Year’s End - Richard Wilbur

Now winter downs the dying of the year,
And night is all a settlement of snow;
From the soft street the rooms of houses show
A gathered light, a shapen atmosphere,
Like frozen-over lakes whose ice is thin
And still allows some stirring down within.

Octaves - Osip Mandelstam

I love the formation of tissue
When after two, after three,
Or after four attempts at inhaling
I draw an unbroken breath.

Meditation on Ginkgo Nuts Left by My Father - Lee Gil-Won

When it reached the sea,
The river quieted for the first time,
After sending up clouds of spray, shaking the rocks,
And stirring up muddy water from time to time.

Of Beauty and Duty - Dante Alighieri

Two ladies to the summit of my mind
Have clomb, to hold an argument of love.

Apple-Pears - Andy Quan

each ninth month of the year
the buds fallen & fruit forming
copper-gold jewels a child’s round cheeks

A Christmas Prayer - George Macdonald

Loving looks the large-eyed cow,
Loving stares the long-eared ass
At Heaven's glory in the grass!

I approach, and I withdraw - Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

I approach, and I withdraw:
who but I could find
absence in the eyes,
presence in what's far?

from “Octonaires on the World’s Vanity and Inconstancy” - Antoine de Chandieu

Ice glitters like it’s good.
The whole world glitters,
sped towards ends,
we all fall in.

Mistletoe - Walter de la Mare

Sitting under the mistletoe
(Pale-green, fairy mistletoe),

O my Lord - Rabi’a of Basri

O my Lord,
the stars glitter

Poems from The Tale of Genji (chapter 44) - Murasaki Shikibu

Ah, cherry blossoms! How one's heart tremhles for them when stormy winds hlow
           although anyone can see they themselves care not at all.

De Spectaculis.XXX (While a roused hind was flying) - Marcus Valerius Martialis

While a roused hind was flying
    from the swift Molossian hounds,
and tangled the drawn-out chase by divers wiles,
    before Caesar's feet,

Was I lost in thoughts of love - Ono no Komachi

Was I lost in thoughts of love

Archimedes - Friedrich von Schiller

To Archimedes once a scholar came,
"Teach me," he said, "the art that won thy fame;—

Publishers - Godfrey Mutiso Gorry

And then they pretend like owls
With marble eyes and wizened stupidity
I do not know why they cannot perceive
True art

Vondel's Lucifer (Act I, lines 282-343) - Joost van den Vondel

Gabriel:
So be ye faithful, ever rendering thus
Both God and man your service: since mankind
So well belovèd are by God Himself.

Via del Monte - Umberto Saba

In Trieste, where there are many sorrows,
and beauties of sky and cityscape,
there’s a hill called the Via del Monte.

Let us go where there are varied crafts - Osip Emilevich Mandelstam

Let us go where there are varied crafts
And trades -- shashlik and chebureki,
Where trousers on a sign give us
The idea of a man.

When I was born - Karaikkal Ammaiyar

When I was born and learned to speak
I was overcome with love

I Will Walk - Anon (Chippewa Indian)

I will walk into somebody's dwelling,
Into somebody's dwelling will I walk.

The Desert of Atacama VI - Raúl Zurita

Arid plains do not dream
             No one has ever managed to see
             Those chimerical pampas

Retirement - William Cowper

Fresh fields and woods! the Earth's fair face,
God's foot-stool, and man's dwelling-place.

Of the Father's Love Begotten - Aurelius Clemens Prudentius

Of the Father's love begotten
Ere the worlds began to be,
He is Alpha and Omega,
He the Source, the Ending He,
Of the things that are, that have been,
And that future years shall see
Evermore and evermore.

To the Tune of To Rouge the Lips - Li Ching Chao

Lonely in my secluded chamber,

A thousand sorrows fill every inch
            of my sensitive being.

The Oracle - Walter von der Vogelweide

Beset with doubts, in agony
I sat quite long alone and thought
How from her service I might be free,
Until a comfort gladness brought.

Parting at evening - Richard Outram

The lake is borrowed light,
    Its darkening waters
Lengthen into night;

February 14th - Saw Wai

Arensberg said:
Only once you have experienced deep pain
And madness
And like an adolescent
Thought the blurred photo of a model
Great art
Can you call it heartbreak.

Winter song - Nichita Stãnescu

You are so beautiful in winter!
The field stretched on its back, near the horizon,
and the trees stopped running from the winter wind ...