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:
- Devonshire Street W.1 poem – John Betjeman poems | Poems and Poetry
- Let A Florid Music Praise by W H Auden
- Robert Burns: The Brigs Of Ayr: Inscribed to John Ballantine, Esq., Ayr.
- The Tour by Sylvia Plath
- Наум Коржавин – Подмосковная платформа в апреле
- Николай Языков – Дом сумасшедших в Дерпте
- Lepracaun or Fairy Shoemaker, The by William Allingham
- The Kingdom by Rudyard Kipling
- Coconut by Paul Hostovsky
- Be there for me by Tanisha Avarsekar
- The Road To Ruin by Siegfried Sassoon
- Robert Burns: Delia, An Ode : “To the Editor of The Star.-Mr. Printer-If the productions of a simple ploughman can merit a place in the same paper with Sylvester Otway, and the other favourites of the Muses who illuminate the Star with the lustre of genius, your insertion of the enclosed trifle will be succeeded by future communications from-Yours, &c., R. Burns. Ellisland, near Dumfries, 18th May, 1789.”
- Вера Павлова – Подарил мне жизнь
- To Virgil poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- A Sleepless Night by Philip Levine
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
- Last night my soul cried O exalted sphere of Heaven by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- Laila and the Khalifa by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- Intrigued with Evening by Jelaluddin Rumi
- In the Waters of Purity by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- In the End by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- In The Arc Of Your Mallet by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- If A Tree Could Wander by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- I Swear by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- I See so Deeply Within Myself by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- I Have a Fire for You in my Mouth by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- I have fallen into unconsciousness by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- I have fallen into unconsciousness by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- I have been tricked by flying too close by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- I have been tricked by flying too close by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- I Have a Fire for You in my Mouth by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- I closed my eyes to creation by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- I closed my eyes to creation by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- I am a sculptor, a molder of form by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- I Am Part Of The Load by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- I Am Part Of The Load by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
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.