Brutally

EMILY DICKINSON

He fumbles at your Soul

As Players at the Keys –

Before they drop full Music on –

He stuns you by Degrees –

Prepares your brittle nature

For the etherial Blow

By fainter Hammers – further heard –

Then nearer – Then so – slow –

Your Breath – has time to straighten –

Your Brain – to bubble cool –

Deals One – imperial Thunderbolt –

That scalps your naked soul –

When Winds hold Forests in their Paws –

The Universe – is still –

GEORGE MEREDITH

from Modern Love

IX

He felt the wild beast in him betweenwhiles

So masterfully rude, that he would grieve

To see the helpless delicate thing receive

His guardianship through certain dark defiles.

Had he not teeth to rend, and hunger too?

But still he spared her. Once: ‘Have you no fear?’

He said: ’twas dusk; she in his grasp; none near.

She laughed: ‘No, surely; am I not with you?’

And uttering that soft starry ‘you,’ she leaned

Her gentle body near him, looking up;

And from her eyes, as from a poison-cup,

He drank until the flittering eyelids screened.

Devilish malignant witch! and oh, young beam

Of heaven’s circle-glory! Here thy shape

To squeeze like an intoxicating grape –

I might, and yet thou goest safe, supreme.

AMY LOWELL

Carrefour

O you,

Who came upon me once

Stretched under apple-trees just after bathing,

Why did you not strangle me before speaking

Rather than fill me with the wild white honey of your words

And then leave me to the mercy

Of the forest bees?

 

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

from Venus and Adonis

The honey fee of parting tendered is:

Her arms do lend his neck a sweet embrace;

Incorporate then they seem; face grows to face.

Till breathless he disjoined, and backward drew

The heavenly moisture, that sweet coral mouth,

Whose precious taste her thirsty lips well knew,

Whereon they surfeit, yet complain on drouth.

He with her plenty pressed, she faint with dearth,

Their lips together glued, fall to the earth.

Now quick desire hath caught the yielding prey,

And glutton-like she feeds, yet never filleth;

Her lips are conquerors, his lips obey,

Paying what ransom the insulter willeth;

Whose vulture thought doth pitch the price so high

That she will draw his lips’ rich treasure dry.

And having felt the sweetness of the spoil,

With blindfold fury she begins to forage;

Her face doth reek and smoke, her blood doth boil,

And careless lust stirs up a desperate courage,

Planting oblivion, beating reason back,

Forgetting shame’s pure blush and honour’s wrack.

Hot, faint and weary, with her hard embracing,

Like a wild bird being tamed with too much handling,

Or as the fleet-foot roe that’s tired with chasing,

Or like the froward infant stilled with dandling,

He now obeys and now no more resisteth,

While she takes all she can, not all she listeth.

What wax so frozen but dissolves with temp’ring,

And yields at last to every light impression?

Things out of hope are compassed oft with vent’ring,

Chiefly in love, whose leave exceeds commission:

Affection faints not like a pale-faced coward,

But then woos best when most his choice is froward.

When he did frown, O, had she then gave over,

Such nectar from his lips she had not sucked.

Foul words and frowns must not repel a lover;

What though the rose have prickles, yet ’tis plucked.

Were beauty under twenty locks kept fast,

Yet love breaks through, and picks them all at last.

 

ALEXANDER POPE

from The Rape of the Lock, Canto III

But when to mischief mortals bend their will,

How soon they find fit instruments of ill?

Just then, Clarissa drew with tempting grace

A two-edg’d weapon from her shining case:

So Ladies in Romance assist their Knight,

Present the spear, and arm him for the fight.

He takes the gift with rev’rence, and extends

The little engine on his finger’s ends;

This just behind Belinda’s neck he spread,

As o’er the fragrant steams she bends her head.

Swift to the Lock a thousand Sprites repair,

A thousand wings, by turns, blow back the hair;

And thrice they twitch’d the diamond in her ear;

Thrice she look’d back, and thrice the foe drew near.

Just in that instant, anxious Ariel sought

The close recesses of the Virgin’s thought;

As on the nosegay in her breast reclin’d,

He watch’d th’ Ideas rising in her mind,

Sudden he view’d, in spite of all her art,

An earthly Lover lurking at her heart.

Amaz’d, confus’d, he found his pow’r expir’d,

Resign’d to fate, and with a sigh retir’d.

The Peer now spreads the glitt’ring Forfex wide,

T’ inclose the Lock; now joins it, to divide.

Ev’n then, before the fatal engine clos’d,

A wretched Sylph too fondly interpos’d;

Fate urg’d the sheers, and cut the Sylph in twain,

(But airy substance soon unites again)

The meeting points the sacred hair dissever

From the fair head, for ever, and for ever!

Then flash’d the living lightning from her eyes,

And screams of horror rend th’ affrighted skies.

Not louder shrieks to pitying heav’n are cast,

When husbands, or when lapdogs breathe their last,

Or when rich China vessels, fall’n from high,

In glitt’ring dust, and painted fragments lie!

Let wreaths of triumph now my temples twine,

(The Victor cry’d) the glorious Prize is mine!

While fish in streams, or birds delight in air,

Or in a coach and six the British Fair,

As long as Atalantis shall be read,

Or the small pillow grace a Lady’s bed,

While visits shall be paid on solemn days,

When num’rous wax-lights in bright order blaze,

While nymphs take treats, or assignations give,

So long my honour, name, and praise shall live!

What Time would spare, from steel receives its date,

And monuments, like men, submit to fate!

Steel could the labour of the Gods destroy,

And strike to dust th’ imperial tow’rs of Troy;

Steel could the works of mortal pride confound,

And hew triumphal arches to the ground.

What wonder then, fair nymph! thy hairs should feel

The conqu’ring force of unresisted steel?

 

W. B. YEATS

Leda and the Swan

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still

Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed

By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,

He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

How can those terrified vague fingers push

The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?

And how can body, laid in that white rush,

But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

A shudder in the loins engenders there

The broken wall, the burning roof and tower

And Agamemnon dead.

Being so caught up,

So mastered by the brute blood of the air,

Did she put on his knowledge with his power

Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

 

D. H. LAWRENCE

Love on the Farm

What large, dark hands are those at the window

Grasping in the golden light

Which weaves its way through the evening wind

At my heart’s delight?

Ah, only the leaves! But in the west

I see a redness suddenly come

Into the evening’s anxious breast –

’Tis the wound of love goes home!

The woodbine creeps abroad

Calling low to her lover:

The sun-lit flirt who all the day

Has poised above her lips in play

And stolen kisses, shallow and gay

Of pollen, now has gone away –

She woos the moth with her sweet, low word:

And when above her his moth-wings hover

Then her bright breast she will uncover

And yield her honey-drop to her lover.

Into the yellow, evening glow

Saunters a man from the farm below;

Leans, and looks in at the low-built shed

Where the swallow has hung her marriage bed.

The bird lies warm against the wall.

She glances quick her startled eyes

Towards him, then she turns away

Her small head, making warm display

Of red upon the throat. Her terrors sway

Her out of the nest’s warm, busy ball,

Whose plaintive cry is heard as she flies

In one blue stoop from out the sties

Into the twilight’s empty hall.

Oh, water-hen, beside the rushes

Hide your quaintly scarlet blushes,

Still your quick tail, lie still as dead,

Till the distance folds over his ominous tread!

The rabbit presses back her ears,

Turns back her liquid, anguished eyes

And crouches low; then with wild spring

Spurts from the terror of his oncoming;

To be choked back, the wire ring

Her frantic effort throttling:

Piteous brown ball of quivering fears!

Ah, soon in his large, hard hands she dies,

And swings all loose from the swing of his walk!

Yet calm and kindly are his eyes

And ready to open in brown surprise

Should I not answer to his talk

Or should he my tears surmise.

I hear his hand on the latch, and rise from my chair

Watching the door open; he flashes bare

His strong teeth in a smile, and flashes his eyes

In a smile like triumph upon me; then careless-wise

He flings the rabbit soft on the table board

And comes towards me: ah! the uplifted sword

Of his hand against my bosom! and oh, the broad

Blade of his glance that asks me to applaud

His coming! With his hand he turns my face to him

And caresses me with his fingers that still smell grim

Of the rabbit’s fur! God, I am caught in a snare!

I know not what fine wire is round my throat;

I only know I let him finger there

My pulse of life, and let him nose like a stoat

Who sniffs with joy before he drinks the blood.

And down his mouth comes to my mouth! and down

His bright dark eyes come over me, like a hood

Upon my mind! his lips meet mine, and a flood

Of sweet fire sweeps across me, so I drown

Against him, die, and find death good.

 

TED HUGHES

Lovesong

He loved her and she loved him

His kisses sucked out her whole past and future or tried to

He had no other appetite

She bit him she gnawed him she sucked

She wanted him complete inside her

Safe and sure forever and ever

Their little cries fluttered into the curtains

Her eyes wanted nothing to get away

Her looks nailed down his hands his wrists his elbows

He gripped her hard so that life

Should not drag her from that moment

He wanted all future to cease

He wanted to topple with his arms round her

Off that moment’s brink and into nothing

Or everlasting or whatever there was

Her embrace was an immense press

To print him into her bones

His smiles were the garrets of a fairy palace

Where the real world would never come

Her smiles were spider bites

So he would lie still till she felt hungry

His words were occupying armies

Her laughs were an assassin’s attempts

His looks were bullets daggers of revenge

Her glances were ghosts in the corner with horrible secrets

His whispers were whips and jackboots

Her kisses were lawyers steadily writing

His caresses were the last hooks of a castaway

Her love-tricks were the grinding of locks

And their deep cries crawled over the floors

Like an animal dragging a great trap

His promises were the surgeon’s gag

Her promises took the top off his skull

She would get a brooch made of it

His vows pulled out all her sinews

He showed her how to make a love-knot

Her vows put his eyes in formalin

At the back of her secret drawer

Their screams stuck in the wall

Their heads fell apart into sleep like the two halves

Of a lopped melon, but love is hard to stop

In their entwined sleep they exchanged arms and legs

In their dreams their brains took each other hostage

In the morning they wore each other’s face

ISOBEL DIXON

Truce

    You bear the hatchet.

     I’ll bury my heart.