“This is no time for saying ‘no'”
Were thy last words to me,
And yet my lips refused the kiss
They might have given thee.
How could I know
That thou wouldst go
To sleep so far from me?
They took thee to the Burning-Ghat,
Oh, Lallji, my desire,
And now a faint and lonely flame
Uprises from the pyre.
The thin grey smoke in spirals drifts
Across the opal sky.
Would that I were a wife of thine,
And thus with thee could die!
How could I know
That thou wouldst go,
Oh, Lallji, my desire?
The lips I missed
The flames have kissed
Upon the Sandal pyre.
If one should meet me with a knife
And cut my heart in twain,
Then would he see the smoke arise
From every severed vein.
Such is the burning, inward fire,
The anguish of my pain,
For my Beloved, whose dying lips
Implored a kiss–in vain!
How could I know
That thou wouldst go,
Oh, Lallji, my desire?
Too young thou art
To lay thy heart
Upon the Sandal pyre.
Thy wife awaits her coming child;
What were a child to me,
If I might take thee in these arms
And face the flames with thee?
The priests are chanting round the pyre,
At dusk they will depart
And leave to thee thy lonely rest,
To me my lonelier heart.
How could I know
Thou lovedst me so?
Upon the Sandal pyre
He lies forsaken.
The flames have taken
My Lallji, my desire!
A few random poems:
- Eidólons. by Walt Whitman
- Ольга Высотская – Обидчивая кукушка
- Владимир Высоцкий – Говорят, лезу прямо под нож
- The Fifth Ode Of Horace. Lib. I poem – John Milton poems
- (Inner Tube) by Michael Ondaatje
- Альфред Теннисон – Годива
- Prelude by Rudyard Kipling
- Olney Hymn 3: Jehovah-Rophi: I Am the Lord That Healeth Thee by William Cowper
- By Heraclides by William Cowper
- Gorgeous Surfaces by Thomas Lux
- Кондратий Рылеев – О милый друг, как внятен голос твой
- Despair by Samuel Coleridge
- The Eviction by William Allingham
- Ольга Берггольц – Ленинградская осень
- English Poetry. Mark Akenside. The Pleasures of Imagination. Марк Эйкенсайд.
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
- Consider This And In Our Time by W H Auden
- The Common Life by W H Auden
- Cocaine Lil and Morphine Sue by W H Auden
- Christmas Oratio by W H Auden
- Carry Her Over the Water by W H Auden
- Canzone by W H Auden
- Calypso by W H Auden
- Base Words Are Uttered by W H Auden
- Autumn Song by W H Auden
- August 1968 by W H Auden
- Atlantis by W H Auden
- As I Walked Out One Evening by W. H. Auden
- As We Like It by W H Auden
- As the poets have mournfully sung by W H Auden
- Are You There? by W H Auden
- After Reading a Child’s Guide to Modern Physics by W. H. Auden
- Academic Graffiti by W H Auden
- A Walk After Dark by W H Auden
- A New Year Greeting by W H Auden
- Continual Conversation With A Silent Man by Wallace Stevens
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
Violet Nicolson ( 1865 – 1904); otherwise known as Adela Florence Nicolson (née Cory), was an English poetess who wrote under the pseudonym of Laurence Hope, however she became known as Violet Nicolson. In the early 1900s, she became a best-selling author. She committed suicide and is buried in Madras, now Chennai, India.