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
On seas of flowers that stir in the blue airs,
And through his curls, all wet with dew, they slide
Those terrible searching finger-tips of theirs.
He hears them breathing, softly, fearfully,
Honey-sweet ruminations, slow respired:
Then a sharp hiss breaks time and melody–
Spittle indrawn, old kisses new-desired.
Down through the perfumed silences he hears
Their eyelids fluttering: long fingers thrill,
Probing a lassitude bedimmed with tears,
While the nails crunch at every louse they kill.
He is drunk with Languor–soft accordion-sigh,
Delirious wine of Love in Idleness;
Longings for tears come welling up and die,
As slow or swift he feels their magical caress.
A few random poems:
- The Palace of Art poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- The Old Age Of Queen Maeve by William Butler Yeats
- Artilleryman’s Vision, The. by Walt Whitman
- Song—Ae fond Kiss by Robert Burns
- Ольга Седакова – Маленькое посвящение Владимиру Ивановичу Хвостину
- In Memory Of Eva Gore-Booth And Con Markiewicz by William Butler Yeats
- A Parsonage In Oxfordshire by William Wordsworth
- Polly’s Tree by Sylvia Plath
- Long For This World by Sophie Hannah
- Dane-Geld by Rudyard Kipling
- Epistle to Hugh Parker by Robert Burns
- Иван Барков – Выбор
- Like the gods. . . by Sappho
- Hunting Song by William Somervile
- An Epitaph (From The Greek) by William Cowper
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
- Afridi Love
- Adoration
- Whispering In Wattle Boughs
- Thoras Song Ashtaroth
- The Swimmer
- The Sick Stockrider
- The Last Leap
- Gone
- An Exiles Farewell
- A Song Of Autumn
- A Dedication
- Medical Ethics
- Vain
- Myself
- My Heritage
- Miserimus
- Memory
- Karazah Karl
- Judith
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.