I am off to an event on Saturday night that requires me to take a romantic poem with me. I have no idea about poems or romance so this is new ground for me. There must be some love gods on STW, what would you choose?

I give it 5 responses before a smutty “roses are red” type answer.

Blah blah blah…..Nantucket

I don’t suppose the event is in Ealing?

There was a young lady liked Snickers….

How about some Donne? The Bait.

Come live with me, and be my love,
And we will some new pleasures prove
Of golden sands, and crystal brooks,
With silken lines, and silver hooks.

There will the river whispering run
Warm’d by thy eyes, more than the sun;
And there the ‘enamour’d fish will stay,
Begging themselves they may betray.

When thou wilt swim in that live bath,
Each fish, which every channel hath,
Will amorously to thee swim,
Gladder to catch thee, than thou him.

If thou, to be so seen, be’st loth,
By sun or moon, thou dark’nest both,
And if myself have leave to see,
I need not their light having thee.

Let others freeze with angling reeds,
And cut their legs with shells and weeds,
Or treacherously poor fish beset,
With strangling snare, or windowy net.

Let coarse bold hands from slimy nest
The bedded fish in banks out-wrest;
Or curious traitors, sleeve-silk flies,
Bewitch poor fishes’ wand’ring eyes.

For thee, thou need’st no such deceit,
For thou thyself art thine own bait:
That fish, that is not catch’d thereby,
Alas, is wiser far than I.

“romantic poets” weren’t lovey-dovey romantic – it was the name of a sort of movement. Might be worth checking what you really have to take

(and,
A lusty young lass from Belize
Had blisters all over her knees, …)

Oh in that case Wordsworth:

I wandered lonely as a cloud
to the kings head and rose and crown
And there saw Mary fulsome, proud and
I longed to peek ‘neath her straining blouse
But sadly I was not allowed

the end.

depending on notions of romance:

Tony Harrison – book ends

I

Baked the day she suddenly dropped dead
we chew it slowly that last apple pie.

Shocked into sleeplessness you’re scared of bed.
We never could talk much, and now don’t try.

You’re like book ends, the pair of you, she’d say,
Hog that grate, say nothing, sit, sleep, stare…

The ‘scholar’ me, you, worn out on poor pay,
only our silence made us seem a pair.

Not as good for staring in, blue gas,
too regular each bud, each yellow spike.

At night you need my company to pass
and she not here to tell us we’re alike!

You’re life’s all shattered into smithereens.

Back in our silences and sullen looks,
for all the Scotch we drink, what’s still between ‘s
not the thirty or so years, but books, books, books.

II

The stone’s too full. The wording must be terse.
There’s scarcely room to carve the FLORENCE on it–

Come on, it’s not as if we’re wanting verse.
It’s not as if we’re wanting a whole sonnet!

After tumblers of neat Johnny Walker
(I think that both of us we’re on our third)
you said you’d always been a clumsy talker
and couldn’t find another, shorter word
for ‘beloved’ or for ‘wife’ in the inscription,
but not too clumsy that you can’t still cut:

You’re supposed to be the bright boy at description
and you can’t tell them what the **** to put!

I’ve got to find the right words on my own.

I’ve got the envelope that he’d been scrawling,
mis-spelt, mawkish, stylistically appalling
but I can’t squeeze more love into their stone.

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand;
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

practical romantic:

Scaffolding.

Masons, when they start upon a building,
Are careful to test out the scaffolding;

Make sure that planks won’t slip at busy points,
Secure all ladders, tighten bolted joints.

And yet all this comes down when the job’s done
Showing off walls of sure and solid stone.

So if, my dear, there sometimes seem to be
Old bridges breaking between you and me

Never fear. We may let the scaffolds fall
Confident that we have built our wall.

– Seamus Heaney

airy fairy romantic:

i carry your heart with me

– ee cummings

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate (for you are my fate,my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

Oooo ,is it a wedding?

Wedding Gloves
A melting of morals
an soulder of souls
as sexy as lace, but with just as much holes
doubts were debated and questions were raised
all the stags and the hens were stunned and amazed
the portents and omens rang as loud as the bells
with you at the alter and me in the cells

Aidan Moffat

(hopefully it’ll pass the swear filter, there may be one or two references to s*x)

Let’s talk about sex, baby
Let’s talk about you and me
Let’s talk about all the good things
And the bad things that may be
Let’s talk about sex
Let’s talk about sex
Let’s talk about sex
Let’s talk about sex

Let’s talk about sex for now
To the people at home or in the crowd
It keeps coming up anyhow
Don’t decoy, avoid, or make void the topic
‘Cause that ain’t gonna stop it
Now we talk about sex on the radio and video shows
Many will know anything goes
Let’s tell it how it is, and how it could be
How it was, and of course, how it should be
Those who think it’s dirty have a choice
Pick up the needle, press pause, or turn the radio off
Will that stop us, Pep? I doubt it
All right then, come on, Spin

Let’s talk about sex, baby
Let’s talk about you and me
Let’s talk about all the good things
And the bad things that may be
Let’s talk about sex
Let’s talk about sex
Let’s talk about sex
Let’s talk about sex

Hot to trot, make any man’s eyes pop
She use what she got to get whatever she don’t got
Fellas drool like fools, but then again they’re only human
The chick was a hit because her body was boomin’
Gold, pearls, rubies, crazy diamonds
Nothin’ she ever wore was ever common
Her dates heads of state, men of taste
Lawyers, doctors, no one was too great for her to get with
Or even mess with, the Prez she says was next on her list
And believe me, you, it’s as good as true
There ain’t a man alive that she couldn’t get next to
She had it all in the bag
So she should have been glad
But she was mad and sad and feelin’ bad
Thinkin’ about the things that she never had
No love, just sex, followed next with a check and a note
That last night was dope, dope

“romantic poets” weren’t lovey-dovey romantic – it was the name of a sort of movement. Might be worth checking what you really have to take

Good point, scaredy.

Turn again, thou fair Eliza!
Ae kind blink before we part;
Rue on thy despairing lover,
Can’st thou break his faithfu’ heart?
Turn again, thou fair Eliza!
If to love thy heart denies,
Oh, in pity hide the sentence
Under friendship’s kind disguise!

Thee, sweet maid, hae I offended?
My offence is loving thee;
Can’st thou wreck his peace for ever,
Wha for thine would gladly die?
While the life beats in my bosom,
Thou shalt mix in ilka throe:
Turn again, thou lovely maiden,
Ae sweet smile on me bestow.

Not the bee upon the blossom,
In the pride o’ sinny noon;
Not the little sporting fairy,
All beneath the simmer moon;
Not the Minstrel in the moment
Fancy lightens in his e’e,
Kens the pleasure, feels the rapture,
That thy presence gies to me.

It’s got to be that one about tides, hasn’t it? Yeats or Keats or something…

Here we go, Keats:

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art—
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors—
No—yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever—or else swoon to death.

Roses are red,
Violets are blue
Poems are hard
Bacon

Because everyone loves a cheeky rasher……..

Ben Jonson.

The Hour-Glass

Do but consider this small dust
Here running in the glass,
By atoms moved;
Could you believe that this
The body, ever, was
Of one that loved?
And in his mistress’ flame, playing like a fly,
Turned to cinders by her eye?
Yes; and in death, as life, unblessed,
To have’t expressed,
Even ashes of lovers find no rest.

Well, sort of romantic.

Romantic poets were, among others, Keats, Browning, Browning, Wordsworth and Byron. Keats being the best.

They (from wikipedia) “[were a] philosophical, literary, artistic and cultural era reacting against prevailing enlightenment ideals of the nineteenth century providing natural, emotional, personal and artistic themes.”

Different to what we think of as romantic ie. lovely-dovey bullshit.

Ode to a Nightingale is what happens when a genius uses English to express their emotions.

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
‘Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,—
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs,
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster’d around by all her starry Fays;
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast fading violets cover’d up in leaves;
And mid-May’s eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
To thy high requiem become a sod.

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is fam’d to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now ’tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?

Alternatively, start singing, Hand in Glove

Stunning

edit:

if O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth;

doesnt’t make you want to drink red wine in your garden in the evening and enjoy the solitude while remembering girlfriends past / the love of your life you’re still with, you need to check your heart’s still beating!

Izzy wizzy
lets get busy!

remembering girlfriends past

I never went out with a Flora

Byron’s She walks in Beauty.

Oh dear Flo,
I love you so,
Even in your nighty,
When the moonlight flits,
Across your t***
Jebus Chris Almighty.

Reflections on Icebreaking – Ogden Nash

Candy
Is Dandy
But liquor
Is quicker.

A romantic poem by a Romantic poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Presence of Love
And in Life’s noisiest hour,
There whispers still the ceaseless Love of Thee,
The heart’s Self-solace and soliloquy.
You mould my Hopes, you fashion me within;
And to the leading Love-throb in the Heart
Thro’ all my Being, thro’ my pulse’s beat;
You lie in all my many Thoughts, like Light,
Like the fair light of Dawn, or summer Eve
On rippling Stream, or cloud-reflecting Lake.
And looking to the Heaven, that bends above you,
How oft! I bless the Lot that made me love you

A romantic poem by a romantic poet, John Cooper Clarke’s I Wanna Be Yours 🙂
I wanna be your vacuum cleaner
breathing in your dust
I wanna be your Ford Cortina
I will never rust
If you like your coffee hot
let me be your coffee pot
You call the shots
I wanna be yours …

Excellent, thank you. I’ve printed off The Presence Of Love.

It’s for Secret Cinema’s 28 Days Later on Saturday night.

The Smile

THERE is a smile of love,
And there is a smile of deceit,
And there is a smile of smiles
In which these two smiles meet.

And there is a frown of hate,
And there is a frown of disdain,
And there is a frown of frowns
Which you strive to forget in vain,

For it sticks in the heart’s deep core
And it sticks in the deep backbone—
And no smile that ever was smil’d,
But only one smile alone,

That betwixt the cradle and grave
It only once smil’d can be;
And, when it once is smil’d,
There’s an end to all misery.”

~ William Blake

I don’t suppose the event is in Ealing?

Sexual Ealing?

(Yes that’s right. It took me two hours to work up that quick fire reply…)

“Sexual Ealing?

(Yes that’s right. It took me two hours to work up that quick fire reply…)”

made me chuckle 🙂

~ William Blake

also wrote “the sick rose” which some believe is about syphilis (so obliquely romantic and also a bit apocalyptic, for your theme !)

Oh, I Wish I’d Looked After Me Tits
Oh, I wish I’d looked after me dear old knockers,
Not flashed them to boys behind the school lockers,
Or let them get fondled by randy old dockers,
Oh, I wish I’d looked after me tits.

‘Cos now I’m much older and gravity’s winning.
It’s Nature’s revenge for all that sinning,
And those dirty memories are rapidly dimming,
Oh, I wish I’d looked after me tits

‘Cos tits can be such troublesome things
When they no longer bounce, but dangle and swing.
And although they go well with my Bingo wings,
I wish I’d looked after me tits.

When they’re both long enough to tie up in a bow,
When it’s not the sweet chariot that swings low,
When they’re less of a friend and more of a foe,
Then I wish I’d looked after me tits.

When I was young I got whistles and hoots,
From the men on the site to the men in the suits,
Now me nipples get stuck in the zips on me boots,
Oh, I wish I’d looked after me tits

When I was younger I rode bikes and scooters,
Cruising around with my favourite suitors.
Now the wheels get entangled with my dangling hooters,
I wish I’d looked after me tits.

When they follow behind and get trapped in the door,
When they’re less in the air and more near the floor,
When people see less of them rather than more,
Oh, I wish I’d looked after me tits

By Pam Ayres

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints,—I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

EB Browning, the little scamp(ette)

She is most fair,
And when they see her pass
The poets’ ladies
Look no more in the glass
But after her.

On a bleak moor
Running under the moon
She lures a poet,
Once proud or happy, soon
Far from his door.

Beside a train,
Because they saw her go,
Or failed to see her,
Travellers and watchers know
Another pain.

The simple lack
Of her is more to me
Than others’ presence
Whether life splendid be
Or utter black.

I have not seen,
I have no news of her;
I can tell only
She is not here, but there
She might have been.

She is to be kissed
Only perhaps by me;
She may be seeking
Me and no other; she
may not exist.

Edward Thomas, The Unknown

Roses are red
Violets are blue
I’ve got a knife
get in the van

My favorite (Welsh) love poem:

Yr Wylan

gan Dafydd ap Gwilym

Yr wylan deg ar lanw, dioer,
Unlliw ag eiry neu wenlloer,
Dilwch yw dy degwch di,
Darn fal haul, dyrnfol heli.
Ysgafn ar don eigion wyd,
Esgudfalch edn bysgodfwyd.
Yngo’r aud wrth yr angor
Lawlaw â mi, lili môr.
Llythr unwaith lle’th ariannwyd,
Lleian ym mrig llanw môr wyd.

Cyweirglod bun, cai’r glod bell,
Cyrch ystum caer a chastell.
Edrych a welych, wylan,
Eigr o liw ar y gaer lân.
Dywaid fy ngeiriau dyun,
Dewised fi, dos hyd fun.
Byddai’i hun, beiddia’i hannerch,
Bydd fedrus wrth fwythus ferch
Er budd; dywaid na byddaf,
Fwynwas coeth, fyw onis caf.
Ei charu’r wyf, gwbl nwyf nawdd,
Och w?r, erioed ni charawdd
Na Merddin wenithfin iach,
Na Thaliesin ei thlysach.
Siprys dyn giprys dan gopr,
Rhagorbryd rhy gyweirbropr.

Och wylan, o chai weled
Grudd y ddyn lanaf o Gred,
Oni chaf fwynaf annerch,
Fy nihenydd fydd y ferch.

The Gull

Fair gull on the tide, indeed,
of the same hue as snow or the white moon,
your beauty is without blemish,
4 a piece like the sun, gauntlet of the brine.
You are light on the ocean wave,
swift proud fish-eating bird.
You’d go close by the anchor
8 hand-in-hand with me, sea lily.
Just like a letter you are painted silver,
you’re a nun on the crest of the sea tide.

Perfect praise of a girl, you are praised afar,
12 make for the curve of fortress and castle.
Gull, look for one
of the colour of Eigr on the lovely fortress.
Say my ardent words,
16 may she choose me, go to the girl.
If she’s alone, make bold to greet her,
be courteous to the dainty maid
for gain; say I will not live,
20 noble refined youth, unless I have her.
I love her, strength of complete passion,
oh men, neither Myrddin
with his fine wheaten lips
24 nor Taliesin ever loved a fairer one.
A sought-after girl [dressed in] fine linen under copper [hair],
exquisite visage perfectly formed.

Ah gull, if you get to see
28 the cheek of the fairest girl in Christendom,
unless I get a most gentle response
the girl will be the death of me.

by Da

There is a thing which in the light
Is seldom used, but in the night
It serves the maiden female crew,
The ladies, and the good-wives too.
They use to take it in their hand,
And then it will uprightly stand;
And to a hole they it apply,
Where by its goodwill it would die;
It spends, goes out, and still within
It leaves its moisture thick and thin.

A Candle by Sir John Suckling 🙂