When the investing darkness growls,
And deep reverberates to deep;
When keyhole whines and chimney howls,
And all the roofs and windows weep;
Then, through the doorless walls of sleep,
The still-sealed ear and shuttered sight,
Phantoms of memory steal and creep,
The very ghosts of sound and light-
Dream-visions and dream-voices of a bygone night.
I see again, I hear again,
Where lightnings flash and house-eaves drip,
A flying swirl of waves and rain-
That storm-path between Sound and Rip.
I feel the swaying of the ship
In every gust that rocks the trees,
And taste that brine upon my lip
And smell the freshness of the breeze
That sped us through the welter of those racing seas.
I hear the menace of the call
To rope and rivet, wheel and mast,
In the swift onrush of the squall,
The challenge of the thundering blast
To daring men as it sweeps past;
And in my dream I have no dread.
Rivet and rope are firm and fast,
The clear lights shining, green and red,
The quiet eyes of sentry watching overhead.
What epic battles pass unsung!
It was a war of gods befell
On that wild night when we were young.
They rode, like cavalry of hell,
The mighty winds, the monstrous swell,
On their white horses, fierce and fleet;
They stood at bay, invincible,
Where pulsed beneath our sliding feet
The faithful iron heart that never lost a beat.
How the sharp sea-spume lashed and stung!
How the salt sea-wind tugged and tare
And clawed and mauled us where we clung,
With panting breasts and streaming hair,
To our frail eyrie in mid-air!
How we exulted in the fight-
With neither haste nor halt to dare
Those Titans furies in their might,
Undaunted and unswerving in our insect flight!
No lap of exquisite repose!
A mortar wherein souls are brayed;
An anvil ringing to the blows
Whereby true men are shaped, and made
Divinely strong and unafraid.
Such gallant sailor-men there be-
Never unready or dismayed,
Though ‘t’s the face of death they see
In cyclone, fire and fog, and white surf on the lee.
Not only in the sylvan bower,
On dreaming hill, by sleeping mere,
The holy place-the sacred hour.
Beset by every form of fear,
Darkness ahead and danger near,
Sorely hard-driven and hard-prest,
But still unspent and of good cheer-
He finds them who can pass the test,
Who never winks an eye and never stays to rest
A few random poems:
- First Poem by Peter Orlovsky
- The Great Palaces Of Versailles by Rita Dove
- Ольга Берггольц – Стихи о ленинградских большевика
- On Being Brought from Africa to America by Phillis Wheatley
- Repose In God by William Cowper
- The Gravy Train by Michael Levy
- Владимир Маяковский – С Польшей мир… (РОСТА №423)
- Aftermath poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Unlike, For Example, The Sound Of A Riptooth Saw by Thomas Lux
- Николай Языков – Прими ты мой поклон заздравный
- Юрий Коринец – Тишина
- Myself by Robert Creeley
- Владимир Маяковский – Теоретики
- My impure god and I by Murali Sivaramakrishnan
- The Taste of Morning by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
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
- Piera Chen – Piera Chen
- IN VINCULUM by PEGGY AYLSWORTH
- I threaded a garland with the memories of a spring… by Preeth Nambiar
- Hoppleroopleoopledook by Pornika Ganguly
- Greece Madum…! by Perugu Ramakrishna
- Frozen by Priyanka Tungana
- From Another Sky by Pierre Reverdy
- Forgotten by Priya Prithviraj
- Forbidden Silence by Preeth Nambiar
- For The Moment by Pierre Reverdy
- For The Moment by Pierre Reverdy
- Elijah by Peter Bardsley
- Eating a Wampee by Piera Chen
- Dying Love!!! by Praveen Parasar
- Diving Deep by Pawan Kumar
- Dead On Arrival by Preethi Saravanakumar
- Creators by Pawan Kumar
- Composition by Peter Cooley
- Coconut by Paul Hostovsky
- Childhood Memories by Preethi Saravanakumar
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
Ada Cambridge (1844 – 1926), also known as Ada Cross, was an English-born Australian author and poetess. She wrote more than 25 works of fiction, three volumes of poetry and two autobiographical works.