Collected Poems of Ted Hughes by Hughes, Ted -- Read -- Imperial Library of Trantor

Index

Cover Title Page Preface Acknowledgements Table of Contents EARLY POEMS AND JUVENILIA (1946–57)

Wild West Too Bad for Hell The Recluse Initiation Here in the Green and Glimmering Gloom Pastoral Symphony No. 1 The Little Boys and the Seasons The Court-Tumbler and Satirist Song of the Sorry Lovers The Woman With Such High Heels She Looked Dangerous Poem (‘In clear Spring’s high ice-breaking heaven’) Scene Without An Act Bawdry Embraced The Drowned Woman

THE HAWK IN THE RAIN (1957)

The Hawk in the Rain The Jaguar Macaw and Little Miss The Thought-Fox The Horses Famous Poet Song Parlour-Piece Secretary Soliloquy The Dove Breeder Billet-Doux A Modest Proposal Incompatibilities September Fallgrief’s Girl-Friends Two Phases The Decay of Vanity Fair Choice The Conversion of the Reverend Skinner Complaint Phaetons Egg-Head The Man Seeking Experience Enquires His Way of a Drop of Water Meeting Wind October Dawn Roarers in a Ring Vampire Childbirth The Hag Law in the Country of the Cats Invitation to the Dance The Casualty Bayonet Charge Griefs for Dead Soldiers Six Young Men Two Wise Generals The Ancient Heroes and the Bomber Pilot The Martyrdom of Bishop Farrar

UNCOLLECTED (1957–59)

Letter Quest Constancy Shells Gulls Aloft Snails

LUPERCAL (1960)

Things Present Everyman’s Odyssey Mayday on Holderness February Crow Hill A Woman Unconscious Strawberry Hill Dick Straightup Fourth of July A Dream of Horses Esther’s Tomcat Historian Pennines in April Hawk Roosting Nicholas Ferrer To Paint a Water Lily Urn Burial Of Cats Fire-Eater Acrobats The Good Life The Bull Moses Cat and Mouse View of a Pig The Retired Colonel The Voyage Relic Wilfred Owen’s Photographs An Otter Witches November The Perfect Forms Thrushes Singers Bullfrog Crag Jack’s Apostasy Pike Snowdrop Sunstroke Cleopatra to the Asp Lupercalia

UNCOLLECTED (1960–67)

A Fable The Storm [from Homer, Odyssey, Book V] Lines To A Newborn Baby To F.R. At Six Months Dully Gumption’s College Courses My Uncle’s Wound The Road to Easington Sunday Evening Poem to Robert Graves Perhaps On Westminster Bridge After Lorca Era of Giant Lizards Small Hours Bad News Good! Dice O White Elite Lotus Carol Warm Moors Folk-Lore Gibraltar Birdsong Plum Blossom The Last Migration The Burning of the Brothel To W. H. Auden

from RECKLINGS (1966)

On the Slope Water Fishing at Dawn Dully Gumption’s Addendum Guinness Flanders Keats Beech Tree Toll Memory Heatwave Fallen Eve The Toughest Thaw Plum-Blossom Public Bar T.V. As Woman’s Weeping Trees A Colonial Don Giovanni A Match Small Events To be a Girl’s Diary Stealing Trout on a May Morning Humanities Tutorial Poltergeist Last Lines The Lake Unknown Soldier

from WODWO (1967)

Part I : Thistles Still Life Her Husband Cadenza Ghost Crabs Boom Ludwig’s Death Mask Second Glance at a Jaguar Public Bar T.V. Fern A Wind Flashes the Grass A Vegetarian Sugar Loaf Bowled Over Wino Logos Reveille The Rescue Stations The Green Wolf The Bear Part III : Theology Gog Kreutzer Sonata Out New Moon in January The Warriors of the North Karma Song of a Rat Heptonstall Ballad from a Fairy Tale Skylarks Mountains You Drive in a Circle Wings Pibroch The Howling of Wolves Gnat-Psalm Full Moon and Little Frieda Wodwo

UNCOLLECTED (1967–70)

Scapegoats and Rabies from Three Legends T.V. On The Brother’s Dream Dog Days on the Black Sea ‘?’ Crowquill Ballad of Bauble-head Crow’s Feast A Crow Hymn Song of Woe Existential Song A Lucky Folly Fighting for Jerusalem This Game of Chess

[CROW]

FOUR CROW POEM (1970) : That Moment King of Carrion Crow and the Birds Crow’s Last Stand A FEW CROWS (1970) : Crow’s First Lesson A Kill Notes for a Little Play A Grin The Battle of Osfrontalis Crow Tyrannosaurus A Childish Prank Carnival from CROW: FROM THE LIFE AND SONGS OF THE CROW (1970) : Two Legends Lineage Examination at the Womb-door Crow and Mama The Door Crow Alights Crow Hears Fate Knock on the Door Crow’s Account of the Battle The Black Beast Crow Communes Crow’s Account of St George A Disaster Crow’s Theology Crow’s Fall Criminal Ballad Crow on the Beach Oedipus Crow Crow’s Vanity A Horrible Religious Error Crow Tries the Media Crow’s Nerve Fails In Laughter Crow Frowns Magical Dangers Robin Song Conjuring in Heaven Crow Goes Hunting Owl’s Song Crow’s Undersong Crow’s Elephant Totem Song Dawn’s Rose Crow’s Playmates Crowego The Smile Crow Improvises Crowcolour Crow’s Battle Fury Crow Blacker than Ever Revenge Fable A Bedtime Story Crow’s Song of Himself Crow Sickened Song for a Phallus Apple Tragedy Crow Paints Himself into a Chinese Mural Crow and the Sea Truth Kills Everybody Crow and Stone Fragment of an Ancient Tablet Snake Hymn Lovesong Glimpse Two Eskimo Songs Littleblood from CROW WAKES (1971) : Crow Wakes Bones Amulet In the Land of the Lion I See a Bear Bedtime Anecdote Song against the White Owl The Ship Lullaby Snow Song The Contender from POEMS [WITH RUTH FAINLIGHT AND ALAN SILLITOE] (1971) : Genesis of Evil Crow’s Song about England Crow’s Courtship Crow’s Song about God Crow the Just

UNCOLLECTED (1971–73)

The Space-Egg was Sailing ¶ ‘In the little girl’s angel gaze’ The New World An Alchemy

PROMETHEUS ON HIS CRAG (1973)

1 ‘His voice felt out the way. “I am” he said’ 2 ‘Prometheus … Relaxes’ 3 ‘Prometheus … Pestered by birds roosting and defecating’ 4 ‘Prometheus … Spotted the vulture coming out of the sun’ 5 ‘Prometheus … Dreamed he had burst the sun’s mass’ 6 ‘Prometheus … Has bitten his prophetic tongue off’ 7 ‘Prometheus … Arrested half-way from heaven’ 8 ‘Prometheus … Lay astonished all his preparations’ 9 ‘Now I know I never shall’ 10 ‘Prometheus … Began to admire the vulture’ 11 ‘Prometheus … Tried to recall his night’s dream’ 12 ‘Prometheus … Had begun to sing’ 13 ‘Prometheus … Heard the cry of the wombs’ 14 ‘Prometheus … Sees the wind’ 15 ‘Prometheus … Had such an advantageous prospect’ 16 ‘Prometheus … Too far from his people to tell them’ 17 ‘No God – only wind on the flower’ 18 ‘The character neglected in this icon’ 19 ‘Prometheus … Shouts and his words’ 20 ‘Prometheus … Pondered the vulture. Was this bird’ 21 ‘His mother covers her eyes’

UNCOLLECTED (1974–75)

Welcombe Exits The Lamentable History of the Human Calf from SPRING SUMMER AUTUMN WINTER : Hunting the Summer The Defenders

SEASON SONGS (1976)

Spring : A March Calf The River in March March Morning Unlike Others Spring Nature Notes I-vI April Birthday Icecrust and Snowflake Deceptions Summer : Swifts Mackerel Song Hay Sheep I-III Apple Dumps Work and Play The Harvest Moon The Golden Boy Autumn : Leaves Autumn Nature Notes The Seven Sorrows A Cranefly in September There Came a Day The Stag Two Horses Winter : The Warrior of Winter Christmas Card December River New Year Song Snow and Snow The Warm and the Cold

UNCOLLECTED (1976–77)

He called Eclipse Pets Green Mother [Caprichos]

poems from GAUDETE (1977)

[The Epilogue Poems] : ‘What will you make of half a man’ ‘I hear your congregations at their rapture’ ‘Who are you?’ ‘At the top of my soul’ ‘The lark sizzles in my ear’ ‘I watched a wise beetle’ ‘In a world where all is temporary’ ‘Collision with the earth has finally come –’ ‘Trying to be a leaf’ ‘I heard the screech, sudden –’ ‘Once I said lightly’ ‘Music, that eats people’ ‘The rain comes again’ ‘This is the maneater’s skull’ ‘I see the oak’s bride in the oak’s grasp’ ‘She rides the earth’ ‘The huntsmen, on top of their swaying horse-towers’ ‘A primrose petal’s edge’ ‘Waving goodbye, from your banked hospital bed’ ‘I said goodbye to earth’ ‘The swallow – rebuilding –’ ‘The night wind, muscled with rain’ ‘The viper fell from the sun’ ‘A doctor extracted’ ‘The coffin, spurred by its screws’ ‘The grass blade is not without’ ‘Churches topple’ ‘I know well’ ‘The sun, like a cold kiss in the street –’ ‘Sometimes it comes, a gloomy flap of lightning’ ‘Having first given away pleasure –’ ‘Looking for her form’ ‘A man hangs on’ ‘When the still-soft eyelid sank again’ ‘The sea grieves all night long’ ‘Hearing your moan echo, I chill. I shiver’ ‘Faces lift out of the earth’ ‘I skin the skin’ ‘What steel was it the river poured’ ‘Calves harshly parted from their mamas’ ‘A bang – A burning –’ ‘The dead man lies, marching here and there’ ‘Every day the world gets simply’ ‘Your tree – your oak’ ‘Glare out of just crumpled grass –’

UNCOLLECTED (1977–78)

He Gets Up in Dark Dawn Unknown Warrior After the Grim Diagnosis [1952–1977] ‘A Nation’s a soul’ A Solstice New Foal Wycoller Hall

from ORTS (1978)

1 ‘The fallen oak sleeps under the bog’ 2 ‘Let that one shrink into place’ 3 ‘The Queen of Egypt’ 4 ‘You have come down from the clouds’ 5‘Skin’ 6 ‘Air’ 7 ‘At some juncture the adult dies’ 8 ‘So much going on’ 9‘Huge global trouble all to earn’ 14 ‘Sunday bells’ 15‘The volcano’ 17 ‘The white shark’ 18 ‘Eye went out to hunt you’ 19‘He sickened’ 21 ‘Searching, I am confronted again’ 24 ‘The buzzard mews –’ 26 ‘Where shall I put my hand?’ 27 ‘Words bring wet lumps of earth’ 28 ‘Sitting under the downpour’ 29‘They brought you a lit-up flying city’ 30‘The mother of the tree’ 31 ‘If searching can’t find you’ 32 ‘Before I was born, you were a spirit’ 33 ‘Where you wait’ 34 ‘Stilled at his drink’ 37 ‘Your eyes are poor’ 38 ‘Better, happier, to stay clear of the pure’ 40 ‘After years of methodical, daily’ 41 ‘Like the future oak invisible’ 42 ‘The bulging oak is not as old’ 43 ‘A cry is coming closer’ 44 ‘He did all that he thought he wanted to do’ 45 ‘Why do you take such nervy shape to become’ 46 ‘You have made me careless’ 48 ‘Does it matter how long’ 49 ‘The salmon’s egg winters the gouging floods’ 50 ‘Your touch jerks me –’ 51 ‘Churches darken like scabs’ 52 ‘As often as I affirm’ 53 ‘In the zoo’ 54 ‘The engine under the car-bonnet’ 55 ‘By the splitting, spilling, fly-crazing’ 56 ‘The cat, craning over the long grass’ 57 ‘The cut stone’ 60 ‘Twisted mouths’ 61 ‘A wild drop flies in space –’ 62 ‘He sits grinning, he blurts laughter’

CAVE BIRDS (1978)

The Scream The Summoner After the First Fright The Interrogator She Seemed So Considerate The Judge The Plaintiff In These Fading Moments I Wanted to Say The Executioner The Accused First, the Doubtful Charts of Skin The Knight Something was Happening The Gatekeeper A Flayed Crow in the Hall of Judgement The Baptist Only a Little Sleep, a Little Slumber A Green Mother As I Came, I Saw a Wood A Riddle The Scapegoat After There was Nothing Came a Woman The Guide His Legs Ran About Walking Bare Bride and Groom Lie Hidden for Three Days The Owl Flower The Risen Finale

ADAM AND THE SACRED NINE (1979)

The Song Adam Awake! All this time his cry He had retreated And the Falcon came The Skylark came The Wild Duck The Swift comes the swift The Unknown Wren And Owl The Dove Came The Crow came to Adam And the Phoenix has come Light Bud-tipped twig The sole of a foot

REMAINS OF ELMET (1979)

The Dark River Abel Cross, Crimsworth Dene Hardcastle Crags Lumb Chimneys Two Trees at Top Withens Stanbury Moor Moors The Trance of Light West Laithe Cobbles Long Screams Curlews Walls at Alcomden Walls First, Mills Hill-Stone was Content Mill Ruins Wild Rock The Sheep Went on Being Dead The Big Animal of Rock Tree Heather Alcomden Remains Of Elmet There Come Days to the Hills Shackleton Hill When Men Got to the Summit Churn-Milk Joan Grouse-Butts The Weasels We Smoked out of the Bank High Sea-Light Bridestones Wadsworth Moor Spring-Dusk Football at Slack Sunstruck Willow-Herb The Canal’s Drowning Black The Long Tunnel Ceiling Under the World’s Wild Rims Two Mount Zion The Ancient Briton Lay under His Rock Rhododendrons Crown Point Pensioners For Billy Holt Heptonstall The Beacon Emily Brontë Haworth Parsonage Top Withens The Sluttiest Sheep in England Auction at Stanbury Widdop Light Falls through Itself In April The Word that Space Breathes Heptonstall Old Church Tick Tock Tick Tock Cock-Crows Heptonstall Cemetery The Angel

UNCOLLECTED (1979)

Irish Elk Barley A Lamb in the Storm The Rose In the Black Chapel

MOORTOWN DIARY (1979)

Rain Dehorning Poor birds Feeding out-wintering cattle at twilight Foxhunt New Year exhilaration Struggle Bringing in new couples Snow smoking as the fields boil Tractor Roe-deer Couples under cover Surprise Last night Ravens February 17th March morning unlike others Turning out She has come to pass Birth of Rainbow Orf Happy calf Coming down through Somerset Little red twin Teaching a dumb calf Last load While she chews sideways Sheep, I–II The day he died A monument The formal auctioneer A memory Now you have to push Hands

from EARTH-NUMB (1979)

Earth-numb That girl Here is the Cathedral Postcard from Torquay Old age gets up Nefertiti Nefertiti A Motorbike Deaf School Photostomias The Lovepet Second Birth Song of Longsight Life Is Trying to Be Life A Citrine Glimpse, I–II FOUR TALES TOLD BY AN IDIOT Actaeon SEVEN DUNGEON SONGS A Knock at the door ORTS Tiger-psalm The stone STAINED GLASS A God

UNCOLLECTED (1980–81)

Unfinished Mystery Do not Pick up the Telephone Lily Sky Furnace Fort Fishing the Estuary [PUBLICATIONS OF THE MORRIGU PRESS, 1979–80] THREE RIVER POEMS

from A PRIMER OF BIRDS (1981)

For Leonard and Lisa Cuckoo Swans Buzzard Black-back Gull Snipe A Swallow Sparrow The Hen Mallard Evening Thrush Magpie Shrike Starlings Have Come Bullfinch Wren Treecreeper Nightingale The Moorhen Pheasant Phoenix

UNCOLLECTED (1981–83)

Cows ‘Drove six or so high miles’ River of Dialectics Sing the Rat Giant Dream of Elephants Remembering Teheran The Great Irish Pike Thomas the Rhymer’s Song Madly Singing in the Mountains To Be Harry Mice Are Funny Little Creatures Weasels at Work Fly Inspects Swallows

from RIVER (1983)

The Morning before Christmas Japanese River Tales Flesh of Light New Year Whiteness Four March Watercolours Dee The Merry Mink Salmon-taking Times Under the Hill of Centurions A Cormorant Stump Pool in April Go Fishing Milesian Encounter on the Sligachan Ophelia Creation of Fishes River Barrow The West Dart Strangers After Moonless Midnight An August Salmon The Vintage of River is Unending Night Arrival of Sea-Trout The Kingfisher That Morning The River Last Night The Gulkana In the Dark Violin of the Valley Low Water A Rival August Evening Performance September Salmon Eighty, and Still Fishing for Salmon September An Eel Fairy Flood Riverwatcher October Salmon Torridge Salmon Eggs

UNCOLLECTED (1983–86)

The Mayfly The Pigeon’s Wings The Live-Bait Waste The Hare Waterlicked Familiar Disarmament MOKOMAKI (1985) What’s the First Thing You Think Of? Conscripts The Best Worker in Europe Grouse-Butts Edith Rights The Pike Mayday Sketching a Thatcher Lamenting Head Reckless Head Sacrificed Head

from FLOWERS AND INSECTS (1986)

Narcissi A Violet at Lough Aughresberg Brambles Daffodils Two Tortoiseshell Butterflies Cyclamens in a Bowl Saint’s Island Where I Sit Writing My Letter Tern Sketch of a Goddess The Honey Bee In the Likeness of a Grasshopper Sunstruck Foxglove Big Poppy Nightjar

UNCOLLECTED (1987–89)

Devon Riviera First Things First A Full House Birthday Greetings Chinese History of Colden Water Kore Glimpse If Mayday Lines about Elias

from WOLFWATCHING (1989)

A Sparrow Hawk Astrological Conundrums Slump Sundays Climbing into Heptonstall Macaw Dust As We Are Wolfwatching Telegraph Wires Source Sacrifice For the Duration Anthem for Doomed Youth The Black Rhino Leaf Mould Manchester Skytrain Walt Take What You Want But Pay For It Us He Devours Little Whale Song On the Reservations

CAPRICCIO (1990)

Capriccios The Locket The Mythographers Systole Diastole Descent Folktale Fanaticism Snow The Other Possession The Coat Smell of Burning The Pit and the Stones Shibboleth The Roof The Error Opus 131 Familiar Flame Chlorophyl

RAIN-CHARM FOR THE DUCHY (1992)

Rain-Charm for the Duchy Two Poems for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother A Birthday Masque The Song of the Honey Bee Two Songs A Masque for Three Voices The Unicorn

UNCOLLECTED (1992–97)

Lobby from Under the Carpet Three Poems for J.R. Two Photographs of Top Withens 1984 on ‘The Tarka Trail’ Be a Dry-Fly Purist The Bear The Mayfly is Frail High Water Everything is on its Way to the River Why the ‘21st Child’ Could Not Be Lifted The Last of the 1st/5th Lancashire Fusiliers Snapshot Playing with an Archetype Epigraph [from Earth Dances] Old Oats Anniversary The Oak Tree A Trout? Black Hair Platform One Comics Mother-Tongue 6 September 1997

TALES FROM OVID (1997)

Creation; Four Ages; Flood; Lycaon Phaethon Callisto and Arcas The Rape of Proserpina Arethusa Tiresias Echo and Narcissus Erisychthon Semele Peleus and Thetis Actaeon Myrrha Venus and Adonis (and Atalanta) Pygmalion Hercules and Dejanira The Birth of Hercules The Death of Cygnus Arachne Bacchus and Pentheus Midas Niobe Salmacis and Hermaphroditus Tereus Pyramus and Thisbe

BIRTHDAY LETTERS (1998)

Fulbright Scholars Caryatids (1) Caryatids (2) Visit Sam The Tender Place St Botolph’s The Shot Trophies 18 Rugby Street The Machine God Help the Wolf after Whom the Dogs Do Not Bark Fidelity Fate Playing The Owl A Pink Wool Knitted Dress Your Paris You Hated Spain Moonwalk Drawing Fever 55 Eltisley Chaucer Ouija The Earthenware Head Wuthering Heights The Chipmunk Horoscope Flounders The Blue Flannel Suit Child’s Park 9 Willow Street The Literary Life The Bird Astringency The Badlands Fishing Bridge The 59th Bear Grand Canyon Karlsbad Caverns Black Coat Portraits Stubbing Wharfe Remission Isis Epiphany The Gypsy A Dream The Minotaur The Pan Error The Lodger Daffodils The Afterbirth Setebos A Short Film The Rag Rug The Table Apprehensions Dream Life Perfect Light The Rabbit Catcher Suttee The Bee God Being Christlike The Beach Dreamers Fairy Tale The Blackbird Totem Robbing Myself Blood and Innocence Costly Speech The Inscription Night-Ride on Ariel Telos Brasilia The Cast The Ventriloquist Life after Death The Hands The Prism The God Freedom of Speech A Picture of Otto Fingers The Dogs Are Eating Your Mother Red

HOWLS & WHISPERS (1998)

Paris 1954 Religion The Hidden Orestes The Laburnum The Difference The Minotaur 2 Howls & Whispers The City Moon-Dust The Offers Superstitions

UNCOLLECTED (1997–98)

from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Some Pike for Nicholas Brother Peartree Shakespeare, drafting his will in 1605, plots an autobiographical play for 1606 The Prophet A Dove

APPENDIX ONE Notes and Prefaces by Ted Hughes APPENDIX TWO Variant Titles APPENDIX THREE Variant Lists of Contents Notes INDEX OF TITLES

A, B, C D, E, F G, H, I J, K, L M, N, O P, Q, R S, T, U V, W, X Y, Z

INDEX OF FIRST LINES About the Author About the Editor Copyright

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