Friday, 27 May 2011
Saturday, 21 May 2011
Clenched Soul (incomplete)
Pablo Neruda
We have lost even this twilight.
No one saw us this evening hand in hand
while the blue night dropped on the world.
I have seen from my window
the fiesta of sunset in the distant mountain tops.
Sometimes a piece of sun
burned like a coin in my hand.
I remembered you with my soul clenched
in that sadness of mine that you know.
Where were you then?
Who else was there?
Saying what?
Why will the whole of love come on me suddenly
when I am sad and feel you are far away?
Saturday, 14 May 2011
Gazing at the Sacred Peak
Du Fu (Tu Fu)
For all this, what is the mountain god like?
An unending green of lands north and south:
From ethereal beauty Creation distills
There, yin and yang split dusk and dawn.
Swelling clouds sweep by. Returning birds
Ruin my eyes vanishing. One day soon,
At the summit, the other mountains will be
Small enough to hold, all in a single glance.
A Sonnet
Francis Beaumont
Flattering Hope, away and leave me,
She'll not come, thou dost deceive me;
Hark the cock crows, th' envious light
Chides away the silent night;
Yet she comes not, oh ! how I tire
Betwixt cold fear and hot desire.
Here alone enforced to tarry
While the tedious minutes marry,
And get hours, those days and years,
Which I count with sighs and fears
Yet she comes not, oh! how I tire
Betwixt cold fear and hot desire.
Restless thoughts a while remove
Unto the bosom of my love,
Let her languish in my pain,
Fear and hope, and fear again;
Then let her tell me, in love's fire,
What torment's like unto desire?
Endless wishing, tedious longing,
Hopes and fears together thronging;
Rich in dreams, yet poor in waking,
Let her be in such a taking:
Then let her tell me in love's fire,
What torment's like unto desire?
Come then, Love, prevent day's eyeing,
My desire would fain be dying:
Smother me with breathless kisses,
Let me dream no more of blisses;
But tell me, which is in Love's fire
Best, to enjoy, or to desire?
Thursday, 12 May 2011
Saturday, 7 May 2011
A Sleepless Night
Alfred Austin
Within the hollow silence of the night
I lay awake and listened. I could hear
Planet with punctual planet chiming clear,
And unto star star cadencing aright.
Nor these alone: cloistered from deafening sight,
All things that are, made music to my ear:
Hushed woods, dumb caves, and many a soundless mere,
With Arctic mains in rigid sleep locked tight.
But ever with this chant from shore and sea,
From singing constellation, humming thought,
And life through time's stops blowing variously,
A melancholy undertone was wrought;
And from its boundless prison-house I caught
The awful wail of lone Eternity.
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