From Venus and Adonis by William Shakespeare

Here are two erotic stanzas from Venus and Adonis, a narrative poem by William Shakespeare. In each of the stanzas below, Venus is speaking to Adonis.

"Is thine own heart to thine own face affected?
Can thy right hand seize love upon thy left?
Then woo thyself, be of thyself rejected,
Steal thine own freedom, and complain on theft.
   Narcissus so himself himself forsook,
   And died to kiss his shadow in the brook."

"Fondling," she saith, "since I have hemm'd thee here
Within the circuit of this ivory pale,
I'll be a park, and thou shalt be my deer;
Feed where thou wilt, on mountain or in dale:
   Graze on my lips, and if those hills be dry,
   Stray lower, where the pleasant fountains lie."

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

"Look not in my eyes, for fear" by A. E. Housman

Lyric 15 from A Shropshire Lad (1896)

by A. E. Housman

Look not in my eyes, for fear

   They mirror true the sight I see,

And there you find your face too clear

   And love it and be lost like me.

One the long nights through must lie

   Spent in star-defeated sighs,

But why should you as well as I

   Perish? -- gaze not in my eyes.

A Grecian lad, as I hear tell,

   One that many loved in vain,

Looked into a forest well

   And never looked away again.

There, when the turf in springtime flowers,

   With downward eye and gazes sad,

Stands amid the glancing showers

   A jonquil, not a Grecian lad.

A. E. Housman (1859-1956)

English classical scholar and poet

(Photographed by E. O. Hoppe)

"Narcissus Reflects" by Paul Lake : Poetry Magazine

Read the poem "Narcissus Reflects" by Paul Lake on pages 265-266 of the February 1994 issue of Poetry Magazine. (The link to this poem has been updated and is now correct.)

Narcissus in Greek mythology