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 found my heart’s desire
In beechen caverns that autumn fills
With the blue shadowiness of distant hills;
Whose luminous grey pillars bear
The stooping sky: calm is the air,
Nor any sound is heard to mar
That crystal silence–as from far,
Far off a man may see
The busy world all utterly
Hushed as an old memorial scene.
Long evenings I have sat and been
Strangely content, while in my hands
I held a wealth of coloured strands,
Shimmering plaits of silk and skeins
Of soft bright wool. Each colour drains
New life at the lamp’s round pool of gold;
Each sinks again when I withhold
The quickening radiance, to a wan
And shadowy oblivion
Of what it was. And in my mind
Beauty or sudden love has shined
And wakened colour in what was dead
And turned to gold the sullen lead
Of mean desires and everyday’s
Poor thoughts and customary ways.
Sometimes in lands where mountains throw
Their silent spell on all below,
Drawing a magic circle wide
About their feet on every side,
Robbed of all speech and thought and act,
I have seen God in the cataract.
In falling water and in flame,
Never at rest, yet still the same,
God shows himself. And I have known
The swift fire frozen into stone,
And water frozen changelessly
Into the death of gems. And I
Long sitting by the thunderous mill
Have seen the headlong wheel made still,
And in the silence that ensued
Have known the endless solitude
Of being dead and utterly nought.
Inhabitant of mine own thought,
I look abroad, and all I see
Is my creation, made for me:
Along my thread of life are pearled
The moments that make up the world.
A few random poems:
- Being Underwater by Sahiti Siddharth
- On Recollection by Phillis Wheatley
- The Temple of Fame poem – Alexander Pope
- Eclogue:–John An’ Thomas by William Barnes
- Hymn by Sidney Godolphin
- Dumb poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- Shadow Of Liberty by Vattacharja Chandan
- Sonnet 10
- When The Green Lies Over The Earth poem – Angelina Weld Grimke poems | Poems and Poetry
- South Africa by Ronald G. Auguste
- Олег Григорьев – Лежу я в одиночестве
- Алексей Ржевский – Долго ль прельщаться
- Владимир Высоцкий – Здесь сидел ты, Валет
- Forgetting Someone by Yehuda Amichai
- Fortune-Hunter, The – Canto 3 by William Somervile
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
- Conversation Among The Ruins by Sylvia Plath
- Circus In Three Rings by Sylvia Plath
- Child’s Park Stones by Sylvia Plath
- “Célibataire” by Sylvia Plath
- By Candlelight by Sylvia Plath
- Burning The Letters by Sylvia Plath
- Bluebeard by Sylvia Plath
- Blackberrying by Sylvia Plath
- Black Rook In Rainy Weather by Sylvia Plath
- Black Pine Tree In An Orange Light by Sylvia Plath
- Battle-Scene From the Comic Operatic Fantasy The Seafarer by Sylvia Plath
- Balloons by Sylvia Plath
- Ariel by Sylvia Plath
- Apprehensions by Sylvia Plath
- An Appearance by Sylvia Plath
- Amnesiac by Sylvia Plath
- All The Dead Dears by Sylvia Plath
- Aftermath by Sylvia Plath
- Admonition by Sylvia Plath
- Above The Oxbow by Sylvia Plath
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

Aldous Leonard Huxley (1894 – 1963) was an English writer and philosopher. He wrote nearly fifty books—both novels and non-fiction works—as well as wide-ranging essays, narratives, and poems.