[John Whitworth]

My publisher wshes to publish this poem in a magazine. She asks me where it was published last. Buggered if I know but it obviously was or she wouldn't have seen it. It begins

'Moon on the water and a sleeping swan'

and ends

'Whoever loved who loved not at first sight'

Does any Spherean recognise it? Thanks in advance.

[Ann Drysdale]

Well, the last line, with a that where the who is, is Kit Marlowe's, though I am assuming that you knew that when you nicked it.

Could it have been a comp that required that line as an ending?

[Michael F]

I can't help you on your question, John.

But as to the Marlowe poem, it's an interesting case of a poem that is true, while the last line is patently false! (Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter comes to mind as a masterful depiction of the opposite ... it's a tremendous novel that I need to read again.)

[John Whitworth]

You can argue that Marlowe's line is true either because

1.If you don't love at first sight then that isn't really love

2. You love only once (as Housman and his Moses) and any subsequent love is but a pale copy

3. You may think you don't love at first sight but actually, as a deep level, you really do.

By the way, is Marlowe's line itself pinched from some Greek or Roman?

[Roger Slater]

I'm unclear where your publisher got these lines. If she wants to publish the poem, I assume that she has the entire poem and you can offer us more than just two lines? That would be helpful to set us a-Googling on your behalf. But if she just has these lines in her memory and nothing more, perhaps she is mistaken given that one of the lines isn't really yours and you yourself don't recall the other.

[Michael F]

Post deleted. I apologize for the unnecessary tangent!

[Roger Slater]

Or perhaps you do not really see a person until you love them?

[John Whitworth]

Moon in the water and a sleeping swan,
It's beautiful, you say and I agree.
It's surely beautiful, and so are we.
And so are we. Quick now now, before it's gone,
Let's catch it with a kiss, let's seal it on
Our beating hearts, let's carve it on a tree.
Do you feel it? Yes you surely do. Do you see?
Let's write it in the scattering stars that shone
When life was but a dream and earth a crust
A billion, zillion years before this night?
We love not as we would but as we must;
We know it's beautiful; we know it's right.
Those stars shine still when we are dead and dust.
Whoever loved who loved not at first sight?

That's the whole poem. Now where did she see it?

[Ann Drysdale]

Shagsberg nicked the line - put it in As You Like It - so perhaps it's classical and therefore fair game.

[Roger Slater]

Are you sure it's your poem at all? I wouldn't have guessed it. I recommend you give her something else for her magazine, as I'm sure you lost track of this one for a reason.