A Little Memory poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster

A poem by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963) White in the moonlight, Wet with dew, We have known the languor Of being two. We have been weary As children are, When over them, radiant, A stooping star, Bends their Good-Night, Kissed and smiled:– Each was mother, Each was child. Child, from your forehead I […]

Scenes Of The Mind

A poem by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963) I have run where festival was loud With drum and brass among the crowd Of panic revellers, whose cries Affront the quiet of the skies; Whose dancing lights contract the deep Infinity of night and sleep To a narrow turmoil of troubled fire. And I have […]

Revelation

A poem by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963) At your mouth, white and milk-warm sphinx, I taste a strange apocalypse: Your subtle taper finger-tips Weave me new heavens, yet, methinks, I know the wiles and each iynx That brought me passionate to your lips: I know you bare as laughter strips Your charnel beauty; […]

Return From Business

A poem by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963) Evenings in trains, When the little black twittering ghosts Along the brims of cuttings, Against the luminous sky, Interrupt with their hurrying rumour every thought Save that one is young and setting, Headlong westering, And there is no recapture. Poetry Monster – Home […]

Private Property

A poem by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963) All fly–yet who is misanthrope?– The actual men and things that pass Jostling, to wither as the grass So soon: and (be it heaven’s hope, Or poetry’s kaleidoscope, Or love or wine, at feast, at mass) Each owns a paradise of glass Where never a yearning […]

Points And Lines

A poem by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963) Instants in the quiet, small sharp stars, Pierce my spirit with a thrust whose speed Baffles even the grasp of time. Oh that I might reflect them As swiftly, as keenly as they shine. But I am a pool of waters, summer-still, And the stars are […]

Poem

A poem by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963) Books and a coloured skein of thoughts were mine; And magic words lay ripening in my soul Till their much-whispered music turned a wine Whose subtlest power was all in my control. These things were mine, and they were real for me As lips and darling […]

Panic

A poem by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963) The eyes of the portraits on the wall Look at me, follow me, Stare incessantly: I take it their glance means nothing at all? –Clearly, oh clearly! Nothing at all … Out in the gardens by the lake The sleeping peacocks suddenly wake; Out in the […]

Out Of The Window

A poem by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963) In the middle of countries, far from hills and sea, Are the little places one passes by in trains And never stops at; where the skies extend Uninterrupted, and the level plains Stretch green and yellow and green without an end. And behind the glass of […]

On The Bus

A poem by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963) Sitting on the top of the ‘bus, I bite my pipe and look at the sky. Over my shoulder the smoke streams out And my life with it. “Conservation of energy,” you say. But I burn, I tell you, I burn; And the smoke of me […]

Minoan Porcelain

A poem by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963) Her eyes of bright unwinking glaze All imperturbable do not Even make pretences to regard The justing absence of her stays, Where many a Tyrian gallipot Excites desire with spilth of nard. The bistred rims above the fard Of cheeks as red as bergamot Attest that […]

Love Song

A poem by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963) Dear absurd child–too dear to my cost I’ve found– God made your soul for pleasure, not for use: It cleaves no way, but angled broad obtuse, Impinges with a slabby-bellied sound Full upon life, and on the rind of things Rubs its sleek self and utters […]

Lapr S Midi Dun Faune

A poem by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963) (From the French of Stéphane Mallarmé.) I would immortalize these nymphs: so bright Their sunlit colouring, so airy light, It floats like drowsing down. Loved I a dream? My doubts, born of oblivious darkness, seem A subtle tracery of branches grown The tree’s true self–proving that […]

Italy

A poem by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963) There is a country in my mind, Lovelier than a poet blind Could dream of, who had never known This world of drought and dust and stone In all its ugliness: a place Full of an all but human grace; Whose dells retain the printed form […]

Inspiration

A poem by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963) Noonday upon the Alpine meadows Pours its avalanche of Light And blazing flowers: the very shadows Translucent are and bright. It seems a glory that nought surpasses– Passion of angels in form and hue– When, lo! from the jewelled heaven of the grasses Leaps a lightning […]

In Uncertainty To A Lady

A poem by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963) I am not one of those who sip, Like a quotidian bock, Cheap idylls from a languid lip Prepared to yawn or mock. I wait the indubitable word, The great Unconscious Cue. Has it been spoken and unheard? Spoken, perhaps, by you …? Poetry […]

Doors Of The Temple

A poem by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963) Many are the doors of the spirit that lead Into the inmost shrine: And I count the gates of the temple divine, Since the god of the place is God indeed. And these are the gates that God decreed Should lead to his house: – kisses […]

Darkness

A poem by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963) My close-walled soul has never known That innermost darkness, dazzling sight, Like the blind point, whence the visions spring In the core of the gazer’s chrysolite… The mystic darkness that laps God’s throne In a splendour beyond imagining, So passing bright. But the many twisted darknesses […]

Crapulous Impression

A poem by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963) (To J.S.) Still life, still life … the high-lights shine Hard and sharp on the bottles: the wine Stands firmly solid in the glasses, Smooth yellow ice, through which there passes The lamp’s bright pencil of down-struck light. The fruits metallically gleam, Globey in their heaped-up […]

Complaint Of A Poet Manqu

A poem by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963) We judge by appearance merely: If I can’t think strangely, I can at least look queerly. So I grew the hair so long on my head That my mother wouldn’t know me, Till a woman in a night-club said, As I was passing by, “Hullo, here […]

By The Fire

A poem by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963) We who are lovers sit by the fire, Cradled warm ‘twixt thought and will, Sit and drowse like sleeping dogs In the equipoise of all desire, Sit and listen to the still Small hiss and whisper of green logs That burn away, that burn away With […]

Books And Thoughts

A poem by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963) Old ghosts that death forgot to ferry Across the Lethe of the years – These are my friends, and at their tears I weep and with their mirth am merry. On a high tower, whose battlements Give me all heaven at a glance, I lie long […]

Anniversaries

A poem by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963) Once more the windless days are here, Quiet of autumn, when the year Halts and looks backward and draws breath Before it plunges into death. Silver of mist and gossamers, Through-shine of noonday’s glassy gold, Pale blue of skies, where nothing stirs Save one blanched leaf, […]

A Melody By Scarlatti

A poem by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963) HOW clear under the trees, How softly the music flows, Rippling from one still pool to another Into the lake of silence. Poetry Monster – Home A few random poems:   External links Bat’s Poetry Page – more poetry […]

A Little Memory

A poem by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963) White in the moonlight, Wet with dew, We have known the languor Of being two. We have been weary As children are, When over them, radiant, A stooping star, Bends their Good-Night, Kissed and smiled:– Each was mother, Each was child. Child, from your forehead I […]

A Terre (being the philosophy of many soldiers) by Wilfred Owen

Sit on the bed. I’m blind, and three parts shell. Be careful; can’t shake hands now; never shall. Both arms have mutinied against me,-brutes. My fingers fidget like ten idle brats. I tried to peg out soldierly,-no use! One dies of war like any old disease. This bandage feels like pennies on my eyes. I […]

Disabled by Wilfred Owen

He sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark, And shivered in his ghastly suit of grey, Legless, sewn short at elbow. Through the park Voices of boys rang saddening like a hymn, Voices of play and pleasure after day, Till gathering sleep had mothered them from him. About this time Town used to swing […]

Anthem For Doomed Youth by Wilfred Owen

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? Only the monstrous anger of the guns. Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle Can patter out their hasty orisons. No mockeries for them; no prayers nor bells, Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, — The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells; And bugles calling for […]

Dulce Et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to […]

Conscious by Wilfred Owen

His fingers wake, and flutter up the bed. His eyes come open with a pull of will, Helped by the yellow may-flowers by his head. A blind-cord drawls across the window-sill . . . How smooth the floor of the ward is! what a rug! And who’s that talking, somewhere out of sight? Why are […]

Insensibility by Wilfred Owen

I Happy are men who yet before they are killed Can let their veins run cold. Whom no compassion fleers Or makes their feet Sore on the alleys cobbled with their brothers. The front line withers, But they are troops who fade, not flowers For poets’ tearful fooling: Men, gaps for filling Losses who might […]

A Terre by Wilfred Owen

(Being the philosophy of many Soldiers.) Sit on the bed; I’m blind, and three parts shell, Be careful; can’t shake hands now; never shall. Both arms have mutinied against me — brutes. My fingers fidget like ten idle brats. I tried to peg out soldierly — no use! One dies of war like any old […]

Arms And The Boy by Wilfred Owen

Let the boy try along this bayonet-blade How cold steel is, and keen with hunger of blood; Blue with all malice, like a madman’s flash; And thinly drawn with famishing for flesh. Lend him to stroke these blind, blunt bullet-heads Which long to muzzle in the hearts of lads. Or give him cartridges of fine […]

Asleep by Wilfred Owen

Under his helmet, up against his pack, After the many days of work and waking, Sleep took him by the brow and laid him back. And in the happy no-time of his sleeping, Death took him by the heart. There was a quaking Of the aborted life within him leaping … Then chest and sleepy […]

Exposure by Wilfred Owen

I Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knife us . . . Wearied we keep awake because the night is silent . . . Low drooping flares confuse our memory of the salient . . . Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous, But nothing happens. Watching, we hear the mad […]

Futility by Wilfred Owen

Move him into the sun — Gently its touch awoke him once, At home, whispering of fields unsown. Always it woke him, even in France, Until this morning and this snow. If anything might rouse him now The kind old sun will know. Think how it wakes the seeds — Woke, once, the clays of […]

Le Christianisme by Wilfred Owen

So the church Christ was hit and buried Under its rubbish and its rubble. In cellars, packed-up saints long serried, Well out of hearing of our trouble. One Virgin still immaculate Smiles on for war to flatter her. She’s halo’d with an old tin hat, But a piece of hell will batter her. ————— The […]

An Imperial Elegy by Wilfred Owen

Not one corner of a foreign field But a span as wide as Europe; An appearance of a titan’s grave, And the length thereof a thousand miles, It crossed all Europe like a mystic road, Or as the Spirits’ Pathway lieth on the night. And I heard a voice crying This is the Path of […]

But I Was Looking At The Permanent Stars by Wilfred Owen

Bugles sang, saddening the evening air, And bugles answered, sorrowful to hear. Voices of boys were by the river-side. Sleep mothered them; and left the twilight sad. The shadow of the morrow weighed on men. Voices of old despondency resigned, Bowed by the shadow of the morrow, slept. ( ) dying tone Of receding voices […]