Leaving Early by Sylvia Plath
Lady, your room is lousy with flowers. When you kick me out, that’s what I’ll remember, Me, sitting here bored as a loepard In your jungle of wine-bottle lamps, Velvet pillows the color of blood pudding And the white china flying fish from Italy. I forget you, hearing the cut flowers Sipping their liquids from […]
Jerusalem Delivered – Book 06 – part 06 by Torquato Tasso
LXXI “O spotless virgin,” Honor thus began, “That my true lore observed firmly hast, When with thy foes thou didst in bondage won, Remember then I kept thee pure and chaste, At liberty now, where wouldest thou run, To lay that field of princely virtue waste, Or lost that jewel ladies hold so dear? Is […]
Esteemed Bliss by Vaishnavi Prakash
A walk with a stern brisk A might that outbeats the king A whole tavern seemed less than a snowglobe For the run is what makes their name a pairee more Blazing eyes wih a slit in the fire A jaw that opens up all doors of fear A tint of pink manifies a thousand […]
King Arthur’s Tomb by William Morris
Hot August noon: already on that day Since sunrise through the Wiltshire downs, most sad Of mouth and eye, he had gone leagues of way; Ay and by night, till whether good or bad He was, he knew not, though he knew perchance That he was Launcelot, the bravest knight Of all who since the […]
Aeneid by Virgil
ARMS, and the man I sing, who, forc’d by fate, And haughty Juno’s unrelenting hate, Expell’d and exil’d, left the Trojan shore. Long labors, both by sea and land, he bore, And in the doubtful war, before he won The Latian realm, and built the destin’d town; His banish’d gods restor’d to rites divine, And […]
This Moment, Yearning and Thoughtful. by Walt Whitman
THIS moment yearning and thoughtful, sitting alone, It seems to me there are other men in other lands, yearning and thoughtful; It seems to me I can look over and behold them, in Germany, Italy, France, Spain—or far, far away, in China, or in Russia or India—talking other dialects; And it seems to me if […]
Proud Music of The Storm by Walt Whitman
1 PROUD music of the storm! Blast that careers so free, whistling across the prairies! Strong hum of forest tree-tops! Wind of the mountains! Personified dim shapes! you hidden orchestras! You serenades of phantoms, with instruments alert, Blending, with Nature’s rhythmus, all the tongues of nations; You chords left us by vast composers! you choruses! […]
Proud Music of The Storm by Walt Whitman
1 PROUD music of the storm! Blast that careers so free, whistling across the prairies! Strong hum of forest tree-tops! Wind of the mountains! Personified dim shapes! you hidden orchestras! You serenades of phantoms, with instruments alert, Blending, with Nature’s rhythmus, all the tongues of nations; You chords left us by vast composers! you choruses! […]
One of the Lives by W. S. Merwin
One of the Lives by W. S. Merwin If I had not met the red-haired boy whose father had broken a leg parachuting into Provence to join the resistance in the final stage of the war and so had been killed there as the Germans were moving north out of Italy and if the friend […]
To A Cloud by William Cullen Bryant
To A Cloud by William Cullen Bryant Beautiful cloud! with folds so soft and fair, Swimming in the pure quiet air! Thy fleeces bathed in sunlight, while below Thy shadow o’er the vale moves slow; Where, midst their labour, pause the reaper train As cool it comes along the grain. Beautiful cloud! I would I […]
The Skies by William Cullen Bryant
The Skies by William Cullen Bryant Ay! gloriously thou standest there, Beautiful, boundless firmament! That swelling wide o’er earth and air, And round the horizon bent, With thy bright vault, and sapphire wall, Dost overhang and circle all. Far, far below thee, tall old trees Arise, and piles built up of old, And hills, whose […]
Spring in Town by William Cullen Bryant
Spring in Town by William Cullen Bryant The country ever has a lagging Spring, Waiting for May to call its violets forth, And June its roses–showers and sunshine bring, Slowly, the deepening verdure o’er the earth; To put their foliage out, the woods are slack, And one by one the singing-birds come back. Within the […]
Doomes-Day: The Ninth Houre by William Alexander
The Argument Christs great fore-runner by him pris’d so much, And those who his familiars were below, Th’ Evangelists, Apostles, and all such As did him in the flesh when mortall know: Then those who freely did their faith avouch, And for the truth true constancy did show: The Churches Fathers, and the Martyrs all, […]
Doomes-Day: The Fourth Houre by William Alexander
The Argument A hideous Trumpet horriblie doth sound; Who sleep in Graves a mighty voyce doth wake; By Angels (Messengers) charg’d from each ground, All flesh comes forth that ever soule did take; Seas give account of all whom they have drown’d; The Earth her guests long hid in haste gives backe: Those who then […]
Epitaphs Translated From Chiabrera by William Wordsworth
I WEEP not, beloved Friends! nor let the air For me with sighs be troubled. Not from life Have I been taken; this is genuine life And this alone–the life which now I live In peace eternal; where desire and joy Together move in fellowship without end.– Francesco Ceni willed that, after death, His tombstone […]
February 23
February 23 is a Notable Day on the Calendar February 23, Defenders of the Fatherland Day In English (unrhymed version) February 23 is a notable day of the calendar! We congratulate men today for a reason! They are our defenders, and our support, In the high mountains And on the expanses of steppes! They […]
Guillaume de Lorris Belated: A Vision of Italy by Ezra Pound
(translated, interpreted by Ezra Pound) ((Guillaume de Lorris was a medieval French writer who authored, “Roman de la Rose” (1230))) Wisdom set apart from all desire, A hoary Nestor with youth’s own glad eyes, Him met I at the style, and all benign He greeted me an equal and I knew, By this his lack […]
Sonnet, an encyclopedic definition
Sonnet, from the 1911 edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica SONNET (Ital. Sonetto, dim. of Suono, Fr. Sonnet). The sonnet in the literature of modern Europe is a brief poetic form of fourteen rhymed verses, ranged according to prescription. Although in a language like the English it does no doubt require considerable ingenuity to construct a satisfactory sonnet of octave and […]