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larryhammerOkay, back to the meming. A poem for the first Poetry Monday of the new year:
Come, live with me and be my love, C. Day-Lewis
Come, live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
Of peace and plenty, bed and board,
That chance employment may afford.
I’ll handle dainties on the docks
And thou shalt read of summer frocks:
At evening by the sour canals
We’ll hope to hear some madrigals.
Care on thy maiden brow shall put
A wreath of wrinkles, and thy foot
Be shod with pain: not silken dress
But toil shall tire thy loveliness.
Hunger shall make thy modest zone
And cheat fond death of all but bone –-
If these delight thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my love.
Continuing the MacSpaunday theme with the only actual Marxist in the quartet (not counting Spender’s brief stint in the Communist Party) as well as the only Poet Laureate (from 1968-1972). He spent most of his life supporting himself as a mystery writer under the name Nicholas Blake, and is now less-known than his son, Daniel Day Lewis. The poem, is of course, one of many parodies over the centuries of Marlowe -- this one and Donne’s Come, live with me and be my bait are my favorites.
—L.
Subject quote from Remorse for Intemperate Speech, William Yeats, written a couple years before.
Come, live with me and be my love, C. Day-Lewis
Come, live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
Of peace and plenty, bed and board,
That chance employment may afford.
I’ll handle dainties on the docks
And thou shalt read of summer frocks:
At evening by the sour canals
We’ll hope to hear some madrigals.
Care on thy maiden brow shall put
A wreath of wrinkles, and thy foot
Be shod with pain: not silken dress
But toil shall tire thy loveliness.
Hunger shall make thy modest zone
And cheat fond death of all but bone –-
If these delight thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my love.
Continuing the MacSpaunday theme with the only actual Marxist in the quartet (not counting Spender’s brief stint in the Communist Party) as well as the only Poet Laureate (from 1968-1972). He spent most of his life supporting himself as a mystery writer under the name Nicholas Blake, and is now less-known than his son, Daniel Day Lewis. The poem, is of course, one of many parodies over the centuries of Marlowe -- this one and Donne’s Come, live with me and be my bait are my favorites.
—L.
Subject quote from Remorse for Intemperate Speech, William Yeats, written a couple years before.