Visions of Beauty, of Light, and of Love,
Born in the soul of a Dream,
Lost, like the phantom-bird under the dove,
When she flies over a stream-
Come ye through portals where angel wings droop,
Moved by the heaven of sleep?
Or, are ye mockeries, crazing a soul,
Doomed with its waking to weep?
I could believe ye were shadows of earth,
Echoes of hopes that are vain,
But for the music ye bring to my heart,
Waking its sunshine again.
And ye are fleeting. All vainly I strive
Beauties like thine to portray;
Forth from my pencil the bright picture starts,
And-ye have faded away.
Like to a bird that soars up from the spray,
When we would fetter its wing;
Like to the song that spurns Memory’s grasp
When the voice yearneth to sing;
Like the cloud-glory that sunset lights up,
When the storm bursts from its height;
Like the sheet-silver that rolls on the sea,
When it is touched by the night-
Bright, evanescent, ye come and are gone,
Visions of mystical birth;
Art that could paint you was never vouchsafed
Unto the children of earth.
Yet in my soul there’s a longing to tell
All you have seemed unto me,
That unto others a glimpse of the skies
You in their sorrow might be.
Vain is the wish. Better hope to describe
All that the spirit desires,
When through a cloud of vague fancies and schemes
Flash the Promethean fires.
Let me then think of ye, Visions of Light,
Not as the tissue of dreams,
But as realities destined to be
Bright in Futurity’s beams.
Ideals formed by a standard of earth
Sink at Reality’s shrine
Into the human and weak like ourselves,
Losing the essence divine;
But the fair pictures that fall from above
On the heart’s mirror sublime
Carry a signature written in tints,
Bright with the future of time.
And the heart, catching them, yieldeth a spark
Under each stroke of the rod-
Sparks that fly upward and light the New Life,
Burning an incense to God!
A few random poems:
- Английская поэзия. Перси Биши Шелли. К Мэри Шелли. Percy Bysshe Shelley. To Mary Shelley
- from The Tenth Elegy by Rainer Maria Rilke
- Robert Burns: Verses Intended To Be Written Below A Noble Earl’s Picture:
- Федор Сологуб – Скупа Филис, но пыл мятежный
- Song, by a Person of Quality poem – Alexander Pope poems | Poetry Monster
- Sonnet CXLIII by William Shakespeare
- March poem – A. E. Housman
- The Hidden Law by W H Auden
- Leady-Day, An’ Ridden House by William Barnes
- Tu Fu – Tu Fu
- The Decameron poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
- Зинаида Александрова – Подснежник
- Rose The Red And White Lily poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Михаил Лермонтов – Я не для ангелов и рая
- Feelings Of The Tyrolese by William Wordsworth
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
- Владимир Корнилов – Чистый лист
- Владимир Корнилов – Черный день
- Владимир Корнилов – Боль
- Владимир Корнилов – Белые слоны
- Владимир Корнилов – Беатриче
- Владимир Корнилов – АЯМ
- Владимир Корнилов – Арена
- Владимир Корнилов – Анафемский сон
- Владимир Корнилов – 26 апреля
- Владимир Лифшиц – Вступление
- Владимир Лифшиц – Сверчок
- Владимир Лифшиц – Грустная шутка
- Владимир Лифшиц – Баллада о черством куске
- Владимир Ладыженский – Христос Воскрес, скворцы поют
- Владимир Костров – Закат приморский умирает
- Владимир Костров – Я стою, как дерево в лесу
- Владимир Костров – Выходец из волости лесистой
- Владимир Костров – Вот женщина с седыми волосами
- Владимир Костров – Вот избушка
- Владимир Костров – Видение на озере
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
Adah Isaacs Menken (1835 – 1868) was an American actress and a performer, who painted painter and wrote a number of poems (31 published so far). She was supposedly the highest earning actress of her time. She was best known for her performance in the hippodrama Mazeppa (with libretto based on Pushkin’s work), it is said that the climax of the spectacle featured her apparently nude and riding a horse on stage. After great success for a few years with the play in New York and San Francisco, she appeared in a production in London and Paris, from 1864 to 1866. She was a friend of Alexander Dumas. Adah Menken died in Paris at the age of 33