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:
- Ballad of the Goodly Fere poem – Ezra Pound poems
- Огюст Барбье – Лев
- With All Thy Gifts. by Walt Whitman
- I Deserve It by Margaret Marie Hubbard
- Аля Кудряшева – Тяжело деревьям зимой
- Владимир Маяковский – Небылицы в лицах
- Spring & Fall: To A Young Child poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- In May by William Henry Davies
- Sappho to Phaon (Ovid Heroid XV) poem – Alexander Pope
- The Ever-Patient Woman poem – Andree Chedid poems | Poems and Poetry
- Forbidden Silence by Preeth Nambiar
- A New Song to an Old Tune by William Ernest Henley
- On Hurricane Jackson
- Contraptions by Satish Verma
- Essential Beauty by Philip Larkin
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
- Fringed Gentian poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Frankincense and Myrrh poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Francis II, King of Naples poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Francis II, King of Naples poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Fragment poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Fool’s Money Bags poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Excerpt from “What’s O’Clock” poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Epitaph of a Young Poet Who Died Before Having Achieved Success poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Epitaph in a Church-Yard in Charleston, South Carolina poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Dreams poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Diya {original title is Greek, Delta-iota-psi-alpha} poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Crowned poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Crepuscule du Matin poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Crepuscule du Matin poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Convalescence poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Convalescence poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Climbing poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Climbing poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Clear, with Light, Variable Winds poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Behind a Wall poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
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.