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
Blends with the fragrant nearness of their bodies;
All items
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
Into all seasons, though no Winter cast
The happy leafing. It is so with me:
My love is less, my love is less for thee.
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.
Text:
“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.”
Amelotte laughed into the air
With eyes that sought the sun:
But where the walls in long brocade
Were screened, as one who is afraid
Description:
Lionel Johnson's poem describes queerness as an evil angel he must fight in order to live up to his religious ideals.
Text:
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:
Dark Angel, ever on the wing,
Who never reachest me too late!
When music sounds, then changest thou
Its silvery to a sultry fire:
Text:
“Our standards are all changing,” said Miss Du Prel. “It does not follow that they are changing for the worse.”
“It seems to me that they are not so much changing, as disappearing altogether,” said Temperley cheerfully, “especially among women. We hear a great deal about rights, but we hear nothing about duties.”
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.
Text:
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;
Mourning for that live soul, I used to see;
Soul of a saint, whose friend I used to be:
Till you came by! a cold, corrupting, fate.
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.
Text:
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
While upon thy lips it fold
Kisses, love-endued with lightness
Lest thou guess what none have told.
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.
Text:
Thursday, 25th July.
Text:
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.
Their deeds I judge and much condemn,
Yet when did I make laws for them ?
Please yourselves, say I, and they
Need only look the other way.
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.”
Text:
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
I would be a mermaid fair;
I would sing to myself the whole of the day;
With a comb of pearl I would comb my hair;
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:
And around her, tame and mild,
All the forest creatures wild—
Lion, panther, kid, and fawn,
Text:
O youth whose heart is right,
Whose loins are girt to gain
The hell-defended height
Where Virtue beckons plain;
Who seest the stark array
And hast not stayed to count
But singly wilt assay
The many-cannoned mount:
Text:
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. Their robes trailed over the grass. They glided in and out among the trees, and over their heads hung yellow fruit like large pears of melted gold.
Description:
A newspaper article discussing the differing treatment from the police of upper class and lower class men implicated in the Cleveland Street scandal.
Text:
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. The police have been deliberately employed in attempting to hush up the whole matter.
Text:
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.
By day she wooes me to the outer air,
Ripe fruits, sweet flowers, and full satiety :
But through the night, a beast she grins at me,
Text:
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;
I have nor begged nor bought a common bliss,
But what you are to me you were to none.
Description:
Edward Carpenter published this poem in praise of queer desire in his literary work "Towards Democracy."
Text:
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
trembled and was faint?
Why in a moment between me and you in the full
summer afternoon did Love sweep- leading after it in procession
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.
Text:
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.
I know the truth the tenderness the courage, I know
the longings hidden quiet there.
Go right on. Have good faith yet--keep that your
unseen treasure untainted.
Text:
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,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.
Smart lad, to slip betimes away
Text:
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
Is sobbed in by a woman's voice forlorn :—
Thy woman's hair, my sister, all unshorn,
Floats back dishevelled strength in agony,
Disproving thy man's name. And while before
Text:
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
Above the applauded circus, in appliance
Of thine own nobler nature's strength and science,—
Drawing two pinions, white as wings of swan,
Text:
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
A happy valley.
There was a friend, my friend with you ;
Text:
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,
As strange as any idol of the past
Whose youth mine worshipped in a youthful trance,
Are not thine tenderness and strength? And hast