July 2025

This Month we feature Poems to Celebrate Byron, Poems to Celebrate Pride and Musical Poems on the Underground

Look out for the new Byron Posters now up at Green Park Underground station. We are delighted to honour London’s special place in the life of one of our great poets.

Lord Byron : So we’ll go no more a-roving

So We'll Go No More A-Roving, Lord Byron 'So we'll go no more a-roving So late into the night, Thought the heart be still as loving, And the moon be still as bright.'

So We’ll Go no More A Roving read by Gavin Ewart

Lord Byron : I would to heaven that I were so much clay

I Would To Heaven That I Were So Much Clay by George Gordon, Lord Byron 'I would to heaven that I were so much clay, As I am blood, bone, marrow, passion, feeling - Because at least the past were passed away - And for the future - (but I write this reeling, Having got drunk exceedingly today, So that I seem to stand upon the ceiling) I say - the future is a serious matter - And so - for God's sake - hock and soda water!'

Lord Byron : Sonnet on Chillon

from Sonnet on Chillon , Lord Byron ' Eternal Spirit of the chainless Mind! Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art, For there thy habitation is the heart– The heart which love of thee alone can bind; And when thy sons to fetters are consign'd- To fetters, and the damp vault’s dayless gloom, Their country conquers with their martyrdom, And Freedom’s fame finds wings on every wind....'

Lord Byron: from Don Juan

from Don Juan, Byron 'The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece! Where burning Sappho loved and sung, Where grew the arts of war and peace, Where Delos rose, and Phoebus sprung! Eternal summer gilds them yet, But all, except their sun, is set.'

Lord Byron : from Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage 

from Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage I have not loved the world, nor the world me; I have not flattered its rank breath, nor bowed To its idolatries a patient knee, Nor coined my cheek to smiles, nor cried aloud In worship of an echo; in the crowd They could not deem me one of such; I stood Among them, but not of them, in a shroud Of thoughts which were not their thoughts, and still could, Had I not filed my mind, which thus itself subdued. Lord Byron

Celebrating Pride

Two Fragments, Sappho (7th Century B.C.) translated by Cicely Herbert Poems on the Underground 1992 ' As a gale on the mountainside bends the oak tree I am rocked by my love. Love holds me captive again and I tremble with bittersweet longing.''
Hour, Carol Ann Duffy ‘Love’s time’s beggar, but even a single hour, bright as a dropped coin, makes love rich. We find an hour together, spend it not on flowers or wine, but the whole of the summer sky and a grass ditch.’
The Conversation of Old Men, Thom Gunn ‘He feels a breeze rise from the Thames, as far off as Rotherhithe, in intimate contact with water, slimy hulls,’
Longings by C.P. Cavafy ( 1863-1933) Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard 'Like the beautiful bodies of those who died before growing old, sadly shut away in sumptuous mausoleum, roses by the head, jasmine at the feet - so appear the longings that have passed without being satisfied, not one of the granted a single night of pleasure, or one of its radiant mornings.'
Leaf , Seán Hewitt from Tongues of Fire 'For woods are forms of grief grown from the earth. For they creak with the weight of it. For each tree is an altar to time. For the oak, whose every knot guards a hushed cymbal of water. For how the silver water holds the heavens in its eye. For the axletree of heaven and the sleeping coil of wind and the moon keeping watch. For how each leaf traps light as it falls. For even in the nighttime of life it is worth living, just to hold it.'
Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers, Adrienne Rich ' Aunt Jennifer's tigers prance across a screen, Bright topaz denizens of a world of green. They do not fear the men beneath the tree; They pace in sleek chivalric certainty. Aunt Jennifer's finger fluttering through her wool Find even the ivory needle hard to pull. The massive weight of Uncle's wedding band Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer's hand. When Aunt is dead, her terrified hands will lie Still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by. The tigers in the panel that she made Will go on prancing, proud and unafraid.'

Music Poems on the Underground

Upwards by Raymond Antrobus

Upwards (for Ty Chijioke) after Christopher Gilbert by Raymond Antrobus ' The last place the sun reaches in my garden is the back wall where the ivy grows above the stinging nettles. What are they singing to us? Is it painless to listen? Will music soothe our anxious house? Speech falls on things like rain sun shades all the feelings of having a heart. Here, take my pulse, take my breath, take my arms as I drift off ' Reprinted by permission of Picador from All the Names Given (2021)

Listen to Upwards by Raymond Antrobus with Evelyn Glennie

Music When Soft Voices Die by Percy Bysshe Shelley

To- P.B. Shelley '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 heaped for the beloved’s bed; And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone, Love itself shall slumber on.'

A Musical Note by Elizabeth Smart

A Musical Note, Elizabeth Smart ' Sometimes Handel is loud, triumphant, insistent. I wanted to say shut up! Can anything really be that successful and sure?'

from Tell Me the Truth About Love by W.H. Auden

lines from "Tell Me the Truth About Love" by W.H. Auden ' When it comes, will it come without warning Just as I'm picking my nose? Will it knock on my door in the morning, Or tread in the bus on my toes? Will it come like a change in the weather? Will its greeting be courteous or rough? Will it alter my life altogether? O tell me the truth about love.' W.H. Auden (1907 -73 By permission of Faber from Collected Poems, revised edition (2007) Music by Benjamin Britten is © Faber Music and the Trustees of the Britten - Pears Foundation and appears by permission

If Bach Had Been a Beekeeper by Charles Tomlinson

If Bach Had Been a Beekeeper, Charles Tomlinson ' If Bach Had Been a Beekeeper he would have heard all those notes suspended above one another in the air of his ear as the undifferentiated swarm returning to the exact hive to place in the hive, topping up the cells with the honey of C major, food for the listening generations, key to their comfort and solace of their distress as they return and return to those counterpointed levels of hovering wings where movement is dance and the air itself a scented garden'

Ode to Joy by Gillian Clarke

Bach and the Sentry by Ivor Gurney

Bach and the Sentry, Ivor Gurney 'Watching the dark my spirit rose in flood On that most dearest Prelude of my delight. The low-lying mist lifted its hood, The October stars showed nobly in clear night. When I return, and to real music-making, And play that Prelude, how will it happen then? Shall I feel as I felt, a sentry hardly waking, With a dull sense of No Man's Land again?'

Naima for John Coltrane by Kamau Brathwaite

Naima for John Coltrane, Kamau Brathwaite 'Propped against the crowded bar he pours into the curved and silver horn his old unhappy longing for a home'

New Poems from July 2021

Remembering Summer by W.S. Merwin,

Remembering Summer, W.S. Merwin ‘Being too warm the old lady said to me is better than being too cold I think now in between is the best because you never give it a thought but it goes by too fast I remember the winter how cold it got I could never get warm wherever I was but I don’t remember the summer heat like that only the long days the breathing of the trees the evenings with the hens still talking in the lane and the light getting longer in the valley the sound of a bell from down there somewhere I can sit here now still listening to it’

Her Glasses by Pascale Petit

Her Glasses, Pascale Petit ‘My grandmother’s glasses are a greenhouse behind which luxurious flowers grow, species I will never name, or find again. Her last glance back at her childhood jungle trembles there, watered by monsoons but I have never seen her cry. She closed the glass doors as I said goodbye. She waved at me as the taxi drove me away – her blinds came down against my fierce rays.’

In the Bright Sleeve of the Sky by Ilya Kaminsky,

In the Bright Sleeve of the Sky, Ilya Kaminsky ‘Is that you, little soul? Sometimes at night I light a lamp so as not to see. I tiptoe, Anushka drowsing in my palms: on my balding head, her bonnet.’

Consider the Grass Growing by Patrick Kavanagh.

Consider the Grass Growing , Patrick Kavanagh ‘Consider the grass growing As it grew last year and the year before, Cool about the ankles like summer rivers, When we walked on a May evening through the meadows To watch the mare that was going to foal.’

An epigram from the Greek Anthology by Anyte of Tegea, translated by David Constantine

from The Greek Anthology, Anyte of Tegea trans. David Constantine ‘Midsummer in the leaves there’s a murmuring breath of air. Among the roots a cold spring bubbles through. Wayfarer, weary to death, here is kindness to spare. Earthly, heavenly, as the tree lives, so may you.’

Black Ink by Fawzi Karim

Black Ink, Fawzi Karim, in a version by Anthony Howell ‘The darkness of this night is greater Than the power of a sultan. Ink from my books, shelf upon shelf of them, Pours down the curtains. Every book is an overturned inkwell. Patience, I say. Day will dawn, And the colours will spill everywhere. Snatching up the brush, I try to paint the walls green, The curtains rosy pink, But now the waves come washing in: Blue – with light’s sporadic wink.’

New Poems from Summer 2022

Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley 'I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed. And on the pedestal these words appear: 'My name is OZYMANDIAS, King of Kings: Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!' Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.'

No Man is an Island by John Donne

'No Man is an Island' by John Donne from meditation 17, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions 'No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.'

Caterpillar La Chenille by Guillaume Apollinaire, translated by Robert Chandler

La Chenille Caterpillar by Guillaume Apollinaire, tr Robert Chandler 'La Chenille Le travail mène à la richesse. Pauvres poètes, travaillons! La chenille en peinant sans cesse Devient le riche papillon. Caterpillar Work hard, poets, work with good cheer: Work leads to wealth and freedom from fear; And butterflies, for all their graces, Are merely caterpillars who persevere. ' Reprinted by permission of Robert Chandler from Guillaume Apollinaire, Poems, translated by Robert Chandler (Everyman 2000)

from War of the Beasts and the Animals by Maria Stepanova, translated by Sasha Dugdale

from War of the Beasts and the Animals by Maria Stepanova, tr. Sasha Dugdale ' on the twenty-second of june at four o’clock on the dot I won’t be listening to anything I’ll have my eyes shut I’ll bury the foreign broadcast It’s the news but I won’t lift a hand If anyone comes I’m out of the loop I’m a sparrow I’m no man’s land' Reprinted by permission of Bloodaxe Books from Maria Stepanova, War of the Beasts and the Animals, trans. Sasha Dugdale (2021)

Ditches by Jessica Traynor

Ditches by Jessica Traynor ' So many songs I could sing you, spread fields of lavender for you to crush in your fists. But there are things more potent than the peaches and plums in your story books, there are shadows in the ditch that know your name. Sit with me – I’ll teach you theirs.' Reprinted by permission of Bloodaxe Books from Pit Lullabies (2022)

‘Dei Miracole’ by Lemn Sissay

Dei Miracole by Lemn Sissay ' The spirit of structure can’t be foreseen, For somewhere between The architecture and the dream More than the sum of its parts Somehow, somewhere, the heart.' Copyright Listener by Lemn Sissay, 2008. First published in Great Britain by Canongate Books Ltd.

Poems from June 2025