On the wooden deck of the wooden Junk, silent, alone, we lie,
With silver foam about the bow, and a silver moon in the sky:
A glimmer of dimmer silver here, from the anklets round your feet,
Our lips may close on each other’s lips, but never our souls may meet.
For though in my arms you lie at rest, your name I have never heard,
To carry a thought between us two, we have not a single word.
And yet what matter we do not speak, when the ardent eyes have spoken,
The way of love is a sweeter way, when the silence is unbroken.
As a wayward Fancy, tired at times, of the cultured Damask Rose,
Drifts away to the tangled copse, where the wild Anemone grows;
So the ordered and licit love ashore, is hardly fresh and free
As this light love in the open wind and salt of the outer sea.
So sweet you are, with your tinted cheeks and your small caressive hands,
What if I carried you home with me, where our Golden Temple stands?
Yet, this were folly indeed; to bind, in fetters of permanence,
A passing dream whose enchantment charms because of its trancience.
Life is ever a slave to Time; we have but an hour to rest,
Her steam is up and her lighters leave, the vessel that takes me west;
And never again we two shall meet, as we chance to meet to-night,
On the Junk, whose painted eyes gaze forth, in desolate want of sight.
And what is love at its best, but this? Conceived by a passing glance,
Nursed and reared in a transient mood, on a drifting Sea of Chance.
For rudderless craft are all our loves, among the rocks and the shoals,
Well we may know one another’s speech, but never each other’s souls.
Give here your lips and kiss me again, we have but a moment more,
Before we set the sail to the mast, before we loosen the oar.
Good-bye to you, and my thanks to you, for the rest you let me share,
While this night drifted away to the Past, to join the Nights that Were.
A few random poems:
- Sweethearts by Mary Gilmore
- Don’t know the answer by Vinko Kalinic
- Robert Burns: The Braes O’ Killiecrankie:
- Ballad for Gloom poem – Ezra Pound poems
- Валерий Брюсов – Грядущие гунны
- Альфред де Мюссе – Как лепестки весеннего цветка
- Carrion Comfort poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- The Last Leap
- Lonely Poets by Ndue Ukaj
- Mad As The Mist And Snow by William Butler Yeats
- The Master of the Dance by Vachel Lindsay
- To Aphrodite by Sappho
- The house where I was born (08) by Yves Bonnefoy
- What Is Woman But A Song! by Timothy Thomas Fortune
- Шекспир – Ты утоляешь мой голодный взор – Сонет 75
External links
Bat’s Poetry Page – more poetry by Fledermaus
Talking Writing Monster’s Page –
Batty Writing – the bat’s idle chatter, thoughts, ideas and observations, all original, all fresh
Poems in English
- Robert Burns: To Miss Ferrier: Enclosing the Elegy on Sir J. H. Blair.
- Robert Burns: Impromptu On Carron Iron Works:
- Robert Burns: Elegy On The Death Of Sir James Hunter Blair:
- Robert Burns: On The Death Of John M’Leod, Esq,: Brother to a young Lady, a particular friend of the Author’s.
- Robert Burns: Epigram To Miss Jean Scott:
- Robert Burns: The Bard At Inverary:
- Robert Burns: Elegy On “Stella”: The following poem is the work of some hapless son of the Muses who deserved a better fate. There is a great deal of “The voice of Cona” in his solitary, mournful notes; and had the sentiments been clothed in Shenstone’s language, they would have been no discredit even to that elegant poet.-R.B.
- Robert Burns: Burlesque Lament For The Absence Of William Creech, Publisher:
- Robert Burns: Epigram To Miss Ainslie In Church: Who was looking up the text during sermon.
- Robert Burns: Address To Wm. Tytler, Esq., Of Woodhouselee: With an Impression of the Author’s Portrait.
- Robert Burns: Hey, Ca’ Thro’ – Boat song:
- Robert Burns: Epitaph For Mr. William Michie: Schoolmaster of Cleish Parish, Fifeshire.
- Robert Burns: Epitaph For William Nicol, Of The High School, Edinburgh:
- Robert Burns: Lines Written Under The Picture Of The Celebrated Miss Burns:
- Robert Burns: A Bottle And Friend:
- Robert Burns: On Elphinstone’s Translation Of Martial’s Epigrams:
- Robert Burns: The Book-Worms:
- Robert Burns: Epigram Addressed To An Artist:
- Robert Burns: Epigram At Roslin Inn:
- Robert Burns: My Lord A-Hunting:
More external links (open in a new tab):
Doska or the Board – write anything
Search engines:
Yandex – the best search engine for searches in Russian (and the best overall image search engine, in any language, anywhere)
Qwant – the best search engine for searches in French, German as well as Romance and Germanic languages.
Ecosia – a search engine that supposedly… plants trees
Duckduckgo – the real alternative and a search engine that actually works. Without much censorship or partisan politics.
Yahoo– yes, it’s still around, amazingly, miraculously, incredibly, but now it seems to be powered by Bing.
Parallel Translations of Poetry
The Poetry Repository – an online library of poems, poetry, verse and poetic works
Violet Nicolson ( 1865 – 1904); otherwise known as Adela Florence Nicolson (née Cory), was an English poetess who wrote under the pseudonym of Laurence Hope, however she became known as Violet Nicolson. In the early 1900s, she became a best-selling author. She committed suicide and is buried in Madras, now Chennai, India.