Lord Alfred Douglas
(1870 - 1945) U.K.
Poet and writer
Lord Alfred Bruce Douglas was a gay poet. He is best known for his nine-year (1891-1900) off-and-on relationship with gay Irish-born British writer Oscar Wilde, who said of him that he "understands me and my art, and loves both. I hope never to be separated from him." Of course, they were separated; Douglas went to France to avoid having to testify at Wilde's trials. When Wilde was released from prison, he also went to France, where their friendship resumed, continuing until Wilde's death. After Wilde's death, Lord Douglas married, but his wife later deserted him. He wrote Poems (1896), and Oscar Wilde and myself (1914). Douglas's sonnets were published in two volumes, Excelsis (1924) and Sonnets and Lyrics (1935). His 74-line poem Two Loves ends:
..."Sweet youth,
Tell me why, sad and sighing, thou dost rove
These pleasant realms? I pray thee speak me sooth
What is thy name?" He said, "My name is Love."
Then straight the first did turn himself to me
And cried, "He lieth, for his name is Shame,
But I am Love, and I was wont to be
Alone in this fair garden, till he came
Unasked by night; I am true Love, I fill
The hearts of boy and girl with mutual flame."
Then sighing said the other, "Have thy will,
I am the Love that dare not speak its name."
Of course, that final line is now a standard phrase for homosexual love, and was even used by James Kirkup as the title of one of his poems.
"Not all the singers of a thousand years"
Sonnet, dedicated to those French men of letters (Messrs. Zola, Copee, Sardou and others) who refused to compromise their spotless reputations or imperil their literary exclusiveness by signing a merciful petition in favour of Oscar Wilde.
Not all the singers of a thousand years
Can open English prisons. No. Though hell
Opened for Tracian Orpheus, now the spell
Of song and art is powerless as the tears
That love has shed. You that were full of fears,
And mean self-love, shall live to know full well
That you yourselves, not he, were pitiable
When you met mercy's voice with frowns or jeers.
And did you ask who signed the plea with you?
Fools! It was signed already with the sign
Of great dead men, of God-like Socrates,
Shakespeare and Plato and the Florentine
Who conquered form. And all your pretty crew
Once, and once only, might have stood with these.
Impression de Nuit
London
See what a mass of gems the city wears
Upon her broad live bosom! row on row
Rubies and emeralds and amethysts glow.
See! that huge circle like a necklace, stares
With thousands of bold eyes to heaven, and dares
The golden stars to dim the lamps below,
And in the mirror of the mire I know
The moon has left her image unawares.
That's the great town at night: I see her breasts,
Pricked out with lamps they stand like huge black towers.
I think they move! I hear her panting breath.
And that's her head where the tiara rests.
And in her brain, through lanes as dark as death,
Men creep like thoughts...The lamps are like pale flowers.
The City of the Soul: II
What shall we do, my soul, to please the King?
Seeing he hath no pleasure in the dance,
And hath condemned the honeyed utterance
Of silver flutes and mouths made round to sing.
Along the wall red roses climb and cling,
And oh! my prince, lift up thy countenance,
For there be thoughts like roses that entrance
More than the languors of soft lute-playing.
Think how the hidden things that poets see
In amber eves or mornings crystalline,
Hide in the soul their constant quenchless light,
Till, called by some celestial alchemy,
Out of forgotten depths, they rise and shine
Like buried treasure on Midsummer night.
Sonnet on the Sonnet
To see the moment holds a madrigal,
To find some cloistered place, some hermitage
For free devices, some deliberate cage
Wherein to keep wild thoughts like birds in thrall;
To eat sweet honey and to taste black gall,
To fight with form, to wrestle and to rage,
Till at the last upon the conquered page
The shadows of created Beauty fall.
This is the sonnet, this is all delight
Of every flower that blows in every Spring,
And all desire of every desert place;
This is the joy that fills a cloudy night
When bursting from her misty following,
A perfect moon wins to an empty space.
The Green River
I know a green grass path that leaves the field,
And like a running river, winds along
Into a leafy wood where is no throng
Of birds at noon-day, and no soft throats yield
Their music to the moon. The place is sealed,
An unclaimed sovereignty of voiceless song,
And all the unravished silences belong
To some sweet singer lost or unrevealed.
So is my soul become a silent place.
Oh, may I wake from this uneasy night
To find a voice of music manifold.
Let it be shape of sorrow with wan face,
Or Love that swoons on sleep, or else delight
That is as wide-eyed as a marigold.
A Summer Storm
Alas! how frail and weak a little boat
I have sailed in. I call it Happiness,
And I had thought there was not storm nor stress
Of wind so masterful but it would float
Blithely in their despite; but lo! one note
Of harsh discord, one word of bitterness,
And a fierce overwhelming wilderness
Of angry waters chokes my gasping throat.
I am near drowned in this unhappy sea,
I will not strive, let me lie still and sink,
I have no joy to live. Oh! unkind love!
Why have you wounded me so bitterly?
That am as easily wounded as a dove
Who has a silver throat and feet of pink.
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