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 Британишский – Тропа виляла
- Sonnet 154: The little Love-god lying once asleep by William Shakespeare
- I don’t want to have you by Vinko Kalinic
- Михаил Лермонтов – Время сердцу быть в покое
- Владимир Британишский – Крылов и тверяки
- A Three-Part Song by Rudyard Kipling
- Владимир Маяковский – Версаль
- Syed Amir
- Олег Бундур – Летняя гроза
- Before a Midnight Breaks in Storm by Rudyard Kipling
- Traveling Through The Dark by William Stafford
- The Battle Of Harlaw–Evergreen Version poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Омар Хайям – Много зла и коварства таится кругом
- Федор Сологуб – Либава, Либава, товарная душа
- Along The Sun-Drenched Roadside by Rainer Maria Rilke
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
- An Epistle To Robert Lloyd, Esq. by William Cowper
- An Epistle To Joseph Hill, Esq. by William Cowper
- An Epigram From Homer by William Cowper
- An Enigma by William Cowper
- An Attempt At The Manner Of Waller by William Cowper
- An Apology For Not Showing Her What I Had Wrote by William Cowper
- Addressed To Miss Macartney, Afterwards Mrs. Greville, On Reading The Prayer For Indifference by William Cowper
- Adam: A Sacred Drama. Act 5. by William Cowper
- Adam: A Sacred Drama. Act 4. by William Cowper
- Adam: A Sacred Drama. Act 3. by William Cowper
- Adam: A Sacred Drama. Act 2. by William Cowper
- Adam: A Sacred Drama. Act 1. by William Cowper
- A Tale. June 1793 by William Cowper
- A Tale, Founded On A Fact, Which Happened In January, 1779 by William Cowper
- A Song : The Sparkling Eye by William Cowper
- A Song : On The Green Margin by William Cowper
- A Riddle by William Cowper
- A Poetical Epistle To Lady Austen by William Cowper
- A Manual, More Ancient Than The Art Of Printing, And Not To Be Found In Any Catalogue by William Cowper
- A Figurative Description Of The Procedure Of Divine Love by William Cowper
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.