Parabola
A poem by Alec Derwent-Hope (1907–2000) by Alec Derwent Hope Year after year the princess lies asleep Until the hundred years foretold are done, Easily drawing her enchanted breath. Caught on the monstrous thorns around the keep, Bones of the youths who sought her, one by one Rot loose and rattle to the […]
Observation Car
A poem by Alec Derwent-Hope (1907–2000) by Alec Derwent Hope To be put on the train and kissed and given my ticket, Then the station slid backward, the shops and the neon lighting, Reeling off in a drunken blur, with a whole pound note in my pocket And the holiday packed with Perhaps. […]
Morning Coffee
A poem by Alec Derwent-Hope (1907–2000) by Alec Derwent Hope Reading the menu at the morning service: – Iced Venusberg perhaps, or buttered bum; Orders the usual sex-ersatz, and, nervous, Glances around; Will she or won’t she come? The congregation dissected into pews Gulping their strip teas in the luminous cavern Agape’s sacamental […]
Meditation on a Bone
A poem by Alec Derwent-Hope (1907–2000) by Alec Derwent Hope 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 […]
Easter Hymn
A poem by Alec Derwent-Hope (1907–2000) by Alec Derwent Hope Make no mistake; there will be no forgiveness; No voice can harm you and no hand will save; Fenced by the magic of deliberate darkness You walk on the sharp edges of the wave; Trouble with soul again the putrefaction Where Lazarus three […]
Death of the Bird
A poem by Alec Derwent-Hope (1907–2000) by Alec Derwent Hope For every bird there is this last migration; Once more the cooling year kindles her heart; With a warm passage to the summer station Love pricks the course in lights across the chart. Year after year a speck on the map, divided By […]
Crossing the Frontier
A poem by Alec Derwent-Hope (1907–2000) by Alec Derwent Hope Crossing the frontier they were stopped in time, Told, quite politely, they would have to wait: Passports in order, nothing to declare And surely holding hands was not a crime Until they saw how, ranged across the gate, All their most formidable friends […]
Conquistador
A poem by Alec Derwent-Hope (1907–2000) by Alec Derwent Hope I sing of the decline of Henry Clay Who loved a white girl of uncommon size. Although a small man in a little way, He had in him some seed of enterprise. Each day he caught the seven-thirty train To work, watered his […]
Commination
A poem by Alec Derwent-Hope (1907–2000) by Alec Derwent Hope He that is filthy let him be filthy still. Rev. 22.11 Like John on Patmos, brooding on the Four Last Things, I meditate the ruin of friends Whose loss, Lord, brings this grand new curse to mind Now send me foes worth cursing, […]
Australia
A poem by Alec Derwent-Hope (1907–2000) by Alec Derwent Hope A Nation of trees, drab green and desolate grey In the field uniform of modern wars, Darkens her hills, those endless, outstretched paws Of Sphinx demolished or stone lion worn away. They call her a young country, but they lie: She is the […]
Winter Dream poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
A poem by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963) Oh wind-swept towers, Oh endlessly blossoming trees, White clouds and lucid eyes, And pools in the rocks whose unplumbed blue is pregnant With who knows what of subtlety And magical curves and limbs– White Anadyomene and her shallow breasts Mother-of-pearled with light. And oh the April, […]
Waking poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
A poem by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963) Darkness had stretched its colour, Deep blue across the pane: No cloud to make night duller, No moon with its tarnish stain; But only here and there a star, One sharp point of frosty fire, Hanging infinitely far In mockery of our life and death And […]
Vision poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
A poem by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963) I had been sitting alone with books, Till doubt was a black disease, When I heard the cheerful shout of rooks In the bare, prophetic trees. Bare trees, prophetic of new birth, You lift your branches clean and free To be a beacon to the earth, […]
Valedictory poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
A poem by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963) I had remarked–how sharply one observes When life is disappearing round the curves Of yet another corner, out of sight!– I had remarked when it was “good luck” and “good night” And “a good journey to you,” on her face Certain enigmas penned in the hieroglyphs […]
Topiary poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
A poem by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963) Failing sometimes to understand Why there are folk whose flesh should seem Like carrion puffed with noisome steam, Fly-blown to the eye that looks on it, Fly-blown to the touch of a hand; Why there are men without any legs, Whizzing along on little trollies With […]
The Reef poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
A poem by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963) My green aquarium of phantom fish, Goggling in on me through the misty panes; My rotting leaves and fields spongy with rains; My few clear quiet autumn days–I wish I could leave all, clearness and mistiness; Sodden or goldenly crystal, all too still. Yes, and I […]
The Louse-Hunters poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
A poem by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963) (From the French of Rimbaud). When the child’s forehead, full of torments red, Cries out for sleep and its pale host of dreams, His two big sisters come unto his bed, Having long fingers, tipped with silvery gleams. They set him at a casement, open wide […]
The Life Theoretic poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
A poem by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963) While I have been fumbling over books And thinking about God and the Devil and all, Other young men have been battling with the days And others have been kissing the beautiful women. They have brazen faces like battering-rams. But I who think about books and […]
The Flowers poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
A poem by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963) Day after day, At spring’s return, I watch my flowers, how they burn Their lives away. The candle crocus And daffodil gold Drink fire of the sunshine– Quickly cold. And the proud tulip– How red he glows!– Is quenched ere summer Can kindle the rose. Purple […]
The Elms poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
A poem by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963) Fine as the dust of plumy fountains blowing Across the lanterns of a revelling night, The tiny leaves of April’s earliest growing Powder the trees–so vaporously light, They seem to float, billows of emerald foam Blown by the South on its bright airy tide, Seeming less […]
The Defeat of Youth poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
A poem by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963) I. UNDER THE TREES. There had been phantoms, pale-remembered shapes Of this and this occasion, sisterly In their resemblances, each effigy Crowned with the same bright hair above the nape’s White rounded firmness, and each body alert With such swift loveliness, that very rest Seemed a […]
The Decameron poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
A poem by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963) Noon with a depth of shadow beneath the trees Shakes in the heat, quivers to the sound of lutes: Half shaded, half sunlit, a great bowl of fruits Glistens purple and golden: the flasks of wine Cool in their panniers of snow: silks muffle and shine: […]
The Alien poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
A poem by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963) A petal drifted loose From a great magnolia bloom, Your face hung in the gloom, Floating, white and close. We seemed alone: but another Bent o’er you with lips of flame, Unknown, without a name, Hated, and yet my brother. Your one short moan of pain […]
Summer Stillness poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
A poem by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963) The stars are golden instants in the deep Flawless expanse of night: the moon is set: The river sleeps, entranced, a smooth cool sleep Seeming so motionless that I forget The hollow booming bridges, where it slides, […]
Stanzas poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
A poem by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963) Thought is an unseen net wherein our mind Is taken and vainly struggles to be free: Words, that should loose our spirit, do but bind New fetters on our hoped-for liberty: And action bears us onward like a stream Past fabulous shores, scarce seen in our […]
Song of Poplars poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
A poem by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963) Shepherd, to yon tall poplars tune your flute: Let them pierce, keenly, subtly shrill, The slow blue rumour of the hill; Let the grass cry with an anguish of evening gold, And the great sky be mute. Then hearken how the poplar trees unfold Their buds, […]
Social Amenities poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
A poem by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963) I am getting on well with this anecdote, When suddenly I recall The many times I have told it of old, And all the worked-up phrases, and the dying fall Of voice, well timed in the crisis, the note Of mock-heroic ingeniously struck– The whole thing […]
September poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
A poem by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963) Spring is past and over these many days, Spring and summer. The leaves of September droop, Yellowing afid all but dead on the patient trees. Nor is there any hope in me. I walk Slowly homeward. Night is as empty and dark Behind my eyes as […]
Scenes Of The Mind poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
A poem by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963) I have run where festival was loud With drum and brass among the crowd Of panic revellers, whose cries Affront the quiet of the skies; Whose dancing lights contract the deep Infinity of night and sleep To a narrow turmoil of troubled fire. And I have […]
Revelation poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
A poem by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963) At your mouth, white and milk-warm sphinx, I taste a strange apocalypse: Your subtle taper finger-tips Weave me new heavens, yet, methinks, I know the wiles and each iynx That brought me passionate to your lips: I know you bare as laughter strips Your charnel beauty; […]
Return From Business poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
A poem by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963) Evenings in trains, When the little black twittering ghosts Along the brims of cuttings, Against the luminous sky, Interrupt with their hurrying rumour every thought Save that one is young and setting, Headlong westering, And there is no recapture. Poetry Monster – Home […]
Private Property poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
A poem by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963) All fly–yet who is misanthrope?– The actual men and things that pass Jostling, to wither as the grass So soon: and (be it heaven’s hope, Or poetry’s kaleidoscope, Or love or wine, at feast, at mass) Each owns a paradise of glass Where never a yearning […]
Points And Lines poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
A poem by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963) Instants in the quiet, small sharp stars, Pierce my spirit with a thrust whose speed Baffles even the grasp of time. Oh that I might reflect them As swiftly, as keenly as they shine. But I am a pool of waters, summer-still, And the stars are […]
Poem poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
A poem by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963) Books and a coloured skein of thoughts were mine; And magic words lay ripening in my soul Till their much-whispered music turned a wine Whose subtlest power was all in my control. These things were mine, and they were real for me As lips and darling […]
Panic poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
A poem by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963) The eyes of the portraits on the wall Look at me, follow me, Stare incessantly: I take it their glance means nothing at all? –Clearly, oh clearly! Nothing at all … Out in the gardens by the lake The sleeping peacocks suddenly wake; Out in the […]
Out Of The Window poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
A poem by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963) In the middle of countries, far from hills and sea, Are the little places one passes by in trains And never stops at; where the skies extend Uninterrupted, and the level plains Stretch green and yellow and green without an end. And behind the glass of […]
On The Bus poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
A poem by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963) Sitting on the top of the ‘bus, I bite my pipe and look at the sky. Over my shoulder the smoke streams out And my life with it. “Conservation of energy,” you say. But I burn, I tell you, I burn; And the smoke of me […]
Minoan Porcelain poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
A poem by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963) Her eyes of bright unwinking glaze All imperturbable do not Even make pretences to regard The justing absence of her stays, Where many a Tyrian gallipot Excites desire with spilth of nard. The bistred rims above the fard Of cheeks as red as bergamot Attest that […]
Love Song poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
A poem by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963) Dear absurd child–too dear to my cost I’ve found– God made your soul for pleasure, not for use: It cleaves no way, but angled broad obtuse, Impinges with a slabby-bellied sound Full upon life, and on the rind of things Rubs its sleek self and utters […]
L’Après-Midi D’un Faune poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
A poem by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963) (From the French of Stéphane Mallarmé.) I would immortalize these nymphs: so bright Their sunlit colouring, so airy light, It floats like drowsing down. Loved I a dream? My doubts, born of oblivious darkness, seem A subtle tracery of branches grown The tree’s true self–proving that […]