A summer wind blows through the open porch,
And, ‘neath the rustling eaves,
A summer light of moonrise, calm and pale,
Shines through a vale of leaves.
The soft gusts bring a scent of summer flowers,
Fresh with the falling dew,
And round the doorway, glimmering white as snow,
The tender petals strew.
Clear through the silence, from a reedy pool
The curlew’s whistle thrills;
A lonely mopoke sorrowfully cries
From the far-folding hills.
O lovely night, and yet so sad and strange!
My fingers touch the key;
And down the empty church my Christmas song
Goes ringing, glad and free.
Each sweet note knocks at dreaming memory’s door,
And memory wakes in pain;
The spectral faces she had turn’d away
Come crowding in again.
The air seems full of music all around-
I know not what I hear,
The multitudinous echoes of the past,
Or these few voices near.
Ah me! the dim aisle vaguely widens out,
I see me stand therein;
A glory of grey sculpture takes the light
A winter morn brings in.
No more I smell the fragrant jessamine flowers
That flake a moonlit floor;
The rustling night-breeze and the open porch
I hear and see no more.
Great solemn windows, down a long, long nave
Their shadow’d rainbows fling;
Dark Purbeck shafts, with hoary capitals,
In carven archways spring.
And overhead the throbbing organ waves
Roll in one mighty sea,
Bearing the song the herald angels sang
Of Christ’s nativity.
Dear hands touch mine beneath the open book,
Sweet eyes look in my face,-
They smile, they melt in darkness; I am snatch’d
From my familiar place.
The summer night-wind blows upon my tears;
Its flowery scent is pain.
O cold, white day! O noble minster-when
May I come back again!
To hear the angels’ anthem shake the air,
Where never discord jars,-
The Christmas carols in the windy street,
Under the frosty stars;
The dream-like falling from the still, grey skies,
With falling flakes of snow,
Of mellow chimes from old cathedral bells,
Solemn and sweet and slow.
To hear loved footsteps beating time with mine
Along the churchyard path,-
To see that ring of faces once again
Drawn round the blazing hearth.
When may I come? O Lord, when may I go?
Nay, I must wait Thy will.
Give patience, Lord, and in Thine own best way
My hopes and prayers fulfil.
A few random poems:
- The Seafarer poem – Ezra Pound poems
- Lady Weeping at the Crossroads by W H Auden
- Written On A Blank Space At The End Of Chaucer’s Tale Of The Flowre And The Lefe poem – John Keats poems
- Lines Written On A Blank Leaf In A Copy Of The Author’s Poem “The Excursion,” by William Wordsworth
- On Twitter
- Morning at the Window by T. S. Eliot
- Вера Звягинцева – Моя любовь к Армении похожа
- Алексей Толстой – С тех пор как я один
- A Man Young And Old: VIII. Summer And Spring by William Butler Yeats
- from The Tenth Elegy by Rainer Maria Rilke
- A Farewell by William Wordsworth
- Olney Hymn 26: On Opening A Place For Social Prayer by William Cowper
- What the Rattlesnake Said by Vachel Lindsay
- Forgetting Someone by Yehuda Amichai
- Power Of Music by William Wordsworth
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
- A Big Idea? by Satish Verma
- Twice Shy by Seamus Heaney
- The Tollund Man by Seamus Heaney
- The Perch by Seamus Heaney
- The Otter by Seamus Heaney
- The Harvest Bow by Seamus Heaney
- The Grauballe Man by Seamus Heaney
- The Early Purges by Seamus Heaney
- Testimony by Seamus Heaney
- Strange Fruit by Seamus Heaney
- Song by Seamus Heaney
- Rite of Spring by Seamus Heaney
- Requiem for the Croppies by Seamus Heaney
- Postscript by Seamus Heaney
- Personal Helicon by Seamus Heaney
- Mossbawn: Two Poems in Dedication by Seamus Heaney
- Mid-Term Break by Seamus Heaney
- Lovers on Aran by Seamus Heaney
- Limbo by Seamus Heaney
- Keeping Going by Seamus Heaney
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
Ada Cambridge (1844 – 1926), also known as Ada Cross, was an English-born Australian author and poetess. She wrote more than 25 works of fiction, three volumes of poetry and two autobiographical works.