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:
- Immigrants by Robert Frost
- I Know an Aged Man Constrained to Dwell by William Wordsworth
- Arrival by Philip Larkin
- Федор Сологуб – Кольцо и венок
- Easter Snow by Winifred Mary Letts
- The Dreadful Has Already Happened by Mark Strand
- After Rain by P. K. Page
- Orlando Furioso Canto 10 by Ludovico Ariosto
- Epistle from Esopus to Maria by Robert Burns
- Sonnet XI. On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer poem – John Keats poems
- An Indian Love Song by Sarojini Naidu
- Stepping Backward
- “Advance – Come Forth From Thy Tyrolean Ground” by William Wordsworth
- Алексей Толстой – То было раннею весной
- Desert Places by Robert Frost
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
- Николай Карамзин – Из письма к И. И. Дмитриеву (Что ж может быть любви и счастия быстрее)
- Николай Карамзин – Из мелодрамы Петр Великий (Жил был в свете добрый царь)
- Николай Карамзин – Истина
- Николай Карамзин – Impromptu графине Р, которой в одной святошной игре досталось быть королевою
- Николай Карамзин – Илья Муромец
- Николай Карамзин – Граф Гваринос
- Николай Карамзин – Господину Дмитриеву на болезнь его (Болезнь есть часть живущих в мире)
- Николай Карамзин – Гимн слепых
- Николай Карамзин – Гимн
- Николай Карамзин – Филлиде
- Николай Карамзин – Эпитафия (Он жил в сем мире для того)
- Николай Карамзин – Эпитафия Джону Гею
- Николай Карамзин – Эпиграмма (Я знаю, для чего Крадон)
- Николай Карамзин – Две песни
- Николай Карамзин – Дурной вкус
- Николай Карамзин – Делиины слова
- Николай Карамзин – Часто здесь в юдоли мрачной
- Николай Карамзин – Берег
- Николай Карамзин – Анакреонтические стихи А. А. Петрову
- Николай Карамзин – Алина
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.