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:
- Now Close the Windows by Robert Frost
- Sonnet. On Leigh Hunt’s Poem ‘The Story of Rimini’ poem – John Keats poems
- For A Fatherless Son by Sylvia Plath
- Artilleryman’s Vision, The. by Walt Whitman
- Dissolve in kisses, I would like to dissolve in your kisses
- Огюст Барбье – Джин
- I Want To Die In My Own Bed by Yehuda Amichai
- Delia: An Ode by Robert Burns
- Salve! by Thomas Edward Brown
- The Perfect High by Shel Silverstein
- Облако в штанах – Владимир Маяковский: читать поэму онлайн, текст стихотворения полностью – Стихи Poetry Monster
- To One Shortly to Die. by Walt Whitman
- Two Sonnets On Fame poem – John Keats poems
- Robert Burns: Presentation Stanzas To Correspondents:
- Robert Burns: O Aye My Wife She Dang Me:
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
- Great-Heart by Rudyard Kipling
- Gethsemane by Rudyard Kipling
- Gentlmen-Rankers by Rudyard Kipling
- Gehazi by Rudyard Kipling
- Fuzzy-Wuzzy by Rudyard Kipling
- Ford o’ Kabul River by Rudyard Kipling
- For To Admire by Rudyard Kipling
- For All We Have And Are by Rudyard Kipling
- Follow Me ‘ome by Rudyard Kipling
- Farewell and adieu… by Rudyard Kipling
- Evarra And His Gods by Rudyard Kipling
- England’s Answer by Rudyard Kipling
- Eddi’s Service by Rudyard Kipling
- Doctors by Rudyard Kipling
- Divided Destinies by Rudyard Kipling
- Delilah by Rudyard Kipling
- Dedication by Rudyard Kipling
- Dane-Geld by Rudyard Kipling
- Cuckoo Song by Rudyard Kipling
- Cruisers by Rudyard Kipling
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.