Lesbia Harford: Verses about Passion

Once I thought my love was worth the name
If tears came.
When the wound is mortal, now I know,
Few tears flow.

I'd love to have you on a rainy day
Tucked in a chair, my head against your knee
To sit and dream with. Sometime you must be
My home-sharer whom rain can't keep away.

I love to see
Her looking up at me,
Stretched on a bed
In her pink dressing gown,
Her arms above her head,
Her hair all down.
I love to see
Her smiling up at me.

Though I had lost my love,
The hills could calm me.
Deep in a woodland grove
No loss could harm me.
But when I came to town,
And saw around me
Lovers pass up and down —
Then sorrow crowned me.

I lie in the dark
Grass beneath and you above me,
Curved like the sky,
Insistent that you love me.
But the high stars
Admonish to refuse you
And I'm for the stars
Though in the stars I lose you.

I do hate the folk I love-
They hurt so.
Their least word and act may be
Source of woe.
'Won't you come to tea with me?'
'Not today'
I'm so tired, I've been to church
Such folk say.

All the dreary afternoon
I must clutch
At the strength to love like them
Not too much

I have golden shoes
To make me fleet.
They are like the wind
Underneath my feet.
When my lover's kiss
Is overbold,
I can run away
In my shoes of gold.
Nay, when I am shod
With this bright fire,
I am forced to run
From my own desire.
From the love I love
Whose arms enfold
I must run away
In my shoes of gold.

Through the swift night
I go to my love.
Tram bells are joy bells,
Bidding us move
On a golden path
Beneath balls of fire
Up hill and down dale,
To o'ertake desire.
Past the old shops
That my childhood knew,
Past hidden houses
And fields of dew
Lovely and secret
As thou, my friend,
Who art all heaven
At journey's end.

I count the days until I see you, dear,
But the days only.
I dare not reckon up the nights and hours
I shall be lonely.
But when at last I meet you, dearest heart,
How can it cheer me?
Desire has power to turn me into stone,
When you come near me.
I give my heart the lie against my will,
Seem not to see you,
Glance aside quickly if I meet your eye,
Love you and flee you.

Old memories waken old desires
Infallibly. While we're alive
With eye or ear or sense at all,
Sometimes, must love revive.
But we'll not think, when some stray gust
Relumes the flicker of desire,
That fuel of circumstance could make
A furnace of our fire.
The past is gone. We must believe
It has no power to change our lives.
Yet still our constant hearts rejoice
Because the past survives.

The love I look for
Could not come from you.
My mind is set to fall
At Peterloo.
But you'ld protect me,
I'd be safe with you.
You could but love me
In the olden way,
With gifts of jewels, children,
Time to play,
Be man to woman
In the olden way.
The love that's love has
Other gifts to bring,
A share in weakness, dreams,
And suffering.
These are the only
Gifts I'd have to bring.
The love I look for
Does not come from you.
I see it dawning in
Deep eyes of blue.
I dare to hope for
Love, but not from you.

And is love very strong where honour rules?
Would the world ever speak of Lancelot's love
Or Tristram's love had they put honour first?
What would you think if Guinevere had knelt
And begged for kisses and had begged in vain?
Should she be constant had she been refused
Or would she laugh and turn to love elsewhere?
But Joseph is a hero nowadays
And young Paolo, the Italian blood,
Rather too rash and uncontrollable.
Lovers who are not free should sigh and part—
Lovers, you call them—and not free to love:
They may be wives or husbands, businessmen,
Saints even: they're not lovers. After all
I'd rather be a lover than a saint.

I'm like all lovers, wanting love to be
A very mighty thing for you and me.
In certain moods your love should be a fire
That burnt your very life up in desire.
The only kind of love then to my mind
Would make you kiss my shadow on the blind
And walk seven miles each night to see it there,
Myself within, serene and unaware.
But you're as bad. You'd have me watch the clock
And count your coming while I mend your sock.
You'd have my mind devoted day and night
To you and care for you and your delight.
Poor fools, who each would have the other give
What spirit must withhold if it would live.
You're not my slave, I wish you not to be.
I love yourself and not your love for me,
The self that goes ten thousand miles away
And loses thought of me for many a day.
And you loved me for loving much beside
But now you want a woman for your bride.
Oh, make no woman of me, you who can,
Or I will make a husband of a man.
By my unwomanly love that sets you free
Love all myself, but least the woman in me.

Standing on tiptoe, head back, eyes and arm
Upraised, Kate groped to reach the higher shelf.
Her sleeve slid up like darkness in alarm
At gleam of dawn. Impatient with herself
For lack of inches, careless of her charm,
She strained to grasp a volume; then she turned
Back to her chair, an unforgetful Eve
Still snatching at the fruit for which she yearned
In Eden. She read idly to relieve
The forehead where her daylong studies burned,
Tales of an uncrowned queen who fed her child
On poisons, till death lurked, in act to spring,
Between the girl's breasts; who with soft mouth smiled
With soft eyes tempted the usurping King
Then dealt him death in kisses. Kate had piled
Her books three deep before her and across
This barricade she watched an old man nod
Over a dirty paper, until loss
Of life seemed better than possession. Shod
With kisses death might skid like thistle floss
Down windy slides, might prove at heart as gay
As Cinderella in glass slippers.
Life goes awkwardly so sandalled. Had decay
Been the girl's gift in that Miltonic strife
She would have rivalled God, Kate thought. A ray
Of sunshine carrying gilded flecks of dust
And minutes bright with fancies, touched her hair
To powder it with gold and silver, just
As if being now admitted she should wear
The scholar's wig, colleague of those whose lust
For beauty hidden in an outworn tongue
Had made it possible for her to read
Tales that were fathered in Arabia, sung
By trouvères and forgotten with their creed
Of love and magic. Beams that strayed among
Kate's fingers lit a rosy lantern there
To glow in twilight. Suddenly afraid
She seemed to see her beauty in a flare
Of light from hell. A throng of devils swayed
Before her, devils that had learned to wear
The shape of scholar, poet, libertine.
They smiled, frowned, beckoned, swearing to estrange
Kate from reflection that her soul had been
Slain by her woman's body or would change
From contact with it to a thing unclean.
Woman was made to worship man, they preached,
Not God, to serve earth's purpose, not to roam
The heavens of thought . . . A factory whistle screeched,
Someone turned up the lights. On her way home
Kate wondered in what mode were angels breeched.