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 swift course;
Glorious–and yet its headlong currents seem
Backwaters of some nobler purer force.
There are slow curves, more subtle far than thought,
That stoop to carry the grace of a girl’s breast;
And hanging flowers, so exquisitely wrought
In airy metal, that they seem possessed
Of souls; and there are distant hills that lift
The shoulder of a goddess towards the light;
And arrowy trees, sudden and sharp and swift,
Piercing the spirit deeply with delight.
Would I might make these miracles my own!
Like a pure angel, thinking colour and form,
Hardening to rage in a flame of chiselled stone,
Spilling my love like sunlight, golden and warm
On noonday flowers, speaking the song of birds
Among the branches, whispering the fall of rain,
Beyond all thought, past action and past words,
I would live in beauty, free from self and pain.
A few random poems:
- Николай Языков – Послание к Кулибину (Какой огонь тогда блистал)
- Fields and Gardens by the River Qi by Wang Wei
- Василий Жуковский – Бородинская годовщина
- Владимир Британишский – Клейнмихель
- Владимир Набоков – Памяти друга
- Yet Gentle Will the Griffin Be by Vachel Lindsay
- So Far and So Far, and on Toward the End. by Walt Whitman
- Someday’s Here by Shel Silverstein
- Ольга Берггольц – Не знаю, не знаю, живу
- Низами Гянджеви – О милый друг, давно пленен я
- Artilleryman’s Vision, The. by Walt Whitman
- Behold, As Goblins Dark Of Mien by Robert Louis Stevenson
- Paradise Lost: Book 06 poem – John Milton poems
- The Journey by Rabindranath Tagore
- Hai Kou Unpublished
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
- Note to Reality by Tony Hoagland
- National Trust by Tony Harrison
- Memory As a Hearing Aid by Tony Hoagland
- Marked with D. by Tony Harrison
- Lucky by Tony Hoagland
- Long Distance II by Tony Harrison
- Long Distance I by Tony Harrison
- Jet by Tony Hoagland
- Tony Harrison – Tony Harrison
- In Praise of Their Divorce by Tony Hoagland
- I Have News For You by Tony Hoagland
- Heredity by Tony Harrison
- Grammar by Tony Hoagland
- Don’t Tell Anyone by Tony Hoagland
- Disappointment by Tony Hoagland
- Coming and Going by Tony Hoagland
- Book Ends by Tony Harrison
- Big Grab by Tony Hoagland
- Bible Study by Tony Hoagland
- Beauty by Tony Hoagland
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.