A poem by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963)
(To J.S.)
Still life, still life … the high-lights shine
Hard and sharp on the bottles: the wine
Stands firmly solid in the glasses,
Smooth yellow ice, through which there passes
The lamp’s bright pencil of down-struck light.
The fruits metallically gleam,
Globey in their heaped-up bowl,
And there are faces against the night
Of the outer room–faces that seem
Part of this still, still life … they’ve lost their soul.
And amongst these frozen faces you smiled,
Surprised, surprisingly, like a child:
And out of the frozen welter of sound
Your voice came quietly, quietly.
“What about God?” you said. “I have found
Much to be said for Totality.
All, I take it, is God: God’s all–
This bottle, for instance …” I recall,
Dimly, that you took God by the neck–
God-in-the-bottle–and pushed Him across:
But I, without a moment’s loss
Moved God-in-the-salt in front and shouted: “Check!”
A few random poems:
- Ольга Берггольц – Марш оловянных солдатиков
- In Memoriam A. H. H.: 39. Old warder of these buried bones poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Of Clementina by Walter Savage Landor
- Haven Woones Fortune A-Twold by William Barnes
- Илья Эренбург – Я слышу всё, и горестные шепоты
- Face Lift by Sylvia Plath
- To A Friend Who Sent Me Some Roses poem – John Keats poems
- Нина Гаген-Торн – День мой в труде тяжелом
- Олег Бундур – Железное здоровье
- Respect her by Vinaya Kumar Hanumanthappa
- Epigram Engraved on the Collar of a Dog Which I Gave to His Royal Highness poem – Alexander Pope poems | Poetry Monster
- The Iliad: Book VI (excerpt) poem – Alexander Pope poems | Poetry Monster
- Владимир Маяковский – Товарищ! Шахтер раздет… (РОСТА №603)
- OPTIONS by Satish Verma
- The Gardener LXXXI: Why Do You Whisper So Faintly by Rabindranath Tagore
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
- Hope And Riders
- Do I
- Communal War
- Blank Dreams
- Before
- Again
- A Voice
- A Toast To Nations
- What Of The Night
- Vows
- To Morrow
- The Winged Mariners
- The Watchman
- The Virgin Martyr
- The Vain Question
- The Soldiers Grave
- The Silence In The Church
- The Season
- The Resting Place
- The Old Manor House
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.