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:
- A New Year’s Gift, Sent To Sir Simeon Steward by Robert Herrick
- Despair by Samuel Coleridge
- His Mercy Endureth For Ever by John Oxenham
- Низами Гянджеви – О кипарис с плавной поступью мри
- The Café Filtre by Paul Blackburn
- Mohini Chatterjee by William Butler Yeats
- Bantams In Pine-Woods by Wallace Stevens
- And ask ye why these sad tears stream? poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Виталий Кодрян – 31 августа
- Miscast I poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Faun by Sylvia Plath
- Daddy, daddy, I can’t go to school by Raj Arumugam
- Юрий Верховский – Вариации на тему Пушкина
- Epitaph on John Dove, Innkeeper by Robert Burns
- The Great War by Vernon Scannell
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
- Омар Хайям – О доколе ты по свету будешь кружить
- Омар Хайям о Боге и религии: Рубаи, стихи Хайяма про Бога – Poetry Monster
- Омар Хайям – Ну, допустим, что будет тебе и почет
- Омар Хайям – Нищим дервишем ставши
- Омар Хайям – Никто не лицезрел ни рая, ни геенны
- Омар Хайям – Ни к другу не взывай, ни к небесам
- Омар Хайям – Нет ни рая, ни ада, о сердце моё
- Омар Хайям – Несовместимых мы порой полны желаний
- Омар Хайям – Неправ, кто думает, что бог неумолим
- Омар Хайям – Небо кушак, что облек изнуренный мой стан
- Омар Хайям – Не зли других и сам не злись
- Омар Хайям – Не зарекайся пить бесценных гроздий сок
- Омар Хайям – Не являй друзьям печальный вид
- Омар Хайям – Не выращивай в сердце печали росток
- Омар Хайям – Не устану в неверном театре теней
- Омар Хайям – Не у тех, кто во прах государства поверг
- Омар Хайям – Не таи в своем сердце обид и скорбей
- Омар Хайям – Не смешно ли весь век по копейке копить
- Омар Хайям – Не порочь лозы-невесты
- Омар Хайям – Не оплакивай, смертный, вчерашних потерь
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.