She Walks in Beauty Read online

  Even though each marriage remains unique and mysterious, these poems underscore how and why getting married remains such a powerful personal and societal ideal.

  The Passionate Shepherd to His Love

  CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE

  Come live with me, and be my love,

  And we will all the pleasures prove,

  That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,

  Woods, or steepy mountain yields.

  And we will sit upon the rocks,

  Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks,

  By shallow rivers to whose falls

  Melodious birds sing madrigals.

  And I will make thee beds of roses,

  And a thousand fragrant posies,

  A cap of flowers, and a kirtle,

  Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;

  A gown made of the finest wool,

  Which from our pretty lambs we pull;

  Fair lined slippers for the cold,

  With buckles of the purest gold;

  A belt of straw and ivy buds,

  With coral clasps and amber studs:

  And if these pleasures may thee move,

  Come live with me, and be my love.

  The shepherds’ swains shall dance and sing

  For thy delight each May morning.

  If these delights thy mind may move,

  Then live with me, and be my love.

  Marriage

  GREGORY CORSO

  Should I get married? Should I be good?

  Astound the girl next door with my velvet suit and faustus hood?

  Don’t take her to movies but to cemeteries

  tell all about werewolf bathtubs and forked clarinets

  then desire her and kiss her and all the preliminaries

  and she going just so far and I understanding why

  not getting angry saying You must feel! It’s beautiful to feel!

  Instead take her in my arms lean against an old crooked tombstone

  and woo her the entire night the constellations in the sky—

  When she introduces me to her parents

  back straightened, hair finally combed, strangled by a tie,

  should I sit knees together on their 3rd degree sofa

  and not ask Where’s the bathroom?

  How else to feel other than I am,

  often thinking Flash Gordon soap—

  O how terrible it must be for a young man

  seated before a family and the family thinking

  We never saw him before! He wants our Mary Lou!

  After tea and homemade cookies they ask What do you do for a living?

  Should I tell them? Would they like me then?

  Say All right get married, we’re losing a daughter

  but we’re gaining a son—

  And should I then ask Where’s the bathroom?

  O God, and the wedding! All her family and her friends

  and only a handful of mine all scroungy and bearded

  just wait to get at the drinks and food—

  And the priest! he looking at me as if I masturbated

  asking me Do you take this woman for your lawful wedded wife?

  And I trembling what to say say Pie Glue!

  I kiss the bride all those corny men slapping me on the back

  She’s all yours, boy! Ha-ha-ha!

  And in their eyes you could see some obscene honeymoon going

  on—

  Then all that absurd rice and clanky cans and shoes

  Niagara Falls! Hordes of us! Husbands! Wives! Flowers!

  Chocolates!

  All streaming into cozy hotels

  All going to do the same thing tonight

  The indifferent clerk he knowing what was going to happen

  The lobby zombies they knowing what

  The whistling elevator man he knowing

  The winking bellboy knowing

  Everybody knowing! I’d be almost inclined not to do anything!

  Stay up all night! Stare that hotel clerk in the eye!

  Screaming: I deny honeymoon! I deny honeymoon!

  running rampant into those almost climactic suites

  yelling Radio belly! Cat shovel!

  O I’d live in Niagara forever! in a dark cave beneath the Falls

  I’d sit there the Mad Honeymooner

  devising ways to break marriages, a scourge of bigamy

  a saint of divorce—

  But I should get married I should be good

  How nice it’d be to come home to her

  and sit by the fireplace and she in the kitchen

  aproned young and lovely wanting my baby

  and so happy about me she burns the roast beef

  and comes crying to me and I get up from my big papa chair

  saying Christmas teeth! Radiant brains! Apple deaf!

  God what a husband I’d make! Yes, I should get married!

  So much to do! like sneaking into Mr. Jones’ house late at night

  and cover his golf clubs with 1920 Norwegian books

  Like hanging a picture of Rimbaud on the lawnmower

  like pasting Tannu Tuva postage stamps all over the picket fence

  like when Mrs Kindhead comes to collect for the Community Chest

  grab her and tell her There are unfavorable omens in the sky!

  And when the mayor comes to get my vote tell him

  When are you going to stop people killing whales!

  And when the milkman comes leave him a note in the bottle

  Penguin dust, bring me penguin dust, I want penguin dust—

  Yet if I should get married and it’s Connecticut and snow

  and she gives birth to a child and I am sleepless, worn,

  up for nights, head bowed against a quiet window, the past behind me,

  finding myself in the most common of situations a trembling man

  knowledged with responsibility not twig-smear nor Roman coin

  soup—

  O what would that be like!

  Surely I’d give it for a nipple a rubber Tacitus

  For a rattle a bag of broken Bach records

  Tack Della Francesca all over its crib

  Sew the Greek alphabet on its bib

  And build for its playpen a roofless Parthenon

  No, I doubt I’d be that kind of father

  not rural not snow no quiet window

  but hot smelly tight New York City

  seven flights up, roaches and rats in the walls

  a fat Reichian wife screeching over potatoes Get a job!

  And five nose running brats in love with Batman

  And the neighbors all toothless and dry haired

  like those hag masses of the 18th century

  all wanting to come in and watch TV

  The landlord wants his rent

  Grocery store Blue Cross Gas & Electric Knights of Columbus

  Impossible to lie back and dream Telephone snow, ghost parking—

  No! I should not get married I should never get married!

  But—imagine If I were married to a beautiful sophisticated woman

  tall and pale wearing an elegant black dress and long black gloves

  holding a cigarette holder in one hand and a highball in the other

  and we lived high up in a penthouse with a huge window

  from which we could see all of New York and ever farther on

  clearer days

  No, can’t imagine myself married to that pleasant prison dream—

  O but what about love? I forget love

  not that I am incapable of love

  it’s just that I see love as odd as wearing shoes—

  I never wanted to marry a girl who was like my mother

  And Ingrid Bergman was always impossible

  And there’s maybe a girl now but she’s already married

  And I don’t like men and—

  but there’s got to be somebody!

  Because what if I’m 60
years old and not married,

  all alone in a furnished room with pee stains on my underwear

  and everybody else is married! All the universe married but me!

  Ah, yet well I know that were a woman possible as I am possible

  then marriage would be possible—

  Like SHE in her lonely alien gaud waiting her Egyptian lover

  so I wait—bereft of 2,000 years and the bath of life.

  From The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia

  SIR PHILIP SIDNEY

  My true love hath my heart, and I have his,

  By just exchange one for the other given.

  I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss:

  There never was a better bargain driven.

  His heart in me keeps me and him in one;

  My heart in him his thoughts and senses guides;

  He loves my heart, for once it was his own;

  I cherish his, because in me it bides.

  His heart his wound receivèd from my sight;

  My heart was wounded with his wounded heart;

  For as from me on him his hurt did light,

  So still, methought, in me his hurt did smart;

  Both equal hurt, in this change sought our bliss:

  My true love hath my heart, and I have his.

  i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

  E. E. CUMMINGS

  i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

  my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

  i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done

  by only me is your doing,my darling)

  i fear

  no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

  no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

  and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

  and whatever a sun will always sing is you

  here is the deepest secret nobody knows

  (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

  and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

  higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

  and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

  i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

  To My Dear and Loving Husband

  ANNE BRADSTREET

  If ever two were one, then surely we.

  If ever man were lov’d by wife, then thee;

  If ever wife was happy in a man,

  Compare with me ye women if you can.

  I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold,

  Or all the riches that the East doth hold.

  My love is such that rivers cannot quench,

  Nor aught but love from thee, give recompense.

  Thy love is such I can no way repay,

  The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray.

  Then while we live, in love let’s so persever

  That, when we live no more, we may live ever.

  To Margo

  GAVIN EWART

  In life’s rough-and-tumble

  you’re the crumble on my apple crumble

  and the fairy on my Christmas tree!

  In life’s death-and-duty

  you’ve the beauty of the Beast’s own Beauty—

  I feel humble as a bumble-bee!

  In life’s darkening duel

  I’m the lighter, you’re the lighter fuel—

  and the tide that sways my inland sea!

  In life’s meet-and-muster

  you’ve the lustre of a diamond cluster—

  a blockbuster—just a duster, me!

  A Word to Husbands

  OGDEN NASH

  To keep your marriage brimming,

  With love in the loving cup,

  Whenever you’re wrong, admit it;

  Whenever you’re right, shut up.

  To the Ladies

  LADY MARY CHUDLEIGH

  Wife and servant are the same,

  But only differ in the name:

  For when that fatal knot is tied,

  Which nothing, nothing can divide:

  When she the word obey has said,

  And man by law supreme has made,

  Then all that’s kind is laid aside,

  And nothing left but state and pride:

  Fierce as an Eastern prince he grows,

  And all his innate rigour shows:

  Then but to look, to laugh, or speak,

  Will the nuptial contract break.

  Like mutes she signs alone must make,

  And never any freedom take:

  But still be governed by a nod,

  And fear her husband as a God:

  Him still must serve, him still obey,

  And nothing act, and nothing say,

  But what her haughty lord thinks fit,

  Who with the power, has all the wit.

  Then shun, oh! shun that wretched state,

  And all the fawning flatt’rers hate:

  Value your selves, and men despise,

  You must be proud, if you’ll be wise.

  The Female of the Species

  RUDYARD KIPLING

  When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride,

  He shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside.

  But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and nail.

  For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

  When Nag the basking cobra hears the careless foot of man,

  He will sometimes wriggle sideways and avoid it as he can.

  But his mate makes no such motion where she camps beside the trail.

  For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

  When the early Jesuit fathers preached to Hurons and Choctaws,

  They prayed to be delivered from the vengeance of the squaws.

  ’Twas the women, not the warriors, turned those stark enthusiasts pale.

  For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

  Man’s timid heart is bursting with the things he must not say,

  For the Woman that God gave him isn’t his to give away;

  But when hunter meets with husband, each confirms the other’s tale—

  The female of the species is more deadly than the male.

  Man, a bear in most relations—worm and savage otherwise,—

  Man propounds negotiations, Man accepts the compromise.

  Very rarely will he squarely push the logic of a fact

  To its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act.

  Fear, or foolishness, impels him, ere he lay the wicked low,

  To concede some form of trial even to his fiercest foe.

  Mirth obscene diverts his anger! Doubt and Pity oft perplex

  Him in dealing with an issue—to the scandal of The Sex!

  But the Woman that God gave him, every fibre of her frame

  Proves her launched for one sole issue, armed and engined for the same;

  And to serve that single issue, lest the generations fail,

  The female of the species must be deadlier than the male.

  She who faces Death by torture for each life beneath her breast

  May not deal in doubt or pity—must not swerve for fact or jest.

  These be purely male diversions—not in these her honour dwells.

  She the Other Law we live by, is that Law and nothing else.

  She can bring no more to living than the powers that make her great

  As the Mother of the Infant and the Mistress of the Mate!

  And when Babe and Man are lacking and she strides unclaimed to claim

  Her right as femme (and baron), her equipment is the same.

  She is wedded to convictions—in default of grosser ties;

  Her contentions are her children, Heaven help him who denies!—

  He will meet no suave discussion, but the instant, white-hot, wild,

  Wakened female of the species warring as for spouse and child.

 
Unprovoked and awful charges—even so the she-bear fights,

  Speech that drips, corrodes and poisons—even so the cobra bites,

  Scientific vivisection of one nerve till it is raw

  And the victim writhes in anguish—like the Jesuit with the squaw!

  So it comes that Man, the coward, when he gathers to confer

  With his fellow-braves in council, dare not leave a place for her

  Where, at war with Life and Conscience, he uplifts his erring hands

  To some God of Abstract Justice—which no woman understands.

  And Man knows it! Knows, moreover, that the Woman that God gave him

  Must command but may not govern—shall enthral but not enslave him.

  And She knows, because She warns him, and Her instincts never fail,

  That the Female of Her Species is more deadly than the Male.

  From Paradise Lost

  JOHN MILTON

  Eve to herself after eating the apple:

  I grow mature

  In knowledge, as the gods who all things know;

  Though others envy what they cannot give;

  . . .

  But to Adam in what sort

  Shall I appear? shall I to him make known

  As yet my change, and give him to partake

  Full happiness with me, or rather not,

  But keep the odds of knowledge in my power

  Without copartner? so to add what wants

  In female sex, the more to draw his love,

  And render me more equal, and perhaps,

  A thing not undesirable, sometime

  Superior; for inferior who is free?

  This may be well: but what if God have seen,

  And death ensue? then I shall be no more,

  And Adam wedded to another Eve,

  Shall live with her enjoying, I extinct;

  A death to think. Confirmed then I resolve,

  Adam shall share with me in bliss or woe:

  So dear I love him, that with him all deaths

  I could endure, without him live no life.

  . . .

  Adam to himself after learning that Eve has eaten the apple: