The Sea - Victor Eftimiu

The irrepressible and boundless sea
Gets ready for the storm with each foreboding.
She rushes upward, mighty roars unloading,
In robes of sizzling foam is clothéd she.

The Vigil - Stefan George

Within the chapel quivers candlelight.
And there the page his vigil keeps alone
Before the altar’s threshold all the night.
“I shall partake when morning dawneth bright
Of all that solemn glory yet unknown,

Franco meditates on an absent lover (Capitolo 21) - Veronica Franco

I said: "My heart, if my own weapons
do this to me, what will those do
with which cruel fortune pierces me?"

The Garden of Death - Godfrey Mutiso Gorry

Weak but alive
dying yet still alive
huge eyes
round like golf balls
white as bones

In Praise of Self-Deprecation - Wislawa Szymborska

The buzzard has nothing to fault himself with.
Scruples are alien to the black panther.
Piranhas do not doubt the rightness of their actions.
The rattlesnake approves of himself without reservations.

The Place Where We Are Right - Yehuda Amichai

From the place where we are right
Flowers will never grow
In the spring.

Ode - Arthur O'Shaughnessy

We are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.

The Fairy Lough - Moira O’Neill

Loughhareema! Loughareema
Lies so high among the heather;
A little lough, a dark lough,
The wather's black and deep.
Ould herons go a-fishin' there,
An' sea-gulls all together
Float roun' the one green island
On the fairy lough asleep.

Vita Nuova - Jón Thoroddsen

Outside the day is blue and bright, but inside Sorrow sits and tells tales to the Prisoner. The shadows gather in the corner and listen.

Italia, Italia! O tu cui die la sorte - Vincenzo da Filicaja

Italia! thou, by lavish Nature graced
With ill-starr’d beauty, which to thee hath been
A fatal dowry, whose effects are traced
In the deep sorrows graven on thy mien;

I hear in the night - Holger Drachmann

I hear in the night
From the sleeping forest
A cry: Ah help me
My God!
I listen trembling,
Cannot sleep,
They call me, I hasten
Outside.

Summer Evening at Sirmione - George Gömöri

Already past the lovelier half of life
but on my way towards distant Ithaca,

Doing Nothing - Roderic Quinn

With the sorrow on me
Neighbours come and go —
Think me vain and foolish
Nursing up my woe.

The Wanderers - Robert Buchanan

God’s blessing on poor ship-folk! Peace and prayer
     Fall on their eyelids till they close in sleep!

A Zacinto - Ugo Foscolo

I'll never step ashore and feel your beach
the way I felt it as a barefoot child,

The Grey Feet of the Wind - Cathal O’Byrne

I followed in the track of the Grey Feet
     of The Wind,
Where Black Clouds ran across the Moon
     adown a Sullen Sky
Like a Herd of Frightened Cattle with
     Harrying Wolves behind
And dark pines stretched gaunt arms to
     me as I went shuddering by.

The Mu'allaqat - Baha ad-Din Zuhayr

“Does the blackened ruin, situated in the stony ground
between Durraj and Mutathallam, which did not speak to me,
when addressed, belong to the abode of Ummi Awfa?

Scarlet light of sunset - Sergei Esenin

Scarlet light of sunset shows up on the lake.
Grouse are crying in the wood, awake.

Psalm 9 - Mahmoud Darwish

O rose beyond the reach of time and of the senses
O kiss enveloped in the scarves of all the winds
surprise me with one dream

The Sheep Keeper (poem II) - Fernando Pessoa

My gaze is clear like a sunflower.
It is my custom to walk the roads
Looking right and left
And sometimes looking behind me,

My Son - Fatoumata Sidibé

The moon keeps watch
and the child sleeps.

Locusts - Femi Osofisan

Hurry, they say –
the afternoon is all a-clamour

I appear on balconies - Abou Chamakma

I appear on balconies and out of domes
and my veil encumbers nobody
for my home is space

Symbu - Saah N´Tow

When the tunnel's light is growing dim
And the darkness around still lingers on
When all it seems, is too much to bear
Do not despair, because Symbu dear
I'll be there for you

A Morning Prayer - Gregory of Nazianzus

    'Tis dawn: to God I lift my hand,
To regulate my way;
    My passions rule, and unmoved stand,
And give to Thee the day: