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:
- Владимир Корнилов – Музыка для себя
- Алексей Жемчужников – Раскаяние
- Parallel Lies by Vaishnavi Prakash
- Postip by Manolo Arriola
- The Rape of the Lock: Canto 3 poem – Alexander Pope poems | Poetry Monster
- Doomsday by Sylvia Plath
- good bye, my sweet angel by Raj Arumugam
- Air Of Diabelli’s by Robert Louis Stevenson
- An Elegy On The Glory Of Her Sex, Mrs Mary Blaize by Oliver Goldsmith
- Let me be to Thee as the circling bird poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- Chronicle
- Petrarchan Sonnet: If no one else breathed in this wide, wide world by T. Wignesan
- Ольга Седакова – Деревья, сильный ветер
- Аля Кудряшева – Октябрь был дождем, непонятным месяцем
- Rivulose poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster
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
- The Country Of Marriage by Wendell Berry
- Testament by Wendell Berry
- Sabbaths 2001 by Wendell Berry
- Ripening by Wendell Berry
- A Warning To My Readers by Wendell Berry
- Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front by Wendell Berry
- Like The Water by Wendell Berry
- In this World by Wendell Berry
- In A Motel Parking Lot, Thinking Of Dr. Williams by Wendell Berry
- For The Future by Wendell Berry
- Do not be ashamed by Wendell Berry
- A Meeting by Wendell Berry
- 1991-II by Wendell Berry
- 1991-I by Wendell Berry
- A Terre (being the philosophy of many soldiers) by Wilfred Owen
- Disabled by Wilfred Owen
- Anthem For Doomed Youth by Wilfred Owen
- Dulce Et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen
- Conscious by Wilfred Owen
- Insensibility by Wilfred Owen
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.