Radclyffe Hall

Radclyffe Hall Poems

Butterfly, butterfly, where are you going?
'Over the roses into the sky.'
Butterfly, butterfly, there is no knowing
When you'll come back again, so good-bye!
...

O Italy of chiming bells,
Of pilgrim shrines and holy wells,
Of incense mist and secret prayers,
Profound and sweet as scented airs
...

Beneath the lime trees in the garden
High above the town,
The scent of whose suspended bloom
Entranced the air with warm perfume
...

The sea was witness of the words you said :
She hushed her every tide that she might hear
Your whispered love, and while you bent so near
My bosom, laying down your weary head
...

You're just as pretty as the Day,
That young and pink above the hills
Trips daintily along her way,
With little breezy thrills.
...

Can nothing last?
No deep, intense emotion?
Have all things passed,
Can nothing last?
...

I BE hopin' you remember,
Now the Spring has come again,
How we used to gather violets
By the Uttle church at Eastnor,
...

I RODE through Eastnor woods to-day.
And all the air did promise May,
Did promise May till every tree
Found voice to make much melody.
...

' Oh ! bother,' sang the thrush,
'I'm in an awful rush,
For I've got to get ready for the Spring.
With feathers from my breast,
...

From Wind's Point hill at eventide,
I see the train go by ;
The train that goes to Ledbury,
Along the vale of Wye.
...

The day our dead are laid to rest
We heap the earth upon their breast ;
Upon the earth we set a stone.
And then we leave them all alone.
...

Oh ! the long green lanes of England !
They be very far away,
And it's there that I'd be walking,
'Mid the hawthorn and the may.
...

' O Lady mine ! 'one day I cried,'
Pray make for me a posy,
That I may think when from your side
On your young mouth so rosy.'
...

Go, cold white pearls, with your luring eyes,
The woman is waiting who longs to win
But the rainbow light that within you lies,
But the soft cool touch of your satin skin.
...

Moth to the flame !
Fool that you be,
Life 's but a game,
Love is the same,
...

A little white Cloud loved the Mountain,
She hung in the sky all day,
And gazed with rather a timid smile
To where, beneath her full many a mile,
...

I sought at dawn for the sweet white heather,
In hiding among the blue,
The earth was warm with the summer weather,
The flowers still damp with dew.
...

I stood beside you in the dark,
And felt the magic of the night
Steal o'er my senses, 'til they swooned,
And mists of passion dimmed my sight.
...

Immortal Lesbian! canst thou still behold
From some far sphere wherein thy soul doth sing
This earth, that once was thine, while glimmered gold
The joyous beams of youth's forgotten spring?
...

The world 's a beautiful world to-day,
A flame of gold and a dusk of gray,

Where Autumn leaves toss their gaudy crests
...

Radclyffe Hall Biography

Radclyffe Hall (born Marguerite Radclyffe-Hall on 12 August 1880 – 7 October 1943) was an English poet and author, best known for the lesbian classic The Well of Loneliness. Marguerite Radclyffe Hall was born at 'Sunny Lawn', Durley Road, in Bournemouth, Hampshire (now Dorset) in 1880, to a wealthy philandering father and quarrelsome mother. Lonely while growing up (her parents separated when she was a baby and she was virtually ignored by her mother and stepfather), she was educated at King's College London, and then in Germany. Hall was a lesbian and described herself as a "congenital invert", a term taken from the writings of Havelock Ellis and other turn-of-the-century sexologists. Having reached adulthood without a vocation, she spent much of her twenties pursuing women she eventually lost to marriage. In 1907 at the Homburg spa in Germany, Hall met Mabel Batten, a well-known amateur singer of lieder. Batten (nicknamed "Ladye") was 51 to Hall's 27, and was married with an adult daughter and grandchildren. They fell in love, and after Batten's husband died they set up residence together. Batten gave Hall the nickname John, which she used the rest of her life. In 1915 Hall fell in love with Mabel Batten's cousin Una Troubridge (1887–1963), a sculptor who was the wife of Vice-Admiral Ernest Troubridge, and the mother of a young daughter. Mabel Batten died the following year, and in 1917 Radclyffe Hall and Una Troubridge began living together. The relationship would last until Hall's death. In 1934 Hall fell in love with Russian émigré Evguenia Souline and embarked upon a long-term affair with her, which Troubridge painfully tolerated. Hall became involved in affairs with other women throughout the years, possibly including blues singer Ethel Waters. Hall lived with Troubridge in London and, during the 1930s, in the tiny town of Rye, East Sussex, noted for its many writers, including her contemporary the novelist E.F. Benson. She died at age 63 of colon cancer, and is interred at Highgate Cemetery in North London. The vault containing her remains is in the Circle of Lebanon, half way round from the Egyptian Avenue entrance. In 1930 Radclyffe Hall received the Gold Medal of the Eichelbergher Humane Award. She was a member of the PEN club, the Council of the Society for Psychical Research and a fellow of the Zoological Society. Radclyffe Hall was listed at number sixteen in the top 500 lesbian and gay heroes in The Pink Paper.)

The Best Poem Of Radclyffe Hall

Butterfly

Song

Butterfly, butterfly, where are you going?
'Over the roses into the sky.'
Butterfly, butterfly, there is no knowing
When you'll come back again, so good-bye!

Butterfly, butterfly, summer is glowing,
But with the winter you too must die,
And your frail soul will be gently blowing
Upward to God on a rose's sigh.
Butterfly, butterfly, butterfly!

Radclyffe Hall Comments

Rajnish Manga 14 August 2016

I like the simplicity and sweetness of expression that goes into the poems of this wonderful Poet. Though, his early days were not so sporty, he definitely transformed his loneliness and energy into a class poetry. Thanks.

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