Encounter In The Chestnut Avenue by Rainer Maria Rilke
Encounter In The Chestnut Avenue by Rainer Maria Rilke He felt the entrance’s green darkness wrapped cooly round him like a silken cloak that he was still accepting and arranging; when at the opposite transparent end, far off, through green sunlight, as through green window panes, whitely a solitary shape flared up, long remaining distant […]
Dedication To M… by Rainer Maria Rilke
Dedication To M… by Rainer Maria Rilke Swing of the heart. O firmly hung, fastened on what invisible branch. Who, who gave you the push, that you swung with me into the leaves? How near I was to the exquisite fruits. But not-staying is the essence of this motion. Only the nearness, only toward the […]
Early Spring by Rainer Maria Rilke
Early Spring by Rainer Maria Rilke Harshness vanished. A sudden softness has replaced the meadows’ wintry grey. Little rivulets of water changed their singing accents. Tendernesses, hesitantly, reach toward the earth from space, and country lanes are showing these unexpected subtle risings that find expression in the empty trees. ————— The End And that’s the […]
Exposed On The Cliffs Of The Heart by Rainer Maria Rilke
Exposed On The Cliffs Of The Heart by Rainer Maria Rilke Exposed on the cliffs of the heart. Look, how tiny down there, look: the last village of words and, higher, (but how tiny) still one last farmhouse of feeling. Can you see it? Exposed on the cliffs of the heart. Stoneground under your hands. […]
Extinguish Thou My Eyes by Rainer Maria Rilke
Extinguish Thou My Eyes by Rainer Maria Rilke Extinguish Thou my eyes:I still can see Thee, deprive my ears of sound:I still can hear Thee, and without feet I still can come to Thee, and without voice I still can call to Thee. Sever my arms from me, I still will hold Thee with all […]
Child In Red by Rainer Maria Rilke
Child In Red by Rainer Maria Rilke Sometimes she walks through the village in her little red dress all absorbed in restraining herself, and yet, despite herself, she seems to move according to the rhythm of her life to come. She runs a bit, hesitates, stops, half-turns around… and, all while dreaming, shakes her head […]
As Once The Winged Energy Of Delight by Rainer Maria Rilke
As Once The Winged Energy Of Delight by Rainer Maria Rilke As once the winged energy of delight carried you over childhood’s dark abysses, now beyond your own life build the great arch of unimagined bridges. Wonders happen if we can succeed in passing through the harshest danger; but only in a bright and purely […]
Fire’s Reflection by Rainer Maria Rilke
Fire’s Reflection by Rainer Maria Rilke Perhaps it’s no more than the fire’s reflection on some piece of gleaming furniture that the child remembers so much later like a revelation. And if in his later life, one day wounds him like so many others, it’s because he mistook some risk or other for a promise. […]
Black Cat by Rainer Maria Rilke
Black Cat by Rainer Maria Rilke A ghost, though invisible, still is like a place your sight can knock on, echoing; but here within this thick black pelt, your strongest gaze will be absorbed and utterly disappear: just as a raving madman, when nothing else can ease him, charges into his dark night howling, pounds […]
Archaic Torso Of Apollo by Rainer Maria Rilke
Archaic Torso Of Apollo by Rainer Maria Rilke We cannot know his legendary head with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso is still suffused with brilliance from inside, like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low, gleams in all its power. Otherwise the curved breast could not dazzle you so, […]
Childhood by Rainer Maria Rilke
Childhood by Rainer Maria Rilke It would be good to give much thought, before you try to find words for something so lost, for those long childhood afternoons you knew that vanished so completely –and why? We’re still reminded–: sometimes by a rain, but we can no longer say what it means; life was never […]
Falling Stars by Rainer Maria Rilke
Falling Stars by Rainer Maria Rilke Do you remember still the falling stars that like swift horses through the heavens raced and suddenly leaped across the hurdles of our wishes–do you recall? And we did make so many! For there were countless numbers of stars: each time we looked above we were astounded by the […]
For Hans Carossa by Rainer Maria Rilke
For Hans Carossa by Rainer Maria Rilke Losing too is still ours; and even forgetting still has a shape in the kindgdom of transformation. When something’s let go of, it circles; and though we are rarely the center of the circle, it draws around us its unbroken, marvelous curve. ————— The End And that’s the […]
Evening by Rainer Maria Rilke
Evening by Rainer Maria Rilke The sky puts on the darkening blue coat held for it by a row of ancient trees; you watch: and the lands grow distant in your sight, one journeying to heaven, one that falls; and leave you, not at home in either one, not quite so still and dark as […]
Death by Rainer Maria Rilke
Death by Rainer Maria Rilke Come thou, thou last one, whom I recognize, unbearable pain throughout this body’s fabric: as I in my spirit burned, see, I now burn in thee: the wood that long resisted the advancing flames which thou kept flaring, I now am nourishinig and burn in thee. My gentle and mild […]
Along The Sun-Drenched Roadside by Rainer Maria Rilke
Along The Sun-Drenched Roadside by Rainer Maria Rilke Along the sun-drenched roadside, from the great hollow half-treetrunk, which for generations has been a trough, renewing in itself an inch or two of rain, I satisfy my thirst: taking the water’s pristine coolness into my whole body through my wrists. Drinking would be too powerful, too […]
Adam by Rainer Maria Rilke
Adam by Rainer Maria Rilke High above he stands, beside the many saintly figures fronting the cathedral’s gothic tympanum, close by the window called the rose, and looks astonished at his own deification which placed him there. Erect and proud he smiles, and quite enjoys this feat of his survival, willed by choice. As labourer […]
Fire, Famine, And Slaughter : A War Eclogue by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The Scene a desolate Tract in la Vendee. Famine is discovered lying on the ground; to her enter Fire and Slaughter. Fam. Sister! sisters! who sent you here? Slau. [to Fire.] I will whisper it in her ear. Fire. No! no! no! Spirits hear what spirits tell: ‘Twill make a holiday in Hell. No! no! […]
Fancy In Nubibus, Or The Poet In The Clouds by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
O! it is pleasant with a heart at ease, Just after sunset, or by moonlight skies, To make the shifting clouds be what you please, Or let the easily persuaded eyes Own each quaint likeness issuing from the mould Of a friend’s fancy; or with head bent low And cheek aslant see rivers flow of […]
Epitaph On An Infant. by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Its balmy lips the infant blest Relaxing from its mother’s breast, How sweet it heaves the happy sigh Of innocent satiety! And such my infant’s latest sigh! Oh tell, rude stone! the passer by, That here the pretty babe doth lie, Death sang to sleep with Lullaby. ————— The End And that’s the End of […]
Psyche by Samuel Coleridge
The butterfly the ancient Grecians made The soul’s fair emblem, and its only name– But of the soul, escaped the slavish trade Of mortal life !–For in this earthly frame Ours is the reptile’s lot, much toil, much blame, Manifold motions making little speed, And to deform and kill the things whereon we feed. ————— […]
Brockley Coomb by Samuel Coleridge
Lines composed while climbing the left ascent of Brockley Coomb, May 1795 With many a pause and oft reverted eye I climb the Coomb’s ascent: sweet songsters near Warble in shade their wild-wood melody: Far off the unvarying Cuckoo soothes my ear. Up scour the startling stragglers of the flock That on green plots o’er […]
As some vast Tropic tree, itself a wood (fragment) by Samuel Coleridge
As some vast Tropic tree, itself a wood, That crests its Head with clouds, beneath the flood Feeds its deep roots, and with the bulging flank Of its wide base controls the fronting bank, (By the slant current’s pressure scoop’d away The fronting bank becomes a foam-piled bay) High in the Fork the uncouth Idol […]
Cologne by Samuel Coleridge
In K?hln, a town of monks and bones, And pavements fang’d with murderous stones And rags, and hags, and hideous wenches ; I counted two and seventy stenches, All well defined, and several stinks ! Ye Nymphs that reign o’er sewers and sinks, The river Rhine, it is well known, Doth wash your city of […]
Epitaph by Samuel Coleridge
Stop, Christian passer-by : Stop, child of God, And read, with gentle breast. Beneath this sod A poet lies, or that which once seem’d he– O, lift one thought in prayer for S. T. C.– That he who many a year with toil of breath Found death in life, may here find life in death […]
About The Nightingale by Samuel Coleridge
From a letter from STC to Wordsworth after writing The Nightingale: In stale blank verse a subject stale I send per post my Nightingale; And like an honest bard, dear Wordsworth, You’ll tell me what you think, my Bird’s worth. My own opinion’s briefly this– His bill he opens not amiss; And when he has […]
Epigram by Samuel Coleridge
Sir, I admit your general rule, That every poet is a fool, But you yourself may serve to show it, That every fool is not a poet. ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem © Poetry Monster, 2021. Poems by topic and subject. Poetry Monster — the ultimate repository of world poetry. Poetry […]
Phantom by Samuel Coleridge
All look and likeness caught from earth All accident of kin and birth, Had pass’d away. There was no trace Of aught on that illumined face, Uprais’d beneath the rifted stone But of one spirit all her own ;– She, she herself, and only she, Shone through her body visibly. ————— The End And that’s […]
A Mathematical Problem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
This is now–this was erst, Proposition the first–and Problem the first. I. On a given finite Line Which must no way incline; To describe an equi– –lateral Tri– –A, N, G, L, E. Now let A. B. Be the given line Which must no way incline; The great Mathematician Makes this Requisition, That we describe […]
Fire, Famine, And Slaughter : A War Eclogue by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The Scene a desolate Tract in la Vendee. Famine is discovered lying on the ground; to her enter Fire and Slaughter. Fam. Sister! sisters! who sent you here? Slau. [to Fire.] I will whisper it in her ear. Fire. No! no! no! Spirits hear what spirits tell: ‘Twill make a holiday in Hell. No! no! […]
Fancy In Nubibus, Or The Poet In The Clouds by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
O! it is pleasant with a heart at ease, Just after sunset, or by moonlight skies, To make the shifting clouds be what you please, Or let the easily persuaded eyes Own each quaint likeness issuing from the mould Of a friend’s fancy; or with head bent low And cheek aslant see rivers flow of […]
Epitaph On An Infant. by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Its balmy lips the infant blest Relaxing from its mother’s breast, How sweet it heaves the happy sigh Of innocent satiety! And such my infant’s latest sigh! Oh tell, rude stone! the passer by, That here the pretty babe doth lie, Death sang to sleep with Lullaby. ————— The End And that’s the End of […]
Aplolgia Pro Vita Sua by Samuel Coleridge
The poet in his lone yet genial hour Gives to his eyes a magnifying power : Or rather he emancipates his eyes From the black shapeless accidents of size– In unctuous cones of kindling coal, Or smoke upwreathing from the pipe’s trim bole, His gifted ken can see Phantoms of sublimity. ————— The End And […]
A Soliloquy Of The Full Moon, She Being In A Mad Passion by Samuel Coleridge
Now as Heaven is my Lot, they’re the Pests of the Nation! Wherever they can come With clankum and blankum ‘Tis all Botheration, & Hell & Damnation, With fun, jeering Conjuring Sky-staring, Loungering, And still to the tune of Transmogrification– Those muttering Spluttering Ventriloquogusty Poets With no Hats Or Hats that are rusty. They’re my […]
Whispers of Immortality by T. S. Eliot
WEBSTER was much possessed by death And saw the skull beneath the skin; And breastless creatures under ground Leaned backward with a lipless grin. Daffodil bulbs instead of balls Stared from the sockets of the eyes! He knew that thought clings round dead limbs Tightening its lusts and luxuries. Donne, I suppose, was such another […]
The Song Of The Jellicles by T. S. Eliot
Jellicle Cats come out tonight, Jellicle Cats come one come all: The Jellicle Moon is shining bright– Jellicles come to the Jellicle Ball. Jellicle Cats are black and white, Jellicle Cats are rather small; Jellicle Cats are merry and bright, And pleasant to hear when they caterwaul. Jellicle Cats have cheerful faces, Jellicle Cats have […]
The Rum Tum Tugger by T. S. Eliot
The Rum Tum Tugger is a Curious Cat: If you offer him pheasant he would rather have grouse. If you put him in a house he would much prefer a flat, If you put him in a flat then he’d rather have a house. If you set him on a mouse then he only wants […]
The Old Gumbie Cat by T. S. Eliot
I have a Gumbie Cat in mind, her name is Jennyanydots; Her coat is of the tabby kind, with tiger stripes and leopard spots. All day she sits upon the stair or on the steps or on the mat; She sits and sits and sits and sits–and that’s what makes a Gumbie Cat! But when […]
The Naming Of Cats by T. S. Eliot
The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter, It isn’t just one of your holiday games; You may think at first I’m as mad as a hatter When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES. First of all, there’s the name that the family use daily, Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo or […]
The Ad-Dressing Of Cats by T. S. Eliot
You’ve read of several kinds of Cat, And my opinion now is that You should need no interpreter To understand their character. You now have learned enough to see That Cats are much like you and me And other people whom we find Possessed of various types of mind. For some are same and some […]