, a passer-by Shows like a little restless midge. Big barges full of yellow hay Are moored against the shadowy wharf, And, like a yellow silken scarf, The thick fog hangs along the quay. The yellow leaves begin to fade And flutter […]...
17. Modern Love VII: She Issues Radiant She issues radiant from her dressing-room, Like one prepared to scale an upper sphere: By stirring up a lower, much I fear How deftly that oiled barber lays his bloom That long-shanked dapper Cupid with frisked curls Can make known women torturingly fair; The gold-eyed serpent dwelling in rich hair, Awakes beneath his magic whisks […]...
18. Modern Love IX: He Felt the Wild Beast He felt the wild beast in him betweenwhiles So masterfully rude, that he would grieve To see the helpless delicate thing receive His guardianship through certain dark defiles. Had he not teeth to rend, and hunger too? But still he spared her. Once: ‘Have you no fear?’ He said: ’twas dusk; she in his grasp; […]...
19. 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 […]...
20. 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 […]...
21. 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 […]...
22. Modern Love V: A Message from Her A message from her set his brain aflame. A world of household matters filled her mind, Wherein he saw hypocrisy designed: She treated him as something that is tame, And but at other provocation bites. Familiar was her shoulder in the glass, Through that dark rain: yet it may come to pass That a changed […]...
23. 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, […]...
24. 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! […]...
25. My Bed is Covered Yellow My bed is covered yellow – Oh Sun, I sit on you Oh golden field I lay on you Oh money I dream of you More, More, cried the bed – talk to me more – Oh bed that taked the weight of the world – all the lost dreams laid on you Oh bed […]...
26. 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 […]...
27. Modern Love XXXIII: In Paris, at the Louvre ‘In Paris, at the Louvre, there have I seen The sumptuously-feathered angel pierce Prone Lucifer, descending. Looked he fierce, Showing the fight a fair one? Too serene! The young Pharsalians did not disarray Less willingly their locks of floating silk: That suckling mouth of his, upon the milk Of heaven might still be feasting through […]...
28. 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 […]...
29. When I am dead, my dearest When I am dead, my dearest, Sing no sad songs for me; Plant thou no roses at my head, Nor shady cypress tree: Be the green grass above me With showers and dewdrops wet; And if thou wilt, remember, And if thou wilt, forget. I shall not see the shadows, I shall not feel the […]...
30. 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 […]...
31. Modern Love XXVII: Distraction is the Panacea Distraction is the panacea, Sir! I hear my oracle of Medicine say. Doctor! that same specific yesterday I tried, and the result will not deter A second trial. Is the devil’s line Of golden hair, or raven black, composed? And does a cheek, like any sea-shell rosed, Or clear as widowed sky, seem most divine? […]...
32. 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 […]...
33. The Sleep-Worker When wilt thou wake, O Mother, wake and see – As one who, held in trance, has laboured long By vacant rote and prepossession strong – The coils that thou hast wrought unwittingly; Wherein have place, unrealized by thee, Fair growths, foul cankers, right enmeshed with wrong, Strange orchestras of victim-shriek and song, And curious […]...
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 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 […]...
36. Modern Love XLIII: Mark Where the Pressing Wind Mark where the pressing wind shoots javelin-like, Its skeleton shadow on the broad-backed wave! Here is a fitting spot to dig Love’s grave; Here where the ponderous breakers plunge and strike, And dart their hissing tongues high up the sand: In hearing of the ocean, and in sight Of those ribbed wind-streaks running into white. […]...
37. And Wilt Thou Leave me Thus? And wilt thou leave me thus? Say nay, say nay, for shame, To save thee from the blame Of all my grief and grame; And wilt thou leave me thus? Say nay, say nay! And wilt thou leave me thus, That hath loved thee so long In wealth and woe among? And is thy heart […]...
38. 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 […]...
39. 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 […]...
40. Confidence Oppressed with sin and woe, A burdened heart I bear, Opposed by many a mighty foe: But I will not despair. With this polluted heart I dare to come to Thee, Holy and mighty as Thou art; For Thou wilt pardon me. I feel that I am weak, And prone to every sin: But Thou […]...