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 – Черный день
- There Can Never Be Another You by Miraj Patel
- Robert Burns: When She Cam’ Ben She Bobbed :
- Владимир Маяковский – Два Берлина
- Sonnet 52: So am I as the rich whose blessèd key by William Shakespeare
- To A Child Dancing In The Wind by William Butler Yeats
- Sonnet (IX) : Flesh o flesh ! The momentous , the mortal , the doomed by Neelam Sinha
- Олег Бундур – Босиком
- Вера Павлова – Снег
- My Desire
- Meary-Ann’s Child by William Barnes
- Олег Бундур – Кто идет?
- Philadelphia by Rudyard Kipling
- In Praise of Laziness by William Wycherley
- Desesperanto by Marilyn Hacker
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
- Graydigger’s Home by William Stafford
- For My Young Friends Who Are Afraid by William Stafford
- Atavism by William Stafford
- Ask Me by William Stafford
- Allegiances by William Stafford
- Across Kansas by William Stafford
- A Ritual To Read To Each Other by William Stafford
- Sonnet 127: In the old age black was not counted fair by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet 126: O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy power by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet 125: Were’t aught to me I bore the canopy by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet 124: If my dear love were but the child of state by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet 123: No, Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet 122: Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet 121: Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet 120: That you were once unkind befriends me now by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet 11: As fast as thou shalt wane, so fast thou grow’st by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet 119: What potions have I drunk of Siren tears by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet 118: Like as to make our appetite more keen by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet 117: Accuse me thus: that I have scanted all by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet 116: Let me not to the marriage of true minds by William Shakespeare
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.