Meditation on a Bone

A piece of bone, found at Trondhjem in 1901, with the following runic inscription (about A.D. 1050) cut on it: I loved her as a maiden; I will not trouble Erlend’s detestable wife; better she should be a widow.

Words scored upon a bone,

Scratched in despair or rage —

Nine hundred years have gone;

Now, in another age,

They burn with passion on

A scholar’s tranquil page.

The scholar takes his pen

And turns the bone about,

And writes those words again.

Once more they seethe and shout

And through a human brain

Undying hate rings out.

“I loved her when a maid;

I loathe and love the wife

That warms another’s bed:

Let him beware his life!”

The scholar’s hand is stayed;

His pen becomes a knife

To grave in living bone

The fierce archaic cry.

He sits and reads his own

Dull sum of misery.

A thousand years have flown

Before that ink is dry.

And, in a foreign tongue,

A man, who is not he,

Reads and his heart is wrung

This ancient grief to see,

And thinks: When I am dung,

What bone shall speak for me?

Poetry Monster – Home

A few random poems:

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 

• Reverie Of Ormuz The Persian by Adela Florence Nicolson
• Reverie Of Mahomed Akram At The Tamarind Tank by Adela Florence Nicolson
• Request by Adela Florence Nicolson
• Reminiscence Of Mahomed Akram by Adela Florence Nicolson
• Protest By Zahir U Din by Adela Florence Nicolson
• Prayer by Adela Florence Nicolson
• Palm Trees By The Sea by Adela Florence Nicolson
• On The City Wall by Adela Florence Nicolson
• On Pilgrimage by Adela Florence Nicolson
• Ojira To Her Lover by Adela Florence Nicolson
• Oh Unforgotten And Only Lover by Adela Florence Nicolson
• Oh Masters by Adela Florence Nicolson
• Oh Life I Have Taken You For My Lover by Adela Florence Nicolson
• No Rival Like The Past by Adela Florence Nicolson
• Nay Not To Night by Adela Florence Nicolson
• My Paramour Was Loneliness by Adela Florence Nicolson
• My Desire by Adela Florence Nicolson
• Middle Age by Adela Florence Nicolson
• Memory by Adela Florence Nicolson
• Marriage Thoughts By Morsellin Khan by Adela Florence Nicolson

More external links (open in a new tab):

Russian Commerce Agency

Dealing Monster

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

Poems by Author and Category

The Poetry Repository – an online library of poems, poetry, verse and poetic works