MAY
1.
When us was wed she turned afraid
Of love and me and all things human;
Like the shut of a winter’s day
Her smile went out, and ’twasn’t a woman —
More like a little frightened fay.
2.
My true love hath my heart, and I have his,
By just exchange, one for the other giv’n.
I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss:
There never was a better bargain driv’n.
3.
The Stage is more beholding to love, than the life of Man. For as to the Stage, love is ever a matter of comedies, and now and then of tragedies: but in life, it doth much mischief: sometimes like a Siren; sometimes like a Fury.
4.
But love is a durable fire
In the mind ever burning;
Never sick, never old, never dead,
From itself never turning.
5.
But the symptoms of the mind in lovers are almost infinite, and so diverse, that no art can comprehend them; though they be merry sometimes, and rapt beyond themselves for joy; yet most part love is a plague, a torture, a hell, a bitter sweet passion at last;
6.
When I am sad and weary
When I think all hope has gone,
When I walk along High Holborn
I think of you with nothing on.
7.
If I worship one thing more than another it shall be the spread of my own body, or any part of it,
Translucent mould of me it shall be you!
Shaded ledges and rests it shall be you!
Firm masculine colter it shall be you!
1.
They arrived at twilight, and, as we strolled out among the sparkling hundreds, Daisy’s voice was playing murmurous tricks in her throat.
‘These things excite me so,’ she whispered. ‘If you want to kiss me any time during the evening, Nick, just let me know and I’ll be glad to arrange it for you. Just mention my name. Or present a green card. I’m giving out green—’
2.
Gin a body meet a body
Comin thro’ the glen;
Gin a body kiss a body,
Need the warld ken!
3.
But his naïveté made people protective, and women were drawn by his innocence. They wanted to wrap their arms around him or something, so lost and boyish did he look at times. Not that this was entirely uncontrived, or unexploited. When I was small and the two of us sat in Lyon’s Cornerhouse drinking milkshakes, he’d send me like a messenger pigeon to women at other tables, and have me announce, ‘My daddy wants to give you a kiss.’
4.
On thy withered Lips and dry,
Which like barren Furrows lye;
Brooding Kisses I will pour,
Shall thy youthful Heart restore.
5.
Such kisses as belong to early days,
Where heart, and soul, and sense, in concert move,
And the blood’s lava, and the pulse a blaze,
Each kiss a heart-quake, — for a kiss’s strength,
I think, it must be reckon’d by its length.
6.
Say I’m weary, say I’m sad,
Say that health and wealth have miss’d me,
Say I’m growing old, but add,
Jenny kiss’d me.
7.
Thanked be fortune it hath been otherwise
Twenty times better, but once in special,
In thin array after a pleasant guise,
When her loose gown from her shoulders did fall
And she me caught in her arms long and small,
Therewithal sweetly did me kiss
And softly said, ‘Dear heart, how like you this?’
1.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
2.
‘Darling, is that you? I’ve got something rather awful to tell you.’
‘Yes?’
‘You’ll be furious.’
‘Well?’
‘I’m engaged to be married.’
‘Who to?’
‘I hardly think I can tell you.’
3.
She was a worthy womman al hir lyve:
Housbondes at chirche dore she hadde fyve.
4.
Reader I married him.
5.
Reader I married her.
6.
Reader I married him/her.
7.
I was ever of opinion, that the honest man who married and brought up a large family, did more service than he who continued single, and only talked of population. From this motive, I had scarce taken orders a years before I began to think seriously of matrimony, and chose my wife as she did her wedding gown, not for a fine glossy surface, but such qualities as would wear well.
1.
Then a similar ball leapt into the air and fell on the grass, where after a moment it lay still. The Bishop went as near as he dared to it, and saw—what but the remains of an enormous spider, veinous and seared! And, as the fire burned lower down, more terrible bodies like this began to break out from the trunk, and it was seen that these were covered with greyish hair.
2.
I heard a spider
and a fly arguing
wait said the fly
do not eat me
I serve a great purpose
in the world
3.
O spiders, spiders, spiders, those aristocrats of the creepy-crawly world, he had never ceased to love them, but he had somehow betrayed them from the start. He had never found an eresus niger, though as a boy his certainty of finding one had seemed to come direct from God. His projected book on The Mechanics of the Orb Web had turned into an article.
4.
The Spider as an Artist
Has never been employed —
Though his surpassing Merit
Is freely certified
5.
The most prominent object was a long table with a tablecloth spread on it, as if a feast had been in preparation when the house and the clocks all stopped together. An epergne or centre-piece of some kind was in the middle of this cloth; it was so heavily overhung with cobwebs that its form was quite undistinguishable; and, as I looked along the yellow expanse out of which I remember its seeming to grow, like a black fungus, I saw speckle-legged spiders with blotchy bodies running home to it, and running out from it, as if some circumstances of the greatest public importance had just transpired in the spider community.
6.
There may be in the cup
A spider steep’d, and one may drink, depart,
And yet partake no venom, for his knowledge
Is not infected: but if one present
The abhorr’d ingredient to his eye, make known
How he hath drunk, he cracks his gorge, his sides,
With violent hefts. I have drunk, and seen the spider.
7.
The worst Fate Bookes have, when they are once read,
They’re laid aside, forgotten like the Dead:
Under a heap of dust they buried lye,
Within a vault of some small Library.
But Spiders they, for honour of that Art
Of Spinning, which by Nature they were taught;
Since Men doe spin their Writings from the Braine,
Striving to make a lasting Web of Fame,
Of Cobwebs thin, high Altars doe they raise,
There offer Flyes, as sacrifice of praise.
1.
Oh, for the wonder that bubbles into my soul,
I would be a good fountain, a good well-head,
Would blur no whisper, spoil no expression.
2.
‘It struck me as a possibility that there might be newts in the fountain, and knowing how keen Gussie is on newts, I advised him to wade in and hunt around.’
‘With all his clothes on?’
‘Yes, he had his clothes on. I remember noticing.’
‘But you can’t go wading in the Trafalgar Square fountain with all your clothes on.’
‘Yes, you can. Gussie did.’
3.
What are we doing when we toss a coin,
just a 5p-piece into the shallow dish
of the fountain in the city-centre
shopping arcade?
4.
That is the Ocean, our Affections here
Are but streams borrow’d from the Fountain there.
And ’tis the noblest Argument to prove
A Beauteous mind, that it knows how to Love:
Those kind Impressions which Fate can’t controul,
Are Heaven’s mintage on a worthy Soul.
5.
‘Allay,’ he cried gaily, and off they went.
Off they went, spanking along lightly, under the green and gold shade of the plane trees, through the small streets that smelled of lemons and fresh coffee, past the fountain square where women, with water-pots lifted, stopped talking to gaze after them, round the corner past the café, with its pink and white umbrellas, green tables, and blue siphons, and so to the sea front.
6.
His Love no Modesty allows:
By swift degrees advancing where
His daring Hand that Alter seiz’d,
Where Gods of Love do Sacrifice;
That awful Throne, that Paradise,
Where Rage is tam’d, and Anger pleas’d;
That Living Fountain, from whose Trills
The melted Soul in liquid Drops distils.
7.
And, after all, it was as magnificent a piece of work as ever human skill contrived. At the foot of the palatial facade was strown, with careful art and ordered irregularity, a broad and broken heap of massive rock, looking as if it might have lain there since the deluge. Over a central precipice fell the water, in a semicircular cascade; and from a hundred crevices on all sides, snowy jets gushed up, and streams spouted out of the mouths and nostrils of stone monsters, and fell in glistening drops;