As Willow Goes, So Goes My Nation

As it's National Poetry Month (in the US), here is a poem. Reading it hurts my heart. (Aren't you all glad not to have been born one hundred years previously and trapped in an unhappy marriage?)

The Affinity - Anna Wickham

I have to thank God I'm a woman,
For in these ordered days a woman only
Is free to be very hungry, very lonely.

It is sad for Feminism, but still clear
That man, more often than woman, is pioneer.
If I would confide a new thought,
First to a man must it be brought.

Now, for our sins, it is my bitter fate
That such a man wills soon to be my mate,
And so of friendship is quick end:
When I have gained a love I lose a friend.

It is well within the order of things
That man should listen when his mate sings;
But the true male never yet walked
Who liked to listen when his mate talked.

I would be married to a full man,
As would all women since the world began;
But from a wealth of living I have proved
I must be silent, if I would be loved.

Now of my silence I have much wealth,
I have to do my thinking all by stealth.
My thoughts may never see the day;
My mind is like a catacomb where early Christians pray.

And of my silence I have much pain,
But of these pangs I have great gain;
For I must take to drugs or drink,
Or I must write the things I think.

If my sex would let me speak,
I would be very lazy and most weak;
I should speak only, and the things I spoke
Would fill the air awhile, and clear like smoke.

The things I think now I write down,
And some day I will show them to the Town.
When I am sad I make thought clear;
I can re-read it all next year.

I have to thank God I'm a woman,
For in these ordered days a woman only
Is free to be very hungry, very lonely.


(helle_d, she knew Natalie Barney!)

(Via antisoppist)

1. Leave a comment to this post.
2. I will give you a letter (if you ask for one. Feel under no obligation to do this!).
3. Post the names of five fictional characters whose names begin with that letter, and your thoughts on each. The characters can be from books, movies, or TV shows.

( 10 Things I Hate About You, Buffy, Angel, Vorkosigan Saga and Lord Peter Wimsey behind the cut. Some spoilers. )

In Nancy Mitford's The Pursuit of Love, the luxury flat Linda is installed in by Fabrice includes "enormous windows [that] worked like windows of a motor-car, the whole of the glass disappearing into the wall". I assumed this was just a made-up device to show how fancy it was, until yesterday when I was reading a recent acquisition, The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters. There's a letter from Unity to Diana in which she describes Hitler's mountain retreat, the Berghof. It includes a window, described as follows: "The window - the largest piece of glass ever made - can be wound down like a motor window, as it was yesterday, leaving it quite open". LINDA'S FLAT IS BASED ON HITLER'S HOUSE. I am a bit disturbed.

Flicking through a book in Oxfam yesterday, I found this gem:

"Dr Martin Routh, President of Magdalen, Oxford, from 1791 to 1854, could see no reason for the installation of baths in the college since the young men were up for only eight weeks at a stretch. Dr Routh also refused to believe in the existence of railways, dismissing undergraduates who told him that they had travelled from London to Oxford in two hours as 'conspirators bent on making him take leave of his senses'".

Oh, Oxford.

WH Auden - The More Loving One

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.

Robert Graves - Love Without Hope

Love without hope, as when the young bird-catcher
Swept off his tall hat to the Squire's own daughter;
So let the imprisoned larks escape and fly
Singing about her head, as she rode by.

George Herbert - Easter Wings

(Linked to rather than posted, as I cannot manage the formatting.)

Stella Benson - Now I Have Nothing

Now I have nothing. Even the joy of loss
Even the dreams I had I now am losing.
Only this thing I know; that you are using
My heart as a stone to bear your foot across ...
I am glad I am glad the stone is of your choosing ...

Robert Frost - Acquainted With the Night

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain - and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height
One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.

Sylvia Plath - Child

Your clear eye is the one absolutely beautiful thing.
I want to fill it with color and ducks,
The zoo of the new
Whose name you meditate--
April snowdrop, Indian pipe,
Little

Stalk without wrinkle,
Pool in which images
Should be grand and classical

Not this troublous
Wringing of hands, this dark
Ceiling without a star.

Anna Wickham - Nervous Prostration

I married a man of the Croydon class
When I was twenty-two
And I vex him and he bores me
Till we don't know what to do!
It isn't good form in the Croydon class
To say you love your wife,
So I spend my days with the tradesmen's books
and pray for the end of life.

In green fields are blossoming trees
And a golden wealth of gorse,
And the young birds sing for joy of worms:
It's perfectly clear of course,
That it wouldn't be taste in the Croydon class
To sing over dinner or tea:
But I sometimes wish the gentleman
would turn and talk to me!

But every man of the Croydon class
Lives in terror of joy and speech.
'Words are betrayers', 'Joys are brief' -
The maxims their wise ones teach -
And for all my labour of love and life
I shall be clothed and fed,
And they'll give me an orderly funeral
When I'm still enough to be dead.

Stevie Smith - Lightly Bound

You beastly child, I wish you had miscarried,
You beastly husband, I wish I had never married.
You hear the north wind riding fast past the window? He calls me.
Do you suppose I shall stay when I can go so easily?

William Henley - Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.


One for everyone who is struggling with exams, work, or just life in general.

A piece by Sappho, translated by Walter Savage Landor.

"Mother, I cannot mind my wheel;
My fingers ache, my lips are dry:
Oh, if you felt the pain I feel!
But oh, whoever felt as I?"