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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
TOWARDS DEMOCRACY: PART 4. SPENDING THE NIGHT ALONE, by EDWARD CARPENTER Poet's Biography
First Line: To lie all night beside the loved on - how lovely
Last Line: Spending the night alone.
Subject(s): Love; Solitude; Loneliness
First Line: To lie all night beside the loved on - how lovely
Last Line: Spending the night alone.
Subject(s): Love; Solitude; Loneliness
TO lie all night beside the loved one—how lovely!
To hold in one's arms something so precious, so beautiful,
Dear head and hair and lips and limbs that shrine eternity,
Through scent and sense and breath and touch and love—
Forgetting all but this one—all but this one.
And then again to spend the night alone, to resume oneself—
To sail out in the silent watches over the sleeping world, and drink of the
intoxication of space,
Calm, self-centred, to the great first One united;
Over-looking the wide sleeping-grounds of Time—forms of the past, the
future—comrades innumerable,
Lovers possible, all safely eternally embosomed;
Kissing them lightly on the lips, the forehead,
Leaving them sleeping,
Spending the night alone.
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IN ABEYANCE by DENISE LEVERTOV
IN A VACANT HOUSE by PHILIP LEVINE
SUNDAY ALONE IN A FIFTH FLOOR APARTMENT, CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS by WILLIAM MATTHEWS
SILENCE LIKE COOL SAND by PAT MORA
THE HONEY BEAR by EILEEN MYLES
AS A MOULD FOR SOME FAIR FORM by EDWARD CARPENTER