Following Wordsworth’s “Lucy Poems,” I will now present another poem about someone called Lucy, from Boudoir Ballads by Joseph Ashby-Sterry. The style is light and softly erotic, quite different from Wordsworth’s romantic pathos. As several other poems by Ashby-Sterry, I illustrate it with a painting by Graham Ovenden, also of a girl called Lucy.
L U C Y’ S L I P S.
O! YOUR rosy little mouth—
Red as coral from the South—
Though meant not, Love, for missing
Quirk or quip:
Was expressly formed, I guess,
For some other lips to press,
What mortals call, Love, kissing
Lip to lip!
After all these poems, you can finally think of the song “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds” from the 1967 LP album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by The Beatles.
Source of the poem: Joseph Ashby-Sterry, Boudoir Ballads, London: Chatto and Windus, Piccadilly (1876).
This poem was included in a post published on Agapeta, 2018/05/09.
I couldn’t find any Polish translation of this poem, so;
O! Twe różane usteczka
Niczym południowe korale
Nie dla, Miłości, docinek i swar
Lecz same układają, się zdaje
By poczuć innych warg
Co zwykli zwać, Miłością, całowaniem
Ustom usta