"I Haved Loved Loving You"

Ah, yes, here it is—that poem I advertised for the other day. It’s entitled “A Song for Mardi Gras,” published in the Collected Poems of Rolfe Humphries (1965). My recollection is that when I first saw it (1957?) it was billed as a translation from the Welsh. The current edition doesn’t specify, but it bears what I take to be a Welsh epigraph: Dy garu de a gerais. A bit of Googling suggests that he was indeed a poet but perhaps more a translator; a very quick skim through the collective works suggests that perhaps the translations (especially from the Welsh) have more freedom and ease; perhaps you can get away with stuff in translation that you can’t do when you are at home. Here’s the poem:

I have loved loving you,
O my dear, my softly spoken.
Now the forty days draw near,
Vows are made, vows are broken.
Fare thee well, my little slim-waist—
Till Easter Monday all are chaste.

I have loved loving you,
O my fond, O my darling,
In the season and beyond,
Under moon, under star,
Now the time has come to fast--
Till Easter Monday all are chaste.

I have loved loving you,
O my linnet, O my dove,
God have mercy on a sinner!
Fare thee well and absent, love,
Moon and star go to waste—
Till Easter Monday all are chaste.

I have loved loving you,
O my green, O my shadow,
In the ambush set between
Mountainside, moor and meadow,
March, be gone; April, haste—
Till Easter Monday all are chaste.

--Rolfe Humphries
Collected Poems of Rolfe Humphries 247-8 (Indiana UP 1965)

I like the easy geniality of this, which escapes jauntiness: The rhythm strikes me as more subtle and challenging than you might at first notice: from an Appendix, I infer that Humphries thought himself a student of Welsh rhythms, whether deservedly or not I cannot say.

Sources say that Humphries lived from 1894 to 1969. He taught for many years at Amherst, and is said to have mentored Theodore Roethke (link). One former colleague remembers him in an oral history: “As a young man Rolfe was a very witty, incisive, and even abusive reviewer. By then [sc. 1960s?—Buce] he was old and tired. He was a guy that you had to like and feel sorry for.” (link).

Fn: the person who first called my attention to this poem 50 years ago was my friend the New York Crank. He didn’t take the bait on my first posted inquiry. I wonder if he remembers.