SONNET 18 Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date: Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimm'd; And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimm'd; But thy eternal summer shall not fade Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st; Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st; So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. William Shakespeare
Funeral Blues Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead Scribbling on the sky the message 'He is Dead'. Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves, Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves. He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong. The stars are not wanted now; put out every one, Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun, Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood; For nothing now can ever come to any good. W H Auden
A Small Keen Wind My wife, for six months now in sinister Tones, has muttered incessantly about divorce, And, since of the woman I m fond, this dark chatter Is painful as well as a bit monotonous. Still, marvel one must, when she fishes out of that trunk, Like rags, my shadier deeds for all to see With This you did when sober, and that when drunk, At the remarkable powers of memory. For although I wriggle like mad when she whistles up Some particularly nasty bit of handiwork, The dirty linen I simply cannot drop, Since Thomas Blackburn is stitched by the laundry mark. So I gather the things and say Yes, these are mine, Though some cleaner items are not upon your list, Then walk with my bundle of rags to another room Since I will not play the role of delinquent ghost And be folded up by guilt in the crook of an arm. I saw tonight walking to cool the mind A little moonshine on a garden wall And, as I brooded, felt a small, keen wind Stroll from the Arctic at its own sweet will. Thomas Blackburn
First Love Waking, with a dream of first love forming real words, as close to my lips as lipstick, I speak your name, after a silence of years, into the pillow, and the power of your name brings me here to the window, naked, to say it again to a garden shaking with light. This was a child's love, and yet I clench my eyes till the pictures return, unfocused at first, then almost clear, an old film played at a slow speed. All day I will glimpse it, in windows of changing sky, in mirrors, my lover's eyes, wherever you are. And later a star, long dead, here, seems precisely the size of a tear. Tonight, a love-letter out of a dream stammers itself in my heart. Such faithfulness. You smile in my head on the last evening. Unseen flowers suddenly pierce and sweeten the air. Carol Ann Duffy
AT AN INN HEN we as strangers sought Their catering care, Veiled smiles bespoke their thought Of what we were. They warmed as they opined Us more than friends-- That we had all resigned For love s dear ends. And that swift sympathy With living love Which quicks the world--maybe The spheres above, Made them our ministers, Moved them to say, Ah, God, that bliss like theirs Would flush our day! And we were left alone As Love s own pair; Yet never the love-light shone Between us there! But that which chilled the breath Of afternoon, And palsied unto death The pane-fly s tune. The kiss their zeal foretold, And now deemed come, Came not: within his hold Love lingered numb. Why cast he on our port A bloom not ours? Why shaped us for his sport In after-hours? As we seemed we were not That day afar, And now we seem not what We aching are. O severing sea and land, O laws of men, Ere death, once let us stand As we stood then! Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)