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:
- Honour
- Sonnet To Mrs. Reynolds’s Cat poem – John Keats poems
- Hope Holds to Christ poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- long_i_waited_in_vain.html
- Ballade Of The Summer Term poem – Andrew Lang poems
- I Went Down into the Desert by Vachel Lindsay
- Владимир Маяковский – Пилсудский
- The Higher Pantheism poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- À ce point du voyage by Martine Morillon-Carreau
- Владимир Высоцкий – Песня Марии
- Total Recount by Pamela Griffiths
- Occasioned By Some Verses of His Grace the Duke of Buckingham poem – Alexander Pope
- My Sad Captains by Thom Gunn
- Innocent Steps by Vaishnavi Prakash
- Владимир Британишский – А весна наступает все же
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
- Федор Сологуб – Лепестками завялыми
- Федор Сологуб – Ландыши, ландыши, бедные цветы
- Федор Сологуб – Ландыш пленительный
- Федор Сологуб – Купол церкви, крест и небо
- Федор Сологуб – Кукушка кукует
- Федор Сологуб – Круг начертан, и Сивилла
- Федор Сологуб – Краем прибережной кручи
- Федор Сологуб – Короткая радость сгорела
- Федор Сологуб – Колёса по рельсам гудели
- Федор Сологуб – Кольцо и венок
- Федор Сологуб – Когда я в бурном море плавал
- Федор Сологуб – Ах, лягушки по дорожке
- Федор Сологуб – Астероид
- Федор Сологуб – Ариадна
- Sergei Esenin – Sergueï Essénine – Stars
- Эмиль Верхарн – Звонарь
- Эмиль Верхарн – Золото
- Эмиль Верхарн – Зимняя пора
- Эмиль Верхарн – Женщина в черном
- Эмиль Верхарн – Здравствуй, подруга
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
Alcaeus of Mytilene ( c. 625/620 – c. 580 Before Christ) ] was a lyric poet from the Greek island of Lesbos who is credited with inventing the Alcaic stanza. He was included in the canonical list of nine lyric poets by the scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria.