Bad Poetry: The Vampyre

Robert Lytton, Earl of Lytton was a 19th-century British diplomat, the son of Parliament member and writer Edward George Bulwer Lytton (possibly most famous for the opening line of his Paul Clifford, "It was a dark and stormy night.").

Like father, like son. Robert Lytton, who used the pseudonym "Owen Meredith," liked to mix the macabre with the sweet and maidenly. Perfect for Halloween.

Here's a taste, from The Vampyre:

I found a corpse, with golden hair,
Of a maiden seven months dead.
But the face, with the death in it, still was fair,
And the lips with their love were red.
Rose-leaves on a snow-drift shed,
Blood-drops by Adonis bled,
Doubtless were not so red.
...
I would that this woman's head
Were less golden about the hair:
I would her lips were less red,
And her face less deadly fair.
For this is the worst to hear--
How came that redness there?

'T is my heart, be sure, she eats for her food;
And it makes one's whole flesh creep
To think that she drinks and drains my blood
Unawares, when I am asleep.
How else could those red-lips keep
Their redness so damson-deep?

There's a thought like a serpent, slips
Ever into my heart and head,--
There are plenty of women, alive and human,
One might woo, if one wished, and wed--
Woemn with hearts, and brains,--ay, and lips
Not so very terribly red.