PENGUIN P O E T S
Penguin Books Ltd, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia This selection first published 1958 Reprinted 1962, 1964, 1966 (twice) Copyright Š Penguin Books Ltd, 1958 Made and printed in Great Britain by Cox & Wyman Ltd, London, Fakenham and Reading Set in Akzidenz Grotesk and Adobe Garamond Pro
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
CONTENTS
W. H. Auden This Lunar Beauty...................................................................................................7 T.S. Eliot Hysteria...................................................................................................................8 C. Day Lewis Is it far to go?...........................................................................................................9 John Keats A Party of Lovers...................................................................................................10 William Blake Jerusalem................................................................................................................11 Charles Baudelaire Autumn..................................................................................................................12 Stephane Mallarme A Fan.....................................................................................................................13 Thomas Hardy She, at his Funeral..................................................................................................14 e. e. cummings Snow......................................................................................................................15
T h i s Lu n a r B e au t y W. H . A u d e n This lunar beauty Has no history, Is complete and early; If beauty later Bear any feature It had a lover And is another. This like a dream Keeps other time, And daytime is The loss of this; For time is inches And the heart’s changes Where ghost has haunted, Lost and wanted. But this was never A ghost’s endeavour Nor, finished this, Was ghost at ease; And till it pass Love shall not near The sweetness here Not sorrow take His endless look.
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Hysteria T. S . E l i o t
As she laughed I was aware of becoming involved in her laughter and being part of it, until her teeth were only accidental stars with a talent for squad-drill. I was drawn in by short gasps, inhaled at each momentary recovery, lost finally in the dark caverns of her throat, bruised by the ripple of unseen muscles. An elderly waiter with trembling hands was hurriedly spreading a pink and white checked cloth over the rusty green iron table, saying: “If the lady and gentleman wish to take their tea in the garden, if the lady and gentleman wish to take their tea in the garden ...� I decided that if the shaking of her breasts could be stopped, some of the fragments of the afternoon might be collected, and I concentrated my attention with careful subtlety to this end.
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I s i t fa r to g o? C . D ay L e w i s
Is it far to go? A step - no further. Is it hard to go? Ask the melting snow, The eddying feather. What can I take there? Not a hank, not a hair. What shall I leave behind? Ask the hastening wind, The fainting star. Shall I be gone long? For ever and a day. To whom there belong? Ask the stone to say, Ask my song. Who will say farewell? The beating bell. Will anyone miss me? That I dare not tell Quick, Rose, and kiss me.
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A Party of Lovers John Keats
Pensive they sit, and roll their languid eyes, Nibble their toast, and cool their tea with sighs, Or else forget the purpose of the night, Forget their tea – forget their appetite. See with cross’d arms they sit -- ah! happy crew, The fire is going out and no one rings For coals, and therefore no coals Betty brings. A fly is in the milk-pot -- must he die By a humane society? No, no; there Mr. Werter takes his spoon, Inserts it, dips the handle, and lo! soon The little straggler, sav’d from perils dark, Across the teaboard draws a long wet mark. Arise! take snuffers by the handle, There’s a large cauliflower in each candle. A winding-sheet, ah me! I must away To No. 7, just beyond the circus gay. ‘Alas, my friend! your coat sits very well; Where may your tailor live?’ ‘I may not tell. O pardon me -- I’m absent now and then. Where might my tailor live? I say again I cannot tell, let me no more be teaz’d -He lives in Wapping, might live where he pleas’d.’
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Jerusalem
William Blake
And did those feet in ancient time Walk upon England’s mountains green? And was the holy Lamb of God On England’s pleasant pastures seen? And did the Countenance Divine Shine forth upon our clouded hills? And was Jerusalem builded here Among these dark Satanic Mills? Bring me my bow of burning gold! Bring me my arrows of desire! Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold! Bring me my chariot of fire! I will not cease from mental fight, Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, Till we have built Jerusalem In England’s green and pleasant land.
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Autumn
Charles Baudelaire
Soon we will plunge ourselves into cold shadows, And all of summer’s stunning afternoons will be gone. I already hear the dead thuds of logs below Falling on the cobblestones and the lawn. All of winter will return to me: derision, Hate, shuddering, horror, drudgery and vice, And exiled, like the sun, to a polar prison, My soul will harden into a block of red ice. I shiver as I listen to each log crash and slam: The echoes are as dull as executioners’ drums. My mind is like a tower that slowly succumbs To the blows of a relentless battering ram. It seems to me, swaying to these shocks, that someone Is nailing down a coffin in a hurry somewhere. For whom? -- It was summer yesterday; now it’s autumn. Echoes of departure keep resounding in the air.
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A Fan
Stephane Mallarme With nothing of language but A beating in the sky From so precious a place yet Future verse will rise. A low wing the messenger This fan if it is the one The same by which behind you there Some mirror has shone Limpidly (where will fall pursued grain by grain a little invisible dust, all that can give me pain) So may it always bless Your hands free of idleness.
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S he, at his Funeral Thomas Hardy
THEY bear him to his resting-place— In slow procession sweeping by; I follow at a stranger’s space; His kindred they, his sweetheart I Unchanged my gown of garish dye, Though sable-sad is their attire; But they stand round with griefless eye, Whilst my regret consumes like fire!
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Snow
e. e. cummings
cru is ingw Hi sperf ul lydesc BYS FLUTTERFULLY IF (endbegi ndesignb ecend)tang lesp ang le s ofC omego CRINGE WITHS lilt( -inglyful of)! (s r BIRDS BECAUSE AGAINS emarkable s)h? y&a (from n o(into whe)re f ind) nd ArE GLIB SCARCELYEST AMONGS FLOWERING
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