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On A Grey Thread
On a Grey Thread (1923) is the debut poetry collection of Elsa Gidlow. Written while the poet was living in New York, On a Grey Thread is a groundbreaking work of poetry, the first in North American history to openly express lesbian desire. Both personal and political, Gidlow's poems express the poet's complex feelings as a young woman whose political ideology and sexual identity ran counter to the traditional values of her time.
Opening her collection with "The Grey Thread," Gidlow expresses herself with ornamental imagery, decorating her drab existence with the colorful beads of her personal identity: "My life is a grey thread, / A thin grey stretched out thread, / And when I trace its course, I moan: / How dull! How dead! // But I have gay beads. / A pale one to begin, / A blue one for my painted dreams, / And one for sin, / Gold with coiled marks, / Like a snake's skin." Employing the double meaning of "gay," offering a brief erotic "moan" on the precipice of enjambment, Gidlow stretches her stanza to its sinful conclusion, recalling Eve's temptation in the Garden of Eden. Having announced herself as a poet whose lines work against the dullness of her day, Gidlow--in "Youth"--is free to not only reveal what she wants from life, but to dare to take it: "Living is crusted with lies. / I want life naked, / Laughing and young. / Not fettered, not tamed, / But life unashamed, / With the cry of Desire on her tongue."
Opening her collection with "The Grey Thread," Gidlow expresses herself with ornamental imagery, decorating her drab existence with the colorful beads of her personal identity: "My life is a grey thread, / A thin grey stretched out thread, / And when I trace its course, I moan: / How dull! How dead! // But I have gay beads. / A pale one to begin, / A blue one for my painted dreams, / And one for sin, / Gold with coiled marks, / Like a snake's skin." Employing the double meaning of "gay," offering a brief erotic "moan" on the precipice of enjambment, Gidlow stretches her stanza to its sinful conclusion, recalling Eve's temptation in the Garden of Eden. Having announced herself as a poet whose lines work against the dullness of her day, Gidlow--in "Youth"--is free to not only reveal what she wants from life, but to dare to take it: "Living is crusted with lies. / I want life naked, / Laughing and young. / Not fettered, not tamed, / But life unashamed, / With the cry of Desire on her tongue."
73 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1923
About the author
Elsa Gidlow
10 books27 followersElsa Gidlow (29 December 1898 – 8 June 1986) was a poet, who in 1923 published the first volume of openly lesbian love poetry in the United States, On a Grey Thread. She promoted alternative spiritualities including Buddhism and Goddess Worship. In the 1940s she founded a rural retreat center, the Druid Heights Artists Retreat, in Marin County, California. She lived there until her death in 1986. Other residents at Druid Heights have included well-known figures such as her close friend Alan Watts and feminist theorist Catharine MacKinnon.
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August 30, 2026 “I must go down
Below narrow roads men have made,
Below bridging lies men have built,
Into the caverns of truth.
I know pain is waiting there
Eager to break me,
But I am strong.
I have faith in my youth.
Living is crusted with lies.
I want life naked,
Laughing and young.
Not fettered, not tamed,
But life unashamed,
With the cry of Desire on her tongue.”
“There are gods everywhere.”
“But what is the world muttering?
Has she whispered it since life began?
"Gods! I want none of your gods.
Look to yourself-Man."
“How you pursue me, woo me, follow,
Like a light-headed girl.
All the world is your willing lover:
What do you want with me?
You are a wanton, lovely, perfect,
A dazzling thing like day,
Draped with silk things,
Tasselled, jewelled,
Hung about with veils;
Painted with sweet lies men have blended
Of folly and dreams and fear.
You are a wanton, all men's mistress:
What do you want with me?”
“I'll not be loved of men for my gifts
If men want grain and grapes alone:
My thoughts are gnarled, fantastic trees,
Grown up untended, barely pruned,
From ancient seed I have not sown.
Their snake-mouthed roots are in my heart.
I feel them hungrily intense
Drawing the seething love-sap out.
Prodigally I feed them all
My being's vivid afluence.”
“Hurt me even, even wound me,
I have need of love that stings.
Come and lie with me and love me,
Bitterness,
So that I may laugh at things.”
“You say you will not think of me:
You shut me out and count your beads,
The chaplet of your rules and doubts,
But lovers never think of creeds.
You 'll fill your mind with serious things:
You 'll think of God or Infinity,
Of a lover whose last charm is gone,
Of anything in the world but me.
Yet every thought will lead you back,
Infinity grow far and dim,
And God, with His sense of irony,
Will never let you think of Him.”
“My laughter rings in the highest mountains,
My mockery echoes vividly over the peaks,
My laughter and my mockery dance lightly
together
Like derisive imps ... But my soul never
speaks.
My wisdom sits on a promontory
And remotely overwatches the world;
My pain stays forever in that cave
Where the ragged ends of life come unfurled.
My love cuts downward between mountains
Like a torrential cataract, to the deeps,
For love, like life, is a down-going.
But my soul is like a thing that sleeps.
It knows the remorseless depths,
The thinnest ether of the farthest height;
There are no lights or darknesses for its
discovering,
It has crawled on the earth and it knows
the joy of flight.
It is speechless because it knows all speeches,
Future and present and what has gone before.
It waits sphinxlike, and I myself
Cannot guess what it is waiting for.”
“Stars, you are my kindred:
I am strong with a new loneliness
That no one understands.”
“Shuddering I crouch to earth,
Trembling lest it come more near,
Trembling lest it stretch a hand
And touch me! Choked by an agony
Of horror lest its deadly eyes
Should shrivel my flaming heart of dream.
Sometimes I think the universe,
Mind, passion, beauty, wisdom, light,
All fathomless life-wonders,
Serve only for its cloak.
It lurks like death in everything
That has a singing heart:
In all exultant voices,
In all desire's burning eyes,
In youth's true soul,
In love's slim hands.
Sometimes I think it is life's core,
This mocking-mouth'd implacable ghost.
Sometimes I think it is life's core.
Sometimes I think it must be God.”
“Now you are gone I kiss your dented pillow
And wonder if it hungers like my breast
For the dear head we both have held in rest.
I said once: Love alone cannot assuage
My thirst, my hunger, love has no reply
For that wild questioning, for this fierce cry.
I said: there is no kiss can feed me now.
Perhaps love is life's flower: I seek the root.
Yea, I have loved and love is dead sea fruit.
Yet I lie here and kiss your dented pillow,
A trembling girl who loves you overmuch —
A harp in anguish for the player's touch.”
“Time is a rhymeless poem
Without any end
Written in space,
Here at the world's summit
Where life-giving winds
Sharply whip one's face.
Life is the one reality,
Life intensely realized,
Life wildly felt;
Death is an ungrasped dream,
A vague monstrous fable,
A puzzle still unspelt.”
“If I have wished for skies unscarred by storm,
Shrunk from the grievous bitterness of things,
The days' perplexities, the nights' unrest,
The cruel, fruitless beating with clipped wings
Against the windows of the Infinite,
And, weary with the conflict's puerile stress,
Cried out against it all, cried out for peace,
Even what peace the rotting dead possess,
May Life forgive me: I am stronger now,
The play bewilders, but I know my part;
And I have learned that Beauty is salt blood
Pain-wrung from the unconquerable heart.
Let there be laughter then, love's wine and bread,
The many mouths of passion, their joys, their grief;
These are but soil and seed -for what grave growths?
I plant and wait, (and pray the time be brief!)
Lean wisdom this, to pause and taste and pause
Like a scared virgin who must stop for breath.
Take the cup simply, drain it to the lees;
Then, smiling, fling the empty cup to Death.”
“For life's skeleton
I shall make flesh from desires;
Then of my mounting laughter
Build it a temple with mocking spires.
I shall laugh to heaven.
I shall laugh below hell and above.
I shall laugh forever.
It was laughter God died of.”
“Now I am done with ineffectual dreams,
Kindly play-toys of the unsure years,
And unencumbered, proud and free and light,
With even pulses and a lifting heart,
I mount the future's twisting stairs.
A week ago I thought that I must die,
Or hang forever, bitter as frost-killed fruit,
Scarred and broken from the Tree of Life-
Because I suddenly came into my sight
And men walked as trees; and dreams went mute.
"T is no small thing, to lose a dear, sure world,
To stumble, desolate, through hideous space,
Down unfamiliar and unfriendly roads
That bruise your feet. And then to suddenly feel
A great light newly shining in your face.”
“I am a seed in the dust,
A live root bedded in night,
And I am filled with a lust
For something the worms call light.
From what seed-pod I was blown
Matters little to me,
Why and by whom I was sown
Or what the reaping may be.
I only wait for my hour
When I shall be done with night,
When I shall thrill into flower
And drink till I die of light.”
“We are given pain to balance every joy,
We tragic-eyed divinities in dust.
Many the hearts life bleeds with little wounds,
The souls bewildered between God and lust.
We know the way of pity and pity's pain;
We know the unlit, endless street called Doubt;
And few but walk a black way at the end,
The piteous, hope-lit candles dead, burned out.
Yet these are mortal wounds of mortal thorns:
What of the few who suffer deadlier scars?
They are worse wounded than any in the world
Who bruise their lifted heads against the stars.”
“Come to me at the top of the world,
O Mine, before the years spill
Our rare love into Time's cup
And give our will to Time's will.
My wide basin is full of starlight,
My moon is lighted with new fire,
I have lit every sun in the firmament
With the hurting flame of my desire.
The worms there in the valley
Die-to forget death!
But here at the top of the world
I laugh under my breath:
There is pain here, and tears,
Bitter, terrible tears;
But the joys have warm mouths, and madness
Dances downwards with the years.
Come to me at the top of the world,
O Mine. The valley is deep,
The valley is full of the dying,
And with those that sleep.
But here wonderful winds blow
And the pines sing one song.
Come to me at the top of the world,
Come soon. I have waited too long.”
“I have brought her, laughing,
To my quietly sinister garden.
For what will be done there
I ask no man's pardon.
I brush the rouge from her cheeks,
Clean the black kohl from the rims
Of her eyes; loose her hair;
Uncover the glimmering, shy limbs.
I break wild roses, scatter them over her.
The thorns between us sting like love's pain.
Her flesh, bitter and salt to my tongue,
I taste with endless kisses and taste again.”
“Let us leave off loving, Madonna:
You have kissed me grey
And still I have no peace.
We thought we could make the night
A tapestry of passion.
Dear Love! What a vain caprice.
Where's the immortal design
We thought we had splashed on the indigo cloth?
And where is the cloth?
Dawn is forever the cynic.
He shows us love is the fame,
Our fesh the eternal moth.
Madonna
. loose me and rise.
We are brief as apple-blossom
And I am heart-weary with thought of the end.
Creation is all.
The hours are thieves, Time a beggar,
And we have little to spend.
I ache for the brush in my hand.
The thrall of the compliant pigment
Governs my blood.
I will paint you, Madonna,
The afterlove glow in your face;
I would deify you if I could
With enchantments of color,
Bind you with fetters of terrible beauty
Fast to my canvas forever,
Give you the eternality God has denied you,
Bind you to life with art's sacred chains
That death cannot sever.
Love has betrayed us enough with its
treacherous wonder:
Let us go now while we ache with the magic
Or what is the gain?
Art is our one immortality,
All we may win from the gods
In exchange for our labor and pain.”
“Do you think there is grief born
In any god's heart?”
“You 're jealous if I kiss this girl and that.
You think I should be constant to one mouth.
Little you know of my too quenchless drouth.
My sister, I keep faith with love, not lovers.
Life laid a flaming finger on my heart,
Gave me an electric golden thread,
Pointed to a pile of beads and said:
Link me one more perfect than the rest.
Love's the thread, my sister, you a bead,
An ivory one, you are so delicate.
These first burned ash-grey-far too passionate.
Farther on the colors mount and sing.
When the last bead's painted with the last design
And slipped upon the thread, I'll tie it so,
Then smiling quietly, I'll turn and go
While vain Life boasts her latest ornament.”
“I shall not harm you at all nor ask you
for anything,
You need have no fear;
I am only very tired and would like to
rest awhile
With my head here
And play with the long strands of your
loosed hair,
Or touch your skin,
Feel your cool breath on my eyes,
watch it stir
Those rising hills where your breasts begin;
And listen to your voice whispering
tender words
Until, perhaps, I fall asleep;
Or feel you kiss my forehead to comfort me
a little
If I should weep.
That is all, just to lie so beside you
Till dawn's lamp is lit.
You need not fear me. I have given
too much of love
Ever to ask for it.”
“Life today is like a glass reflecting
Nothing more than my own grieving eyes,
Or like a goblet that I sit and stare at,
Empty of all but stains of last night's wine.”
“I shall never have any fear of love,
Not of its depth nor its uttermost height,
Its exquisite pain and its terrible delight.
I shall never have any fear of love.
I shall never hesitate to go down
Into the fastness of its abyss
Nor shrink from the cruelty of its awful kiss.
I shall never have any fear of love.
Never shall I dread love's strength
Nor any pain it might give.
Through all the years I may live
I shall never have any fear of love.
I shall never draw back from love
Through fear of its vast pain
But build joy of it and count it again.
I shall never have any fear of love.
I shall never tremble nor Ainch
From love's moulding touch:
I have loved too terribly and too much
Ever to have any fear of love.”
“Like an unhappy woman Earth frees herself
from the arms of Winter,
Surely Winter, her indifferent Lord,
Whose touch is death to her passionate body,
And, weeping, yields to Spring, the
wooing maiden,
The slim girl who kisses her with
awakening kisses,
Burning her lips and eyelids with flaming mouth
loosed upon them,
Renewing her body with wildness
of young caresses,
Holding her close while the reckless hours dance
to death.
Wan passion flowers growing in hidden places,
Memories,
Kisses given by the slim maiden.
Wan passion flowers,
All that is left to Earth of her maddest lover.”
“Watch my Love in sleep:
Is she not beautiful
As a young flower at night
Weary and glad with dew?
Pale curved body
That I have kissed too much,
Warm with slumber's Alush;
Breasts like mounded snow,
Too small for children's mouths;
Lips a red spring bud
My love will bring to bloom.”
“There are more songs in the far corners
of my soul
Than I shall ever be able to sing.
I shall go away long before they are
all expressed
And they will wait for another life, for
more suffering,
To give them birth; another life and many
more tears
And love, to make them open their eyes to
the light.
It will take many lives to express all
the songs
I hear singing to themselves day and night.”
“Why are you laughing, Poet?
I much prefer your sighs.
I myself have just read one of your songs
And tears are biting my eyes.
And why should I not laugh?
I cleaned my heart of its dust,
Swept my spirit clear of its cobwebs,
Gathered them up and thrust
Them from me. And then
Men passing, found the whole,
Called them songs and sang them and exulted.
They thought they had found my soul.”
Below narrow roads men have made,
Below bridging lies men have built,
Into the caverns of truth.
I know pain is waiting there
Eager to break me,
But I am strong.
I have faith in my youth.
Living is crusted with lies.
I want life naked,
Laughing and young.
Not fettered, not tamed,
But life unashamed,
With the cry of Desire on her tongue.”
“There are gods everywhere.”
“But what is the world muttering?
Has she whispered it since life began?
"Gods! I want none of your gods.
Look to yourself-Man."
“How you pursue me, woo me, follow,
Like a light-headed girl.
All the world is your willing lover:
What do you want with me?
You are a wanton, lovely, perfect,
A dazzling thing like day,
Draped with silk things,
Tasselled, jewelled,
Hung about with veils;
Painted with sweet lies men have blended
Of folly and dreams and fear.
You are a wanton, all men's mistress:
What do you want with me?”
“I'll not be loved of men for my gifts
If men want grain and grapes alone:
My thoughts are gnarled, fantastic trees,
Grown up untended, barely pruned,
From ancient seed I have not sown.
Their snake-mouthed roots are in my heart.
I feel them hungrily intense
Drawing the seething love-sap out.
Prodigally I feed them all
My being's vivid afluence.”
“Hurt me even, even wound me,
I have need of love that stings.
Come and lie with me and love me,
Bitterness,
So that I may laugh at things.”
“You say you will not think of me:
You shut me out and count your beads,
The chaplet of your rules and doubts,
But lovers never think of creeds.
You 'll fill your mind with serious things:
You 'll think of God or Infinity,
Of a lover whose last charm is gone,
Of anything in the world but me.
Yet every thought will lead you back,
Infinity grow far and dim,
And God, with His sense of irony,
Will never let you think of Him.”
“My laughter rings in the highest mountains,
My mockery echoes vividly over the peaks,
My laughter and my mockery dance lightly
together
Like derisive imps ... But my soul never
speaks.
My wisdom sits on a promontory
And remotely overwatches the world;
My pain stays forever in that cave
Where the ragged ends of life come unfurled.
My love cuts downward between mountains
Like a torrential cataract, to the deeps,
For love, like life, is a down-going.
But my soul is like a thing that sleeps.
It knows the remorseless depths,
The thinnest ether of the farthest height;
There are no lights or darknesses for its
discovering,
It has crawled on the earth and it knows
the joy of flight.
It is speechless because it knows all speeches,
Future and present and what has gone before.
It waits sphinxlike, and I myself
Cannot guess what it is waiting for.”
“Stars, you are my kindred:
I am strong with a new loneliness
That no one understands.”
“Shuddering I crouch to earth,
Trembling lest it come more near,
Trembling lest it stretch a hand
And touch me! Choked by an agony
Of horror lest its deadly eyes
Should shrivel my flaming heart of dream.
Sometimes I think the universe,
Mind, passion, beauty, wisdom, light,
All fathomless life-wonders,
Serve only for its cloak.
It lurks like death in everything
That has a singing heart:
In all exultant voices,
In all desire's burning eyes,
In youth's true soul,
In love's slim hands.
Sometimes I think it is life's core,
This mocking-mouth'd implacable ghost.
Sometimes I think it is life's core.
Sometimes I think it must be God.”
“Now you are gone I kiss your dented pillow
And wonder if it hungers like my breast
For the dear head we both have held in rest.
I said once: Love alone cannot assuage
My thirst, my hunger, love has no reply
For that wild questioning, for this fierce cry.
I said: there is no kiss can feed me now.
Perhaps love is life's flower: I seek the root.
Yea, I have loved and love is dead sea fruit.
Yet I lie here and kiss your dented pillow,
A trembling girl who loves you overmuch —
A harp in anguish for the player's touch.”
“Time is a rhymeless poem
Without any end
Written in space,
Here at the world's summit
Where life-giving winds
Sharply whip one's face.
Life is the one reality,
Life intensely realized,
Life wildly felt;
Death is an ungrasped dream,
A vague monstrous fable,
A puzzle still unspelt.”
“If I have wished for skies unscarred by storm,
Shrunk from the grievous bitterness of things,
The days' perplexities, the nights' unrest,
The cruel, fruitless beating with clipped wings
Against the windows of the Infinite,
And, weary with the conflict's puerile stress,
Cried out against it all, cried out for peace,
Even what peace the rotting dead possess,
May Life forgive me: I am stronger now,
The play bewilders, but I know my part;
And I have learned that Beauty is salt blood
Pain-wrung from the unconquerable heart.
Let there be laughter then, love's wine and bread,
The many mouths of passion, their joys, their grief;
These are but soil and seed -for what grave growths?
I plant and wait, (and pray the time be brief!)
Lean wisdom this, to pause and taste and pause
Like a scared virgin who must stop for breath.
Take the cup simply, drain it to the lees;
Then, smiling, fling the empty cup to Death.”
“For life's skeleton
I shall make flesh from desires;
Then of my mounting laughter
Build it a temple with mocking spires.
I shall laugh to heaven.
I shall laugh below hell and above.
I shall laugh forever.
It was laughter God died of.”
“Now I am done with ineffectual dreams,
Kindly play-toys of the unsure years,
And unencumbered, proud and free and light,
With even pulses and a lifting heart,
I mount the future's twisting stairs.
A week ago I thought that I must die,
Or hang forever, bitter as frost-killed fruit,
Scarred and broken from the Tree of Life-
Because I suddenly came into my sight
And men walked as trees; and dreams went mute.
"T is no small thing, to lose a dear, sure world,
To stumble, desolate, through hideous space,
Down unfamiliar and unfriendly roads
That bruise your feet. And then to suddenly feel
A great light newly shining in your face.”
“I am a seed in the dust,
A live root bedded in night,
And I am filled with a lust
For something the worms call light.
From what seed-pod I was blown
Matters little to me,
Why and by whom I was sown
Or what the reaping may be.
I only wait for my hour
When I shall be done with night,
When I shall thrill into flower
And drink till I die of light.”
“We are given pain to balance every joy,
We tragic-eyed divinities in dust.
Many the hearts life bleeds with little wounds,
The souls bewildered between God and lust.
We know the way of pity and pity's pain;
We know the unlit, endless street called Doubt;
And few but walk a black way at the end,
The piteous, hope-lit candles dead, burned out.
Yet these are mortal wounds of mortal thorns:
What of the few who suffer deadlier scars?
They are worse wounded than any in the world
Who bruise their lifted heads against the stars.”
“Come to me at the top of the world,
O Mine, before the years spill
Our rare love into Time's cup
And give our will to Time's will.
My wide basin is full of starlight,
My moon is lighted with new fire,
I have lit every sun in the firmament
With the hurting flame of my desire.
The worms there in the valley
Die-to forget death!
But here at the top of the world
I laugh under my breath:
There is pain here, and tears,
Bitter, terrible tears;
But the joys have warm mouths, and madness
Dances downwards with the years.
Come to me at the top of the world,
O Mine. The valley is deep,
The valley is full of the dying,
And with those that sleep.
But here wonderful winds blow
And the pines sing one song.
Come to me at the top of the world,
Come soon. I have waited too long.”
“I have brought her, laughing,
To my quietly sinister garden.
For what will be done there
I ask no man's pardon.
I brush the rouge from her cheeks,
Clean the black kohl from the rims
Of her eyes; loose her hair;
Uncover the glimmering, shy limbs.
I break wild roses, scatter them over her.
The thorns between us sting like love's pain.
Her flesh, bitter and salt to my tongue,
I taste with endless kisses and taste again.”
“Let us leave off loving, Madonna:
You have kissed me grey
And still I have no peace.
We thought we could make the night
A tapestry of passion.
Dear Love! What a vain caprice.
Where's the immortal design
We thought we had splashed on the indigo cloth?
And where is the cloth?
Dawn is forever the cynic.
He shows us love is the fame,
Our fesh the eternal moth.
Madonna
. loose me and rise.
We are brief as apple-blossom
And I am heart-weary with thought of the end.
Creation is all.
The hours are thieves, Time a beggar,
And we have little to spend.
I ache for the brush in my hand.
The thrall of the compliant pigment
Governs my blood.
I will paint you, Madonna,
The afterlove glow in your face;
I would deify you if I could
With enchantments of color,
Bind you with fetters of terrible beauty
Fast to my canvas forever,
Give you the eternality God has denied you,
Bind you to life with art's sacred chains
That death cannot sever.
Love has betrayed us enough with its
treacherous wonder:
Let us go now while we ache with the magic
Or what is the gain?
Art is our one immortality,
All we may win from the gods
In exchange for our labor and pain.”
“Do you think there is grief born
In any god's heart?”
“You 're jealous if I kiss this girl and that.
You think I should be constant to one mouth.
Little you know of my too quenchless drouth.
My sister, I keep faith with love, not lovers.
Life laid a flaming finger on my heart,
Gave me an electric golden thread,
Pointed to a pile of beads and said:
Link me one more perfect than the rest.
Love's the thread, my sister, you a bead,
An ivory one, you are so delicate.
These first burned ash-grey-far too passionate.
Farther on the colors mount and sing.
When the last bead's painted with the last design
And slipped upon the thread, I'll tie it so,
Then smiling quietly, I'll turn and go
While vain Life boasts her latest ornament.”
“I shall not harm you at all nor ask you
for anything,
You need have no fear;
I am only very tired and would like to
rest awhile
With my head here
And play with the long strands of your
loosed hair,
Or touch your skin,
Feel your cool breath on my eyes,
watch it stir
Those rising hills where your breasts begin;
And listen to your voice whispering
tender words
Until, perhaps, I fall asleep;
Or feel you kiss my forehead to comfort me
a little
If I should weep.
That is all, just to lie so beside you
Till dawn's lamp is lit.
You need not fear me. I have given
too much of love
Ever to ask for it.”
“Life today is like a glass reflecting
Nothing more than my own grieving eyes,
Or like a goblet that I sit and stare at,
Empty of all but stains of last night's wine.”
“I shall never have any fear of love,
Not of its depth nor its uttermost height,
Its exquisite pain and its terrible delight.
I shall never have any fear of love.
I shall never hesitate to go down
Into the fastness of its abyss
Nor shrink from the cruelty of its awful kiss.
I shall never have any fear of love.
Never shall I dread love's strength
Nor any pain it might give.
Through all the years I may live
I shall never have any fear of love.
I shall never draw back from love
Through fear of its vast pain
But build joy of it and count it again.
I shall never have any fear of love.
I shall never tremble nor Ainch
From love's moulding touch:
I have loved too terribly and too much
Ever to have any fear of love.”
“Like an unhappy woman Earth frees herself
from the arms of Winter,
Surely Winter, her indifferent Lord,
Whose touch is death to her passionate body,
And, weeping, yields to Spring, the
wooing maiden,
The slim girl who kisses her with
awakening kisses,
Burning her lips and eyelids with flaming mouth
loosed upon them,
Renewing her body with wildness
of young caresses,
Holding her close while the reckless hours dance
to death.
Wan passion flowers growing in hidden places,
Memories,
Kisses given by the slim maiden.
Wan passion flowers,
All that is left to Earth of her maddest lover.”
“Watch my Love in sleep:
Is she not beautiful
As a young flower at night
Weary and glad with dew?
Pale curved body
That I have kissed too much,
Warm with slumber's Alush;
Breasts like mounded snow,
Too small for children's mouths;
Lips a red spring bud
My love will bring to bloom.”
“There are more songs in the far corners
of my soul
Than I shall ever be able to sing.
I shall go away long before they are
all expressed
And they will wait for another life, for
more suffering,
To give them birth; another life and many
more tears
And love, to make them open their eyes to
the light.
It will take many lives to express all
the songs
I hear singing to themselves day and night.”
“Why are you laughing, Poet?
I much prefer your sighs.
I myself have just read one of your songs
And tears are biting my eyes.
And why should I not laugh?
I cleaned my heart of its dust,
Swept my spirit clear of its cobwebs,
Gathered them up and thrust
Them from me. And then
Men passing, found the whole,
Called them songs and sang them and exulted.
They thought they had found my soul.”
December 19, 2019
I knew nothing about this auther when I started reading this. I picked it up for free off a public domain websigt. It however is wonderful. Lesbian poetry from 1923 it is way ahead of its time and wonderful.
August 19, 2023
Elsa Gidlow you brilliant lesbian PLAYER!
Youth: “Living is crusted with lies. I want life naked, Laughing and young. Not fettered, not tamed, But life unashamed, With the cry of Desire on her tongue.”
Futility: “Under all the beauty that I know, All the vital dreams, Sharp loveliness, Under the hair, the lips of laughter, The dusk-dim eyes of pain, Lurks the single thing I fear, Hard-mouthed, implacable-eyed, The monster, The satyr-thing, futility.”
Didn’t pull quotes from these but I really liked “I Must be Far” on page 29 and “This is Not Love” on page 45, “Mnasidika” on 59, “ Chance” on 71. Lovely writing.
“Episode” on page 43 is so undeniably gay
Experience: “Now you are gone I kiss your dented pillow and wonder if it hungers like my breast for the dear head we have both held in rest. I said once: Love alone cannot assuage my thirst, my hunger, love has no reply for that wild questioning, for this fierce cry. I said: there is no kiss that can feed me now. Perhaps love is life’s flower: I seek the root. Yea, I have loved and love is the dead sea fruit. Yet I lie here and kiss your dented pillow, a trembling girl who loves your overmuch — A harp in anguish for the players touch.”
The Artist: “Love has betrayed us enough with its treacherous wonder: Let us go now while we ache with magic or what is the gain? Art is our one immortality, all we may win from the gods in exchange for our labor and pain.”
Philosophy: “Since we must soon be fed as honey and new bread to ever-hungry Death: O, love me very sweet and kiss me very long and let us use our breath for song. Nothing else endures overlong.”
Of a Certain Friendship on page 57 is OUCH (positive) if you have lost a friend
Of a Certain Friendship:
“Odd how you entered my house quietly, quietly left again. While you stayed you ate at my table, slept in my bed. There was much sweetness, yet little was done, little said. After you left there was pain, now there is no more pain. But the door of a certain room in my house will always be shut. Your fork, your plate, the glass you drank from, the music you played, are in that room with the pillow where last your head was laid. And there is one place in my garden where it’s best that I set no foot.”
Youth: “Living is crusted with lies. I want life naked, Laughing and young. Not fettered, not tamed, But life unashamed, With the cry of Desire on her tongue.”
Futility: “Under all the beauty that I know, All the vital dreams, Sharp loveliness, Under the hair, the lips of laughter, The dusk-dim eyes of pain, Lurks the single thing I fear, Hard-mouthed, implacable-eyed, The monster, The satyr-thing, futility.”
Didn’t pull quotes from these but I really liked “I Must be Far” on page 29 and “This is Not Love” on page 45, “Mnasidika” on 59, “ Chance” on 71. Lovely writing.
“Episode” on page 43 is so undeniably gay
Experience: “Now you are gone I kiss your dented pillow and wonder if it hungers like my breast for the dear head we have both held in rest. I said once: Love alone cannot assuage my thirst, my hunger, love has no reply for that wild questioning, for this fierce cry. I said: there is no kiss that can feed me now. Perhaps love is life’s flower: I seek the root. Yea, I have loved and love is the dead sea fruit. Yet I lie here and kiss your dented pillow, a trembling girl who loves your overmuch — A harp in anguish for the players touch.”
The Artist: “Love has betrayed us enough with its treacherous wonder: Let us go now while we ache with magic or what is the gain? Art is our one immortality, all we may win from the gods in exchange for our labor and pain.”
Philosophy: “Since we must soon be fed as honey and new bread to ever-hungry Death: O, love me very sweet and kiss me very long and let us use our breath for song. Nothing else endures overlong.”
Of a Certain Friendship on page 57 is OUCH (positive) if you have lost a friend
Of a Certain Friendship:
“Odd how you entered my house quietly, quietly left again. While you stayed you ate at my table, slept in my bed. There was much sweetness, yet little was done, little said. After you left there was pain, now there is no more pain. But the door of a certain room in my house will always be shut. Your fork, your plate, the glass you drank from, the music you played, are in that room with the pillow where last your head was laid. And there is one place in my garden where it’s best that I set no foot.”
January 11, 2025
This is the first book of lesbian poetry published in the United States in 1923. I was so profoundly surprised to find that the emotions and experiences expressed in these poems to be so familiar to the lesbian experience of myself and other lesbians I know, in a way that I would have never expected from a 100+ year old text. To me, it was the very particular experience of a woman coming through hopelessness to own the joy of allowing herself to love as a lesbian and the joy and heartbreak of loving women over and over and over again. There was a biographical note at the end, and it sounds like she lived such an interesting life. (Google her.) I'm so curious to learn more. I think I'll read more of her poetry, and I'll definitely read her autobiography.
January 3, 2023
I accept the timeless blight
Of crawling like a worm with unclean things.
A bleeding-heart collection of poetry by a woman who knows that real love has stakes. She relishes in sin, welcomes the pain of discovery, knows that to expand your capacity for sorrow and hurt is to expand your capacity for joy. It’s a bold affirmation of queerness, particularly bold for being published originally in 1920. There’s all the drama and self-righteousness that’s unique to artists, and not all of the poems hit the mark for me. But I am very fond of the motto underlying this collection: to live fully is to hurt, and that will never stop being worth it.
November 17, 2022
I do not have many thoughts about this to be honest. Like any collection, there were some stronger than others, but I do think this collection had its standout moments. I don't know if I'll return to this one at any point, but I enjoyed it.
April 13, 2026
The first book of openly lesbian love poetry published in the US in 1923. In awe of how modern/relatable this is. Also Elsa Gidlow is defo worth a google - very interesting Yorkshire lass (look for her feud with Lovecraft)
May 2, 2026
God. I could read these poems every single day & never grow tired of them.
I love her optimism her Witt, her exploration of self, religion & sexuality.
Elsa Gidlow introduced me to my love of Poetry & for that I’m eternally grateful.
What an incredible poet.
I love her optimism her Witt, her exploration of self, religion & sexuality.
Elsa Gidlow introduced me to my love of Poetry & for that I’m eternally grateful.
What an incredible poet.
April 18, 2025
My favourite poems were "The Artist", "Before Sleep" and "A Thought".
February 1, 2023
I am completely obsessed with Elsa and this book!! Best poetry collection I swear like lesbian poetry just keeps me GOING and these are all so captivating and perfect. I did a history assignment on Elsa Gidlow a couple years ago and thank god I did because I never would’ve found this otherwise.. it’s like $8 on amazon BUY IT!! I also highly recommend this poetry to any Taylor Swift fans🤭 inspiration I sense? Maybe..🫣
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