Venice masks

Friday 30 September 2011

Revelation - Edmund Gosse

 Into the silver night
      She brought with her pale hand
    The topaz lanthorn-light,
  And darted splendour o’er the land;
      Around her in a band,
Ringstraked and pied, the great soft moths came flying,
  And flapping with their mad wings, fann’d
The flickering flame, ascending, falling, dying.

Thursday 29 September 2011

Sonnet 22 - Elizabeth Barrett Browning

When our two souls stand up erect and strong,
Face to face, silent, drawing nigh and nigher,

Wednesday 28 September 2011

The Vanity of This World - Andreas Gryphius

Look anywhere you will, the Earth is empty show.
What someone builds today, another soon tears down;
Where now a city stands will be a grassy mound,
A place that only shepherds grazing their flocks will know.

Tuesday 27 September 2011

Monday 26 September 2011

Ossian Sang - Domhnull mac Fhionnlaidh

Sweet is the voice in the land of gold,
    And sweeter the music of birds that soar,
When the cry of the heron is heard on the wold,
    And the waves break softly on Bundatrore.

Sunday 25 September 2011

Christ in creation - Joseph Mary Plunkett

I see his blood upon the rose
And in the stars the glory of his eyes,
His body gleams amid eternal snows,
His tears fall from the skies.

Saturday 24 September 2011

Korosta Katzina Song - Anonymous (Hopi Indian)

              Yellow butterflies,
Over the blossoming virgin corn,
              With pollen-painted faces
Chase one another in brilliant throng.

Friday 23 September 2011

The Heart of Auss - John M Wenitong

I've seen the Rock at the break of day
And it seems so right for a place to stay
A place in Law to live love and pass away
For the people of my Dreaming

Thursday 22 September 2011

To Rosemounde - Geoffrey Chaucer

Ma dame, ye ben of al beaute shryne
As fer as cercled is the mapamonde;
For as the cristall glorious ye shyne,
And lyke ruby ben your chekys rounde.
Therwyth ye ben so mery and so iocunde
That at a reuell whan that I se you dance,
It is an oynement vnto my wounde,
Thoght ye to me ne do no daliance.

Wednesday 21 September 2011

Fire runs through my body - Anonymous

Fire runs through my body with the pain of loving you,
pain runs through my body with the fires of my love for you.

Tuesday 20 September 2011

About My Poetry - Nazim Hikmet

I have no silver-saddled horse to ride,
no inheritance to live on,
neither riches no real-estate —
a pot of honey is all I own.
A pot of honey
red as fire!

Monday 19 September 2011

Sonnet 101 [Ways apt and new to sing of love I'd find] - Petrarch

Ways apt and new to sing of love I'd find,
Forcing from her hard heart full many a sigh,

Sunday 18 September 2011

A Garden - Andrew Marvell

See how the flowers, as at parade,
Under their colours stand display'd:

Saturday 17 September 2011

The Human Seasons - John Keats

Four Seasons fill the measure of the year;
There are four seasons in the mind of man:

Friday 16 September 2011

Beyond the Years - Paul Laurence Dunbar

I
Beyond the years the answer lies,
Beyond where brood the grieving skies
    And Night drops tears.
Where Faith rod-chastened smiles to rise
    And doff its fears,
And carping Sorrow pines and dies—
    Beyond the years.

Thursday 15 September 2011

I Am Much Too Alone in This World, Yet Not Alone - Rainer Maria Rilke

I am much too alone in this world, yet not alone
     enough
to truly consecrate the hour.

Wednesday 14 September 2011

Kubla Khan - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
    Down to a sunless sea.

Tuesday 13 September 2011

The Elephant is Slow to Mate - D. H. Lawrence

The elephant, the huge old beast,
      is slow to mate;
he finds a female, they show no haste
      they wait

Monday 12 September 2011

A Dream - Edgar Allan Poe

In visions of the dark night
I have dreamed of joy departed
But a waking dream of life and light
Hath left me broken-hearted.

Sunday 11 September 2011

The hand that signed the paper - Dylan Thomas

The hand that signed the paper felled a city;
Five sovereign fingers taxed the breath,
Doubled the globe of dead and halved a country;
These five kings did a king to death.

Saturday 10 September 2011

Friday 9 September 2011

My lute awake - Sir Thomas Wyatt

My lute awake, perform the last
Labour, that thou and I shall waste,
And end that I have now begun:
And when this song is sung and past,
My lute! be still, for I have done.

Thursday 8 September 2011

To an Old Lady - William Empson

Ripeness is all; her in her cooling planet
Revere; do not presume to think her wasted.
Project her no projectile, plan nor man it;
Gods cool in turn, by the sun long outlasted.

Wednesday 7 September 2011

Song - Richard Watson Dixon

The feathers of the willow
Are half of them grown yellow
Above the swelling stream;
And ragged are the bushes,
And rusty now the rushes,
And wild the clouded gleam.

Tuesday 6 September 2011

Love in a Life - Robert Browning

Room after room,
I hunt the house through
We inhabit together.
Heart, fear nothing, for, heart, thou shalt find her,
Next time, herself!—not the trouble behind her
Left in the curtain, the couch's perfume!
As she brushed it, the cornice-wreath blossomed anew,—
Yon looking-glass gleamed at the wave of her feather.

Monday 5 September 2011

Thanks - W. S. Merwin

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water thanking it
smiling by the windows looking out
in our directions

Saturday 3 September 2011

That Sure is My Little Dog - Eleanor Lerman

Yes, indeed, that is my house that I am carrying around
on my back like a bullet-proof shell and yes, that sure is
my little dog walking a hard road in hard boots.

Friday 2 September 2011

A Poem For The End Of The Century - Czesław Miłosz

When everything was fine
And the notion of sin had vanished
And the earth was ready
In universal peace
To consume and rejoice
Without creeds and utopias,

Thursday 1 September 2011

Believing in Iron - Yusef Komunyakaa

The hills my brothers & I created
Never balanced, & it took years
To discover how the world worked.