The Complete Poems Read online

  The Second-Fated

  A Slice of Wedding Cake [Bitter Thoughts on Receiving a Slice of Cordelia’s Wedding Cake]

  A Plea to Boys and Girls

  A Bouquet from a Fellow Roseman

  Yes

  The Outsider

  From STEPS (1958)

  The Enlisted Man

  Mike and Mandy [Caroline and Charles]

  Nothing

  Call It a Good Marriage

  Read Me, Please!

  The Twin of Sleep

  Around the Mountain

  III

  From FOOD FOR CENTAURS (1960)

  Twice of the Same Fever

  Established Lovers

  The Quiet Glades of Eden

  Heroes in Their Prime

  Catkind

  Two Children [The Young Goddess]

  Here Live Your Life Out!

  Joan and Darby

  Superman on the Riviera

  The Picture Nail

  Old World Dialogue

  The Were-Man

  The Person from Porlock

  From THE PENNY FIDDLE (1960)

  The Penny Fiddle

  Robinson Crusoe

  The Six Badgers

  Jock o’ Binnorie

  From MORE POEMS (1961)

  Lyceia

  Symptoms of Love

  The Sharp Ridge

  Under the Olives

  The Visitation

  Fragment

  Apple Island

  The Falcon Woman

  Troughs of Sea

  The Laugh

  The Death Grapple

  The Starred Coverlet

  The Intrusion

  Patience

  The Cure

  Hag-Ridden

  Turn of the Moon

  The Secret Land

  Seldom Yet Now

  To Myrto of Myrtles

  Anchises to Aphrodite

  A Lost World

  The Dangerous Gift

  Surgical Ward: Men

  Nightfall at Twenty Thousand Feet

  The Simpleton

  Two Rhymes About Fate and Money

  The Two Witches

  Burn It!

  Song: Come, Enjoy Your Sunday!

  From COLLECTED POEMS 1961 (1961)

  Ruby and Amethyst

  From THE MORE DESERVING CASES (1962)

  The Miller’s Man

  July 24th

  Safe Receipt of a Censored Letter

  From NEW POEMS 1962 (1962)

  Recognition

  The Watch

  Name Day

  Uncalendared Love

  The Meeting

  Lack

  Not at Home

  Horizon

  Golden Anchor

  Lion Lover

  Ibycus in Samos

  Possessed

  The Winged Heart

  In Trance at a Distance

  The Wreath

  In Her Praise

  The Alabaster Throne

  A Restless Ghost

  Between Moon and Moon

  Beware, Madam!

  The Cliff Edge

  Acrobats

  Ouzo Unclouded

  The Broken Girth

  Inkidoo and the Queen of Babel

  Three Songs for the Lute

  I Truth Is Poor Physic

  II In Her Only Way

  III Hedges Freaked with Snow

  The Ambrosia of Dionysus and Semele

  The Unnamed Spell

  From MAN DOES, WOMAN IS (1964)

  A Time of Waiting

  Expect Nothing

  No Letter

  The Why of the Weather

  In Time

  Fire Walker

  Deed of Gift

  At Best, Poets

  She Is No Liar

  A Last Poem

  The Pearl

  The Leap

  Bank Account

  Judgement of Paris

  Man Does, Woman Is

  The Ample Garden

  To Myrto About Herself

  The Three-Faced

  Dazzle of Darkness

  Myrrhina

  Food of the Dead

  Eurydice

  To Beguile and Betray

  I Will Write

  Bird of Paradise

  The Metaphor

  Secrecy

  Joseph and Mary

  An East Wind

  Dance of Words

  A Blind Arrow

  The Oleaster

  The Septuagenarian

  Non Cogunt Astra

  Song: Sword and Rose

  Endless Pavement

  In Disguise

  A Measure of Casualness

  In Time of Absence

  The Green Castle

  Not to Sleep

  The Hearth

  That Other World

  The Beds of Grainne and Diarmuid

  Rain of Brimstone

  Consortium of Stones

  The Black Goddess

  Broken Neck

  O

  Woman of Greece

  The Colours of Night

  Between Trains

  To the Teumessian Vixen

  The Hung Wu Vase

  La Mejicana

  Lamia In Love

  After the Flood

  A Late Arrival

  Song: With No Return

  All I Tell You From My Heart

  The Undead

  From ANN AT HIGHWOOD HALL (1964)

  Ann at Highwood Hall

  St Valentine’s Day

  I Have a Little Cough, Sir

  Joseph and Jesus

  LOVE RESPELT (1915)

  The Red Shower

  Above the Edge of Doom

  Wild Cyclamen

  Gift of Sight

  Batxóca

  The Snap-Comb Wilderness

  Change

  A Court of Love

  Black

  Between Hyssop and Axe

  Gold and Malachite

  Ambience

  The Vow

  The Frog and the Golden Ball

  Those Who Came Short

  Whole Love

  This Holy Month

  The Blow

  The Impossible

  The Fetter

  Iron Palace

  True Joy

  Tomorrow’s Envy of Today

  The Hidden Garden

  The Wedding

  What Will Be, Is

  Son Altesse

  Everywhere Is Here

  Song: The Far Side of Your Moon

  Deliverance

  Conjunction

  Nothing Now Astonishes

  I’d Die for You [Postscript]

  From COLLECTED POEMS 1965 (1965)

  Grace Notes

  Good Night to the Old Gods

  The Sweet-Shop Round the Corner

  Double Bass

  Descent into Hell

  The Pardon

  Point of No Return

  A Shift of Scene

  From SEVENTEEN POEMS MISSING FROM ‘LOVE RESPELT’ (1966)

  Cock in Pullet’s Feathers

  Dead Hand

  Arrears of Moonlight

  What Did You Say?

  Lure of Murder

  The Gorge

  Ecstasy of Chaos

  Stolen Jewel

  The Eagre

  The Snapped Thread [The Tangled Thread]

  Fortunate Child

  Loving True, Flying Blind

  The Near Eclipse

  Dancing Flame

  Birth of Angels

  On Giving

  From COLOPHON TO ‘LOVE RESPELT’ (1967)

  The P’eng that was a K’un

  Like Owls

  In Perspective

  The Utter Rim

  Bower-Bird

  Mist

  The Word

  Perfectionists

  Prison Walls

  A Dream of Hell

  Our Self

  Bites and Kisses

  Sun-Face
and Moon-Face

  Freehold

  The Necklace

  A Bracelet

  Blackening Sky

  Blessed Sun

  Lion-Gentle

  Song: The Palm Tree

  Spite of Mirrors

  Pride of Love

  Hooded Flame

  Injuries

  Her Brief Withdrawal

  The Crane

  Strangeness

  From THE POOR BOY WHO FOLLOWED HIS STAR (1968)

  Hide and Seek

  The Hero

  At Seventy-Two

  From POEMS 1965–1968 (1968)

  Song: How Can I Care?

  Song: Though Once True Lovers

  Song: Cherries or Lilies

  Song: Crown of Stars

  Song: Fig Tree in Leaf

  Song: Dew-drop and Diamond

  Song: Just Friends

  Song: Of Course

  Song: Three Rings for Her

  Sincèrement

  Dans un Seul Lit

  Is Now the Time?

  Twins

  Sail and Oar

  Gooseflesh Abbey

  The Home-Coining

  With the Gift of a Lion’s Claw

  Wigs and Beards

  Personal Packaging, Inc.

  Work Room

  The Ark

  All Except Hannibal

  The Beggar Maid and King Cophetua

  For Ever

  Jugum Improbum

  De Arte Poetica

  Sit Mihi Terra Levis

  Astymelusa

  Tousled Pillow

  To Be In Love

  Fact of the Act

  To Ogmian Hercules

  Arrow Shots

  She to Him

  Within Reason

  The Yet Unsayable

  None the Wiser

  The Narrow Sea

  The Olive-Yard

  BEYOND GIVING (1969)

  PART I

  Song: To a Rose

  Song: Dream Warning

  Song: Beyond Giving

  Trial of Innocence

  Poisoned Day

  Superstition [Leave-Taking]

  In the Name of Virtue

  What We Did Next

  Compact

  Song: New Year Kisses

  Song: The Clocks of Time

  Gold Cloud

  Song: Basket of Blossom

  Song: Wherever We May Be

  What Is Love?

  Song: The Promise

  Song: Yesterday Only

  PART II

  Semi-Detached

  Iago

  Against Witchcraft

  Troublesome Fame

  Tolling Bell

  Blanket Charge

  The Strayed Message

  Song: The Sundial’s Lament

  Poem: A Reminder

  Antorcha y Corona, 1968; Torch and Crown, 1968

  Armistice Day, 1918

  The Motes

  From POEMS ABOUT LOVE (1969)

  If and When

  From POEMS 1968–1970 (1970)

  Song: The Sigil

  Song: Twinned Heart

  Song: Olive Tree

  Song: Once More

  Song: Victims of Calumny

  Love Gifts

  Mankind and Ocean

  Virgin Mirror

  Secret Theatre

  How It Started

  Brief Reunion

  The Judges

  Love and Night

  Child with Veteran

  Purification

  Powers Unconfessed

  Pandora

  Solomon’s Seal

  To Put It Simply

  To Tell and Be Told

  The Theme of Death

  At the Well

  Logic

  Robbers’ Den

  The Accomplice

  First Love

  Through a Dark Wood

  In the Vestry

  When Love Is Not

  The Reiteration

  Man of Evil

  The Raft

  The Uncut Diamond

  My Ghost [The Co-Walker]

  The Risk

  Something to Say

  OCCASIONALIA

  Research and Development: Classified

  The Imminent Seventies

  Carol of Patience

  H

  Invitation to Bristol

  The Primrose Bed

  The Strangling in Merrion Square

  The Awakening

  From THE GREEN-SAILED VESSEL (1971)

  The Hoopoe Tells Us How [Dedicatory]

  PART I: LOVE POEMS

  The Wand

  Five; Quinque

  Arrow on the Vane

  Gorgon Mask

  To Be Poets

  With a Gift of Rings

  Casse-Noisette

  The Garden

  The Green-Sailed Vessel

  Dreaming Children

  The Prohibition

  Serpent’s Tail

  Until We Both …

  The Miracle

  The Rose

  Testament

  The Crab-Tree

  Three Locked Hoops

  Cliff and Wave

  PART II: MAINLY SATIRES

  Those Blind from Birth

  Fools

  The Gateway

  Advice from a Mother

  A Reduced Sentence

  The Gentleman

  Complaint and Reply

  Song: Reconciliation

  Knobs and Levers

  The Virus

  Druid Love

  Problems of Gender

  Confess, Marpessa

  Jus Primae Noctis

  Work Drafts

  From POEMS 1970–1972 (1972)

  Her Beauty

  Always

  Desert Fringe

  The Title of Poet

  Depth of Love

  Breakfast Table

  The Half-Finished Letter

  The Hazel Grove

  Pity

  Silent Visit

  Coronet of Moonlight

  Song: To Become Each Other

  Heaven

  Growing Pains

  Friday Night

  The Pact

  Poor Others

  A Toast to Death

  The Young Sibyl

  Records

  The Flowering Aloe

  Circus Ring

  Ageless Reason

  As When the Mystic

  Unposted Letter (1963)

  Birth of a Goddess

  Beatrice and Dante

  The Dilemma

  The Wall

  Women and Masks (translation)

  Tilth

  The Last Fistful

  The Traditionalist

  The Prepared Statement

  St Antony of Padua

  Broken Compact

  A Dream of Frances Speedwell

  The Encounter

  Age Gap

  Nightmare of Senility

  Absent Crusader

  Dream Recalled on Waking

  Colophon

  From TIMELESS MEETING (1973)

  The Promised Ballad

  The Impossible Day

  The Poet’s Curse

  Seven Years [Where Is the Truth?]

  Love as Lovelessness

  The Scared Child

  As All Must End

  Touch My Shut Lips

  The Moon’s Last Quarter

  True Evil

  When and Why

  The Window Pane

  Pride of Progeny

  That Was the Night

  Song: The Queen of Time

  Should I Care?

  Timeless Meeting

  Envoi

  AT THE GATE (1974)

  Ours Is No Wedlock

  The Discarded Love Poem

  Earlier Lovers

  Fast Bound Together

  £. s. d.

  Three Words Only

  True Magic

  The Tower of Love

  The Lov
e Letter

  Song: Seven Fresh Years

  As a Less Than Robber

  Singleness in Love

  Love Charms

  At the Gate

  The Moon’s Tear

  Song: From Otherwhere or Nowhere

  Name

  Two Disciplines

  The Ugly Secret

  Three Years Waiting

  From COLLECTED POEMS 1975 (1975)

  The Crystal

  A Charm for Sound Sleeping

  The New Eternity

  History of the Fall

  Elsewhere

  What Can We Not Ask?

  Two Crucial Generations

  To Come of Age

  September Landscape

  Crucibles of Love

  Woman Poet and Man Poet

  The Field-Postcard

  If No Cuckoo Sings

  Mountain Lovers

  Three Times In Love

  The Sentence

  Spring 1974

  Advent of Summer

  The Unpenned Poem

  The Green Woods of Unrest

  UNCOLLECTED POEMS

  JUVENILIA: 1910–1914

  A Pot of White Heather

  The Mountain Side at Evening

  The Will o’ the Wisp

  The King’s Son

  The Miser of Shenham Heath

  Rondeau

  ’Am and Advance: A Cockney Study

  Peeping Tom

  The Ballad of the White Monster

  The Future

  Alcaics Addressed to My Study Fauna

  The Cyclone

  The Ape God

  Lament in December

  Merlin and the Child

  A Day in February

  The Wasp

  Five Rhymes:

  My Hazel-Twig

  After the Rain

  Envy

  The King’s Highway

  The Glorious Harshness of the Parrot’s Voice

  Two Moods

  The Briar Burners

  The Tyranny of Books

  The Exhaust-Pipe

  The Organ Grinder

  1918–1927

  The Two Brothers

  Peace

  Bazentin, 1916

  The Dancing Green

  The Personal Touch

  Song: The Ring and Chain

  The Oxford English School

  The Stepmother and the Princess

  Cynics and Romantics

  Records for Wonder

  Old Lob-Lie-by-the-Fire

  Misgivings, on Reading a Popular ‘Outline of Science’

  The Toads

  A History

  Four Children

  The Bargain

  In the Beginning Was a Word

  The Bait

  An Independent

  [The Untidy Man]

  1934–1939

  Midsummer Duet

  Majorcan Letter, 1935

  Assumption Day

  The Moon Ends in Nightmare

  1952–1959

  The Housing Project

  Advice to Colonel Valentine

  Hippopotamus’s Address to the Freudians

  Twin to Twin

  Considine

  The Juggler

  The Young Witch

  Birth of a Great Man

  To Magdalena Mulet, Margita Mora & Lucia Graves

  The Pumpkin

  Max Beerbohm at Rapallo

  The Grandfather’s Complaint

  Song: A Beach in Spain

  Bathunts at Bathurst

  To a Caricaturist, Who Got Me Wrong

  In Jorrocks’s Warehouse

  A Fever

  Augeias and I

  Is It Peace?

  Fingers in the Nesting Box

  Barabbas’s Summer List

  Stable Door

  Flight Report

  School Hymn for St Trinian’s

  1960–1974

  A Piebald’s Tail