By The Fire

A poem by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963)

We who are lovers sit by the fire,

Cradled warm ‘twixt thought and will,

Sit and drowse like sleeping dogs

In the equipoise of all desire,

Sit and listen to the still

Small hiss and whisper of green logs

That burn away, that burn away

With the sound of a far-off falling stream

Of threaded water blown to steam,

Grey ghost in the mountain world of grey.

Vapours blue as distance rise

Between the hissing logs that show

A glimpse of rosy heat below;

And candles watch with tireless eyes

While we sit drowsing here. I know,

Dimly, that there exists a world,

That there is time perhaps, and space

Other and wider than this place,

Where at the fireside drowsily curled

We hear the whisper and watch the flame

Burn blinkless and inscrutable.

And then I know those other names

That through my brain from cell to cell

Echo–reverberated shout

Of waiters mournful along corridors:

But nobody carries the orders out,

And the names (dear friends, your name and yours)

Evoke no sign. But here I sit

On the wide hearth, and there are you:

That is enough and only true.

The world and the friends that lived in it

Are shadows: you alone remain

Real in this drowsing room,

Full of the whispers of distant rain

And candles staring into the gloom.

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Poems in English 

• Warm are the Still and Lucky Miles by W H Auden by Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H. Auden)
• Voltaire At Ferney by W H Auden by Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H. Auden)
• Underneath an Abject Willow by W H Auden by Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H. Auden)
• This Lunar Beauty by W H Auden by Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H. Auden)
• They Wondered Why the Fruit had Been Forbidden by W H Auden by Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H. Auden)
• The Waters by W H Auden by Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H. Auden)
• The Wanderer by W H Auden by Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H. Auden)
• The Two by W H Auden by Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H. Auden)
• The Riddle by W H Auden by Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H. Auden)
• The Quest by W H Auden by Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H. Auden)
• The Quest XII (Vocation) by W H Auden by Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H. Auden)
• The Novelist by W H Auden by Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H. Auden)
• The Labyrinth by W H Auden by Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H. Auden)
• The Hidden Law by W H Auden by Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H. Auden)
• The Geography of the House by W H Auden by Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H. Auden)
• The Dream by W H Auden by Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H. Auden)
• The Common Life by W H Auden by Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H. Auden)
• Thanksgiving for a Habitat by W H Auden by Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H. Auden)
• Taller To-day by W H Auden by Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H. Auden)
• Song Of The Master And Boatswain by W H Auden by Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H. Auden)

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