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Love Sonnet XVII - Zora Cross
Jan. 21st, 2013 08:04 amBeloved, lest I should remember, I
Must swift forget the wonder of last night.
Hot memory would but blacken out my sight
And dull my senses till they seemed to die.
How could I live, remembering that sigh…
That breath…that sob…that all sublime delight?
Eternal joy is death, I think, and might
Not such sweet madness kill me, coming nigh?
I died with you that hour. Or, if not, merged
Myself in you, commingling all my life
Within your own, until I fled and fled
Into your blood; and my pure pulses surged,
Heaped with the wedded bliss of man and wife…
Dying, I lived…and living, I was dead.
I do like how Zora goes right for the sex/death link here. Mild allusions? HELL NO, sex and death all the way. According to the internet, her 1917 collection of love poetry was considered a bit risqué, but very popular nevertheless.
The other thing that strikes me is that I don't think it occurred to me - not when I studied gothic lit and not in all the time I've been interested in the genre since - that Australians wrote gothic poetry too. It does seem, from the Oxford Book of Australian Women's Verse, as if it came late, or perhaps Susan Lever didn't think much of 19th century Australian gothic poetry. I don't know enough to comment on her choices, even, but I wish I did.
Must swift forget the wonder of last night.
Hot memory would but blacken out my sight
And dull my senses till they seemed to die.
How could I live, remembering that sigh…
That breath…that sob…that all sublime delight?
Eternal joy is death, I think, and might
Not such sweet madness kill me, coming nigh?
I died with you that hour. Or, if not, merged
Myself in you, commingling all my life
Within your own, until I fled and fled
Into your blood; and my pure pulses surged,
Heaped with the wedded bliss of man and wife…
Dying, I lived…and living, I was dead.
I do like how Zora goes right for the sex/death link here. Mild allusions? HELL NO, sex and death all the way. According to the internet, her 1917 collection of love poetry was considered a bit risqué, but very popular nevertheless.
The other thing that strikes me is that I don't think it occurred to me - not when I studied gothic lit and not in all the time I've been interested in the genre since - that Australians wrote gothic poetry too. It does seem, from the Oxford Book of Australian Women's Verse, as if it came late, or perhaps Susan Lever didn't think much of 19th century Australian gothic poetry. I don't know enough to comment on her choices, even, but I wish I did.