Look not in my eyes, for fear

XV

Look not in my eyes, for fear

  They mirror true the sight I see,

And there you find your face too clear

  And love it and be lost like me.

One the long nights through must lie

  Spent in star-defeated sighs,

But why should you as well as I

  Perish? gaze not in my eyes.

 

A Grecian lad, as I hear tell,

  One that many loved in vain,

Looked into a forest well

  And never looked away again.

There, where the turf in springtime flowers,

   With downward eye and gazes sad,

Stands amid the glancing showers

  A jonquil, not a Grecian lad.

 

-A. E. Housman

 

I was googling poems about eyes earlier in the week and reminded myself of this. The second stanza is a reference to Narcissus, who, of course, fell in love with his own image in a pond, and was so stationary from that time on, he was turned into a flower. A Shropshire Lad comes out in 1896, when Housman was 26, and presumably the first verse refers to the great, almost certainly Platonic, love of his early life, Moses Jackson.

 

I can't think of Housman without thinking of two other things. One is the Wendy Cope poem:

 

Another Unfortunate Choice 

I think I'm in love with A. E. Housman

Which puts me in a terrible fix,

No woman ever stood a chance with Housman

And he's been dead since 1936.

 

-Wendy Cope 

 

And the other thing Housman's very name brings to mind? The hilarious Fragment of a Greek Tragedy, of course. But that's for another day.

Wendy Cope's Valentine (#poem)

 

Valentine

My heart has made its mind up

And I'm afraid it's you.

Whatever you've got lined up

My heart has made its mind up

And if you can't be signed up

This year, next year will do.

My heart has made its mind up

And I'm afraid it's you.

-Wendy Cope

'Tis the season! I don't quite yet know where the elements in that picture are leading me, but somewhere, I guess...

The form of the poem is a triolet. I had more to say about that here.

Happy (upcoming) Valentine's Day to all. (And one Other Reader in particular!)