Colour
by Victoria Sackville-West (1892-1962)
In the last orgy of Creation’s hour,
—That fabled day, when all to sudden birth
Sprang,—as the toy of his redundant mirth
God tossed in bounty Colour to the earth.
He held the exquisite and pallid flower,
Spoke new strange words, and in his hands there blushed
The great white rose to crimson slowly flushed.
Views: 36
La Pequeña Llama
by Juana de Ibarbourou (1892-1979)
Yo siento por la luz un amor de salvaje.
Cada pequeña llama me encanta y sobrecoge.
¿No será, cada lumbre, un cáliz que recoge
El calor de las almas que pasan en su viaje?
Hay unas pequeñitas, azules, temblorosas,
Lo mismo que las almas taciturnas y buenas.
Hay otras casi blancas: fulgores de azucenas.
Hay otras casi rojas: espíritus de rosas.
Yo respeto y adoro la luz como si fuera
Una cosa que vive, que siente, que medita,
Un ser que nos contempla transformado en hoguera.
Así, cuando yo muera, he de ser a tu lado
Una pequeña llama de dulzura infinita
Para tus largas noches de amante desolado.
Views: 29
A Musical Instrument
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)
What was he doing, the great god Pan,
Down in the reeds by the river?
Spreading ruin and scattering ban,
Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat,
And breaking the golden lilies afloat
With the dragon-fly on the river.
He tore out a reed, the great god Pan,
From the deep cool bed of the river:
The limpid water turbidly ran,
And the broken lilies a-dying lay,
And the dragon-fly had fled away,
Ere he brought it out of the river.
High on the shore sate the great god Pan,
While turbidly flowed the river;
And hacked and hewed as a great god can,
With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed,
Till there was not a sign of a leaf indeed
To prove it fresh from the river.
He cut it short, did the great god Pan,
(How tall it stood in the river!)
Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man,
Steadily from the outside ring,
And notched the poor dry empty thing
In holes, as he sate by the river.
‛This is the way,’ laughed the great god Pan,
Laughed while he sate by the river,)
‛The only way, since gods began
To make sweet music, they could succeed.’
Then, dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed,
He blew in power by the river.
Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan!
Piercing sweet by the river!
Blinding sweet, O great god Pan!
The sun on the hill forgot to die,
And the lilies revived, and the dragon-fly
Came back to dream on the river.
Yet half a beast is the great god Pan,
To laugh as he sits by the river,
Making a poet out of a man:
The true gods sigh for the cost and pain, —
For the reed which grows nevermore again
As a reed with the reeds in the river.
Views: 33
Komm, falsche Dirne!
by Georg Friedrich Daumer (1800-1875)
Komm, falsche Dirne, lass dich küssen!
So falsch du bist, – du bist doch süss;
Dein Mund hat all an sich gerissen
Den Honig aus dem Paradies.
Ich herze dich, und sollte hassen;
Ich hasse dich, doch ach, wie mild!
Ich sollte dich auf ewig lassen,
Und fasse dich, so wild, so wild!
Und ist in alle diese Wonnen
Mein Leben und mein Geist getaucht –
Was mir dein Herz für Qual ersonnen,
Ist alles in den Wind gehaucht!
Views: 23
Silence Sings
by Thomas Sturge Moore (1870-1944)
So faint, no ear is sure it hears,
So faint and far;
So vast that very near appears
My voice, both here and in each star
Unmeasured leagues do bridge between;
Like that which on a face is seen
Where secrets are;
Sweeping, like veils of lofty balm,
Tresses unbound
O’er desert sand, o’er ocean calm,
I am wherever is not sound;
And, goddess of the truthful face,
My beauty doth instill its grace
That joy abound.
Views: 27
Go, Lovely Rose!
by Edmund Waller (1606-1687)
Go lovely Rose!
Tell her that wastes her time and me,
That now she knows,
When I resemble her to thee
How sweet and fair she seems to be.
Tell her that’s young
And shuns to have her graces spied,
That hadst thou sprung.
In deserts where no men abide,
Thou must have uncommended died.
Small is the worth
Of beauty from the light retired:
Bid her come forth,
Suffer herself to be desired
And not blush so to be admired.
Then die! that she
The common fate of all things rare
May read in thee;
How small a part of time they share
That are so wondrous sweet and fair.
Views: 26
Snake
by D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930)
A snake came to my water-trough
On a hot, hot day, and I in pajamas for the heat,
To drink there.
In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob-tree
I came down the steps with my pitcher
And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the
trough before me.
He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom
And trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down, over
the edge of the stone trough
And rested his throat upon the stone bottom,
And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small
clearness,
He sipped with his straight mouth,
Softly drank though his straight gums, into his slack long body,
Silently.
Someone was before me at my water-trough,
And I, like a second comer, waiting.
He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do,
And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do,
And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused
a moment,
And stooped and drank a little more,
Being earth-brown, earth-golden from hte burning bowels of
the earth
On the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.
The voice of my education said to me
He must be killed,
For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are
venomous.
And voices in me said, If you were a man
You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off.
But must I confess how I liked him,
How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink at
my water-trough
And depart peaceful, pacified and thankless,
Into the burning bowels of this earth?
Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him?
Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him?
Was it humility, to feel so honored?
I felt so honored.
And yet those voices:
If you were not afraid, you would kill him!
And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid,
But even so, honored still more
That he should seek my hospitality
From out the dark door of the secret earth.
He drank enough
And lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken,
And flickered his tongue like a forked night on the air, so black;
Seeming to lick his lips,
And looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air,
And slowly turned his head,
And slowly, very slowly, as if thrice adream,
Proceeded to draw his slow length curving round
And climeb again the broken bank of my wall-face.
And as he put his head into that dreadful hole,
And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders, and
entered farther,
A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing into
that horrid black hole,
Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly drawing him-
self after,
Overcame me now his back was turned.
I looked round, I put down my pitcher,
I picked up a clumsy log
And threw it at the water-trough with a clatter.
I think it did not hit him,
But suddenly that part of him that was left behind convulsed
in undignified haste,
Writhed like lightning, and was gone
Into the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the wall front,
At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with fascination.
And immediately I regretted it.
I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act!
I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human edu-
cation.
And I thought of the albatross
And I wished he would come back, my snake.
For he seemed to me again like a king,
Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,
Now due to be crowned again.
And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords
Of life.
And I have something to expiate;
A pettiness.
Views: 53
Reflection
by Mercedes de Acosta (1893-1968)
I, with my back to the window,
Can see bending and swinging trees,
A gay blue patch of the sky
With the corner of a cloud looking in
And you, with your face buried in a rose.
Thus, I have my whole world,
In just this little mirror
Which I hold in the hollow of my hand.
Views: 42
Le Soir
by Alphonse de Lamartine (1790-1861)
Le soir ramène le silence.
Assis sur ces rochers déserts,
Je suis dans le vague des airs
Le char de la nuit qui s’avance.
Vénus se lève à l’horizon;
À mes pieds l’étoile amoureuse
De sa lueur mystérieuse
Blanchit les tapis de gazon.
De ce hêtre au feuillage sombre
J’entends frissonner les rameaux:
On dirait autour des tombeaux
Qu’on entend voltiger une ombre.
Tout à coup, détaché des cieux,
Un rayon de l’astre nocturne,
Glissant sur mon front taciturne,
Vient mollement toucher mes yeux.
Doux reflet d’un globe de flamme,
Charmant rayon, que me veux-tu?
Viens-tu dans mon sein abattu
Porter la lumière à mon âme?
Descends-tu pour me révéler
Des mondes le divin mystère,
Ces secrets cachés dans la sphère
Où le jour va te rappeler?
Une secrète intelligence
T’adresse-t-elle aux malheureux?
Viens-tu, la nuit, briller sur eux
Comme un rayon de l’espérance?
Viens-tu dévoiler l’avenir
Au cœur fatigué qui l’implore?
Rayon divin, es-tu l’aurore
Du jour qui ne doit pas finir?
Mon cœur à ta clarté s’enflamme,
Je sens des transports inconnus,
Je songe à ceux qui ne sont plus:
Douce lumière, es-tu leur âme?
Peut-être ces mânes heureux
Glissent ainsi sur le bocage.
Enveloppé de leur image,
Je crois me sentir plus près d’eux?
Ah! si c’est vous, ombres chéries,
Loin de la foule et loin du bruit,
Revenez ainsi chaque nuit
Vous mêler à mes rêveries.
Ramenez la paix et l’amour
Au sein de mon âme épuisée,
Comme la nocturne rosée
Qui tombe après les feux du jour.
Venez!… Mais des vapeurs funèbres
Montent des bords de l’horizon :
Elles voilent le doux rayon,
Et tout rentre dans les ténèbres.
Views: 128
Afternoon in February
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)
The day is ending,
The night is descending;
The marsh is frozen,
The river dead.
Through clouds like ashes
The red sun flashes
On village windows
That glimmer red.
The snow recommences;
The buried fences
Mark no longer
The road o’er the plain;
While through the meadows,
Like fearful shadows,
Slowly passes
A funeral train.
The bell is pealing,
And every feeling
Within me responds
To the dismal knell;
Shadows are trailing,
My heart is bewailing
And tolling within
Like a funeral bell.
Views: 46