A poem by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963)
Once more the windless days are here,
Quiet of autumn, when the year
Halts and looks backward and draws breath
Before it plunges into death.
Silver of mist and gossamers,
Through-shine of noonday’s glassy gold,
Pale blue of skies, where nothing stirs
Save one blanched leaf, weary and old,
That over and over slowly falls
From the mute elm-trees, hanging on air
Like tattered flags along the walls
Of chapels deep in sunlit prayer.
Once more … Within its flawless glass
To-day reflects that other day,
When, under the bracken, on the grass,
We who were lovers happily lay
And hardly spoke, or framed a thought
That was not one with the calm hills
And crystal sky. Ourselves were nought,
Our gusty passions, our burning wills
Dissolved in boundlessness, and we
Were almost bodiless, almost free.
The wind has shattered silver and gold.
Night after night of sparkling cold,
Orion lifts his tangled feet
From where the tossing branches beat
In a fine surf against the sky.
So the trance ended, and we grew
Restless, we knew not how or why;
And there were sudden gusts that blew
Our dreaming banners into storm;
We wore the uncertain crumbling form
Of a brown swirl of windy leaves,
A phantom shape that stirs and heaves
Shuddering from earth, to fall again
With a dry whisper of withered rain.
Last, from the dead and shrunken days
We conjured spring, lighting the blaze
Of burnished tulips in the dark;
And from black frost we struck a spark
Of blue delight and fragrance new,
A little world of flowers and dew.
Winter for us was over and done:
The drought of fluttering leaves had grown
Emerald shining in the sun,
As light as glass, as firm as stone.
Real once more: for we had passed
Through passion into thought again;
Shaped our desires and made that fast
Which was before a cloudy pain;
Moulded the dimness, fixed, defined
In a fair statue, strong and free,
Twin bodies flaming into mind,
Poised on the brink of ecstasy.
A few random poems:
- Tarrant Moss by Rudyard Kipling
- Владислав Ходасевич – Новый год
- Night by William Morris
- Flowers Of The Dust by John Oxenham
- Владимир Степанов – Двенадцать месяцев
- When I Go Alone At Night by Rabindranath Tagore
- Аля Кудряшева – Это просто слишком длинная осень
- My Sad Captains by Thom Gunn
- Михаил Лермонтов – Юнкерская молитва
- Rise, O Days. by Walt Whitman
- New Year’s Dawn – Broadway by Sara Teasdale
- Robert Burns: The Lass That Made The Bed To Me :
- Аля Кудряшева – Я этой ночью уйду, не спи
- He Tells Of A Valley Full Of Lovers by William Butler Yeats
- Константин Бальмонт – Мост
External links
Bat’s Poetry Page – more poetry by Fledermaus
Talking Writing Monster’s Page –
Batty Writing – the bat’s idle chatter, thoughts, ideas and observations, all original, all fresh
Poems in English
- One’s-Self I Sing. by Walt Whitman
- One Hour to Madness and Joy. by Walt Whitman
- Once I Pass’d Through a Populous City. by Walt Whitman
- On the Beach at Night, Alone. by Walt Whitman
- On Journeys Through The States. by Walt Whitman
- Old Ireland. by Walt Whitman
- Offerings. by Walt Whitman
- Of the Visage of Things. by Walt Whitman
- Of the Terrible Doubt of Appearances. by Walt Whitman
- Of Him I Love Day and Night. by Walt Whitman
- O You Whom I Often and Silently Come. by Walt Whitman
- O Tan-faced Prairie Boy. by Walt Whitman
- O Sun of Real Peace. by Walt Whitman
- O Star of France. by Walt Whitman
- O Living Always—Always Dying. by Walt Whitman
- O Hymen! O Hymenee! by Walt Whitman
- O Bitter Sprig! Confession Sprig! by Walt Whitman
- Now List to my Morning’s Romanza. by Walt Whitman
- Now Finale to the Shore. by Walt Whitman
- Not Youth Pertains to Me. by Walt Whitman
More external links (open in a new tab):
Doska or the Board – write anything
Search engines:
Yandex – the best search engine for searches in Russian (and the best overall image search engine, in any language, anywhere)
Qwant – the best search engine for searches in French, German as well as Romance and Germanic languages.
Ecosia – a search engine that supposedly… plants trees
Duckduckgo – the real alternative and a search engine that actually works. Without much censorship or partisan politics.
Yahoo– yes, it’s still around, amazingly, miraculously, incredibly, but now it seems to be powered by Bing.
Parallel Translations of Poetry
The Poetry Repository – an online library of poems, poetry, verse and poetic works
Aldous Leonard Huxley (1894 – 1963) was an English writer and philosopher. He wrote nearly fifty books—both novels and non-fiction works—as well as wide-ranging essays, narratives, and poems.