‘Anywhere,’ said Christopher Robin.

So they went off together. But wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on the top of the Forest a little boy and his Bear will always be playing.

from The House at Pooh Corner, A. A. Milne (1882–1956)

HE WAS MY NORTH, MY SOUTH, MY EAST AND WEST …

A thousand years you said,
as our hearts melted.
I look at the hand that you held,
and the ache is hard to bear.

Lady Heguri
(mid—late eighth century),
translated from the Japanese by
Geoffrey Bownas and
Anthony Thwaite

Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,

Silence the pianos and with muffled drum

Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead

Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,

Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves,

Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,

My working week and my Sunday rest,

My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;

I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one;

Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;

Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;

For nothing now can ever come to any good.

W.H. Auden (1907–73)

‘Music, when soft voices die’

Music, when soft voices die,

Vibrates in the memory;

Odours, when sweet violets sicken,

Live within the sense they quicken.

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,

Are heap’d for the belovèd’s bed;

And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,

Love itself shall slumber on.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)

‘As birds are fitted to the boughs’

As birds are fitted to the boughs

That blossom on the tree

And whisper when the south wind blows –

So was my love to me.

And still she blossoms in my mind

And whispers softly, though

The clouds are fitted to the wind,

The wind is to the snow.

Louis Simpson (1923– )

Farewell, Sweet Dust

Now I have lost you, I must scatter

All of you on the air henceforth;

Not that to me it can ever matter

But it’s only fair to the rest of earth.

Now especially, when it is winter

And the sun’s not half as bright as he was,

Who wouldn’t be glad to find a splinter

That once was you, in the frozen grass?

Snowflakes, too, will be softer feathered,

Clouds, perhaps, will be whiter plumed;

Rain, whose brilliance you caught and gathered,

Purer silver have reassumed.

Farewell, sweet dust; I never was a miser:

Once, for a minute, I made you mine:

Now you are gone, I am none the wiser

But the leaves of the willow are as bright as wine.

Elinor Wylie (1885–1928)

Echo

Come to me in the silence of the night;