She holds a rose in her two hands, and / to her face.

A quick note on transcription-- the slanted alignment of this autograph was very likely unintentional. I think it's probably block form in more of a hurry than his other poems or, perhaps, a poem with more attention paid to the content in the moment of writing, rather than the overall presentation (which seems to be of concern to Spender, especially in later poems.) I wanted to replicate the slanted alignment in this post simply so that it resembles the autograph better. The alignment is a also a suggestion in itself-- raising questions about how Spender wrote in his journal. Were the original drafts written elsewhere, which he neatly transcribed into his nice notebook? Or were they written as the short prose descriptions suggest, that he extracted himself from a moment of travel to write a candid, reactionary aside? Like Plath we know that this artifact had an intended audience and that Spender was cultivating a certain youth-in-disinterested-revolt persona. The alignment as well as the handwriting in this poem are less neat eloquent than later poems in the notebook. Also, the bolded words are blue-ink edits. She holds a rose in her two hands, and to her face. _________________ "Why shouldst thou moch my fingers, churlish one so fair, and so fair? Though smooth as wax they still could pluck thy hair each carmine petal, stained with the late sun they still could take. And so the other cheek though offerdst for my sake being so meek? My fingers they are paper wands and grave, and wise; and thou art yielding to the hands, but what besides? If ought, I'll have thee all. Thy face to mine: and what hast thou to give?... But now like wine my soul receives the fragrance thou hast given... O Andtis no artists' beauty, it is heaven!" May 18, 1927 This piece is what I would be tempted to term a persona-poem because the speaker is the woman holding the rose (We learn on the previous page of prose that she is one of his hosts.) However, the quotes distinguish the speaker out of the poem in some ways. It becomes clear that this isn't a poem of a woman's direct thoughts (or even the thoughts of the poet imagining himself in this persona), but an assumption of her thoughts. But more on this at the end... The woman holds a rose and feels affronted by it's particularly youthful beauty (churlish one, / so fair). We can easily gather then that this woman is not young herself and feels, at some level, debilitated by the presence. She asserts that her fingers, which the rose mochs (with its thorns?), still have the agency to pluck out the personified petals (thy hair... thy cheek). Naturally, fingers can easily pluck out rose petals, but that she must convince the rose of this suggests the extent of her feelings of debilitation in the loss of youth. Or, she is defending the virtues of old age-- her fingers are instruments of power that are "grave" and "wise." She asks the rose what else it can provide besides its aesthetic beauty. But this seems more of a request from painful jealousy. She'd like to "have thee all. Thy face to mine." In the final moment, the woman is overwhelmed by bliss of fragrance-- a deep pleasure not rooted in youth or beauty and one that cannot be replicated by artists. Spender does well with his conceit here and the attempt separates this poem from the more confessional or modern poems in the notebook. We've talked quite a bit of Spender's ego, and it is not missing in this poem either. Though this is a "persona" poem of sorts, we can gather from his feelings of boredom and intellectual isolation that this poem is self-reflexive in many ways-- the thorny rose, youthful, in a prime that the inhabitants of Nantes are want.