Sun burning down on back and loins, penetrating the skin, bathing their flanks in sweat,
Where they lie naked on the warm ground, and the ferns arch over them,
Out in the woods, and the sweet scent of fir-needles
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Description:
Edward Carpenter published this poem in praise of queer desire in his an anthology Towards Democracy.
Text:
Text:
My love is lessened and must soon be past.
I never promised such persistency
In its condition. No, the tropic tree
Has not a charter that its sap shall last
Description:
This excerpt from Dante Gabriel Rossetti's poem, The Bride's Prelude", shows a coded Victorian language that speaks about the queering of race and refer's to the bride's room as a "chamber", suggesting some sort of forced or arranged marriage. There is a lot of reference to gold and jewels on the bride's head in this first section of Rossetti's poem, which alludes to Egyptian culture. None of Rossetti's poems really addresses or blatantly discusses the mullatto woman or Black woman (or any woman of color, for that matter), but in these codes that reference different geographical parts of the world and how it is used in juxtoposition with palesness and whitness form this queering of race when compared to Euro-centric, white features that are ideal in Victorian England.
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“Sister,” said busy Amelotte
To listless Aloÿse;
“Along your wedding-road the wheat
Bends as to hear your horse's feet,
And the noonday stands still for heat.”
Description:
Lionel Johnson's poem describes queerness as an evil angel he must fight in order to live up to his religious ideals.
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Dark Angel, with thine aching lust
To rid the world of penitence:
Malicious Angel, who still dost
My soul such subtile violence!
Because of thee, no thought, no thing,
Abides for me undesecrate:
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“Our standards are all changing,” said Miss Du Prel. “It does not follow that they are changing for the worse.”
Description:
Lionel Johnson wrote this bitter sonnet in 1892, supposedly to repudiate his former friend, Oscar Wilde, whom he had introduced to Lord Alfred Douglas.
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I hate you with a necessary hate.
First, I sought patience: passionate was she:
My patience turned in very scorn of me,
That I should dare forgive a sin so great,
As this, through which I sit disconsolate;
Description:
This text is an excerpt from Anne Lister's original diaries that was written on September 20th, 1824. The title of the text is "No Priest But Love- Excerpts From The Diaries of Anne Lister." These diary entries were written between 1824 and 1826 and act as window into the life a lesbian who lived during the period right before the Victorian Era. Her diary entries depict her life in Yorkshire, Northern England and document her sexual and romantic relationships with several different women. Her entries account for her daily life, her relationships, her gender identity, the harassment she faced as a lesbian, along with her economic struggles.
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Monday 20 Sept.
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CHILD, the hours that breathe around thee
Know thee most divinely fair ;
In its love the last enwound thee,
And the next shall take thy hair
Backward from thy forehead's whiteness
Description:
This short diary excerpt by the ten-year-old Emily Pepys was found and published in a larger collection,The Journal of Emily Pepys, for the first time by Gillian Avery in 1984.
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Thursday, 25th July.
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THE laws of God, the laws of man,
He may keep that will and can ;
Not I : let God and man decree
Laws for themselves and not for me ;
And if my ways are not as theirs
Let them mind their own affairs.
Description:
Alfred Tennyson’s poem “The Mermaid” was originally published in the book Poems, Chiefly Lyrical which was the first publication of a collection of Tennyson’s earliest poetic works. It was published in 1830 when Tennyson was only 21 years old and the collection generally received mixed reviews. “The Mermaid” itself is not one of Tennyson’s most famous poems, but it displays forms of non-heteronormative sexuality and an early representation of a femme fatale type character prior to the publication of “Lady of Shalott.”
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I
Who would be
A mermaid fair,
Singing alone,
Combing her hair
Under the sea,
In a golden curl
With a comb of pearl,
On a throne?
II
Description:
The first half of a poem, reprinted in the monthly publication Our Corner
Text:
Four broad beech-trees great of hold,
Crowned the green, smooth-swelling knoll;
There She stood, the glorious form
Dazzling with its beauty warm;
Naked as the sun of noon,
Naked as the midnight moon:
Text:
O youth whose heart is right,
Whose loins are girt to gain
The hell-defended height
Where Virtue beckons plain;
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Birds sang, turf came to the water-edge, and trees grew from it. Away off among the trees I saw beautiful women walking. Their clothes were of many delicate colours and clung to them, and they were tall and graceful and had yellow hair.
Description:
A newspaper article discussing the differing treatment from the police of upper class and lower class men implicated in the Cleveland Street scandal.
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We are exceedingly glad that the horrible scandal which Reynolds’s Newspaper was the first to bring under the notice of the general public has at last come more prominently forward through the proceedings at Bow-’street Police-court.
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BY day she wooes me, soft, exceeding fair :
But all night as the moon so changeth she ;
Loathsome and foul with hideous leprosy
And subtle serpents gliding in her hair.
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You are to me the secret of my soul
And I to you what no man yet has been.
I, your Prometheus, fire from Heaven stole
And for my theft the world's revenge is keen.
What I have done for you no man has done;
Description:
Edward Carpenter published this poem in praise of queer desire in his literary work "Towards Democracy."
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You, proud curve-lipped youth. with brown sensitive face,
Why, suddenly, as you sat there on the grass, did you
turn full upon me those twin black eye of yours
With gaze so absorbing so intense, I a strong man
Description:
Edward Carpenter was a British poet, socialist, and LGBT activist. He published "To A Stranger" in his book Towards Democracy. In the poem, he addresses a presumably queer person telling them that eventually their love will be recognized.
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O faithful eyes, day after day as I see and how
you--unswerving faithful and beautiful--going about your
ordinary work unnoticed,
I have noticed--I do not forget you.
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THE time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place ;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.
To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
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TRUE genius, but true woman ! dost deny
Thy woman's nature with a manly scorn,
And break away the gauds and armlets worn
By weaker women in captivity ?
Ah, vain denial ! that revolted cry
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THOU large-brained woman and large-hearted man,
Self-called George Sand ! whose soul, amid the lions
Of thy tumultuous senses, moans defiance
And answers roar for roar, as spirits can :
I would some mild miraculous thunder ran
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UP those Museum steps you came,
And straightway all my blood was flame,
O Lallie, Lallie !
The world (I had been feeling low)
In one short moment's space did grow
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O fair as those I love, and sweet and fair
As those whose sweetness is so fair to me,
O dearer than the love my love does dare
Hardly to greet when sight grows ecstasy,