Anniversaries

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.

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Poems in English 

• Sunt Leones by Stevie Smith by Stevie (Florence Margaret) Smith
• Pad, Pad by Stevie Smith by Stevie (Florence Margaret) Smith
• Our Bog Is Dood by Stevie Smith by Stevie (Florence Margaret) Smith
• Not Waving But Drowning by Stevie Smith by Stevie (Florence Margaret) Smith
• Nor We Of Her To Him by Stevie Smith by Stevie (Florence Margaret) Smith
• Never Again by Stevie Smith by Stevie (Florence Margaret) Smith
• My Heart Was Full by Stevie Smith by Stevie (Florence Margaret) Smith
• My Heart Goes Out by Stevie Smith by Stevie (Florence Margaret) Smith
• Mother, Among The Dustbins by Stevie Smith by Stevie (Florence Margaret) Smith
• Infelice by Stevie Smith by Stevie (Florence Margaret) Smith
• In The Night by Stevie Smith by Stevie (Florence Margaret) Smith
• I Remember by Stevie Smith by Stevie (Florence Margaret) Smith
• I Do Not Speak by Stevie Smith by Stevie (Florence Margaret) Smith
• Happiness by Stevie Smith by Stevie (Florence Margaret) Smith
• Freddy by Stevie Smith by Stevie (Florence Margaret) Smith
• Exeat by Stevie Smith by Stevie (Florence Margaret) Smith
• Edmonton, thy cemetery by Stevie Smith by Stevie (Florence Margaret) Smith
• Drugs Made Pauline Vague by Stevie Smith by Stevie (Florence Margaret) Smith
• Deeply Morbid by Stevie Smith by Stevie (Florence Margaret) Smith
• Conviction (iv) by Stevie Smith by Stevie (Florence Margaret) Smith

More external links (open in a new tab):

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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.

 

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