He lurks among the reeds, beside the marsh,
Red oleanders twisted in His hair,
His eyes are haggard and His lips are harsh,
Upon His breast the bones show gaunt and bare.
The green and stagnant waters lick His feet,
And from their filmy, iridescent scum
Clouds of mosquitoes, gauzy in the heat,
Rise with His gifts: Death and Delirium.
His messengers: They bear the deadly taint
On spangled wings aloft and far away,
Making thin music, strident and yet faint,
From golden eve to silver break of day.
The baffled sleeper hears th’ incessant whine
Through his tormented dreams, and finds no rest
The thirsty insects use his blood for wine,
Probe his blue veins and pasture on his breast.
While far away He in the marshes lies,
Staining the stagnant water with His breath,
An endless hunger burning in His eyes,
A famine unassuaged, whose food is Death.
He hides among the ghostly mists that float
Over the water, weird and white and chill,
And peasants, passing in their laden boat,
Shiver and feel a sense of coming ill.
A thousand burn and die; He takes no heed,
Their bones, unburied, strewn upon the plain,
Only increase the frenzy of His greed
To add more victims to th’ already slain.
He loves the haggard frame, the shattered mind,
Gloats with delight upon the glazing eye,
Yet, in one thing, His cruelty is kind,
He sends them lovely dreams before they die;
Dreams that bestow on them their heart’s desire,
Visions that find them mad, and leave them blest,
To sink, forgetful of the fever’s fire,
Softly, as in a lover’s arms, to rest.
A few random poems:
- Journal Entry poem – Ysabelle Moriarty poems | Poetry Monster
- Юнна Мориц – Зимнее
- Владимир Британишский – Клейнмихель
- In Tara’s Halls by William Butler Yeats
- Михаил Кузмин – Возможно ль: скоро четверть века
- Like A Vocation by W H Auden
- The Lost Pleiad by William Gilmore Simms
- Song—Bessy and her Spinnin Wheel by Robert Burns
- Postscript by Seamus Heaney
- Sonnet To Chatterton poem – John Keats poems
- 1991-II by Wendell Berry
- Laughing Rose by William Henry Davies
- Юнна Мориц – Попрыгать-поиграть
- Thanatos Basileos poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- Илья Зданевич – Пабло Пикассо
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
- Lover’s Gifts XLVIII: I Travelled the Old Road by Rabindranath Tagore
- Lover’s Gifts XLVII: The Road Is by Rabindranath Tagore
- Lover’s Gifts XLIV: Where Is Heaven by Rabindranath Tagore
- Lover’s Gifts XLIII: Dying, You Have Left Behind by Rabindranath Tagore
- Lover’s Gifts XLII: Are You a Mere Picture by Rabindranath Tagore
- Lover’s Gifts XL: A Message Came by Rabindranath Tagore
- Lover’s Gifts XIX: It Is Written in the Book by Rabindranath Tagore
- Lover’s Gifts XIII: Last Night in the Garden by Rabindranath Tagore
- Lover’s Gifts VIII: There Is Room for You by Rabindranath Tagore
- Lover’s Gifts V: I Would Ask For Still More by Rabindranath Tagore
- Lover’s Gifts LXX: Take Back Your Coins by Rabindranath Tagore
- Lover’s Gifts LVIII: Things Throng and Laugh by Rabindranath Tagore
- Lover’s Gifts LIV: In the Beginning of Time by Rabindranath Tagore
- Lover’s Gifts LII: Tired of Waiting by Rabindranath Tagore
- Lover’s Gifts IV: She Is Near to My Heart by Rabindranath Tagore
- Lover’s Gifts II: Come to My Garden Walk by Rabindranath Tagore
- Lotus by Rabindranath Tagore
- Lost Time by Rabindranath Tagore
- Lost Star by Rabindranath Tagore
- Little Of Me by Rabindranath Tagore
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.