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<div class="quote">carmina erunt formae tot monumenta tuae.<br/>Each of these poems will be a monument to your beauty.
  <div class="author">Propertius</div>
</div>

<p>Poems I know.</p>

<div class="toc">
  <ul>
  </ul>
</div>

<div class="poem english">
<div class="title">She walks in beauty, like the night</div>
<div class="author">George Gordon, Lord Byron</div>
<div class="date">April 2004</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="18">
  She walks in beauty, like the night
     Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
  And all that’s best of dark and bright
     Meet in her aspect and her eyes;
  Thus mellowed to that tender light
     Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

  One shade the more, one ray the less,
     Had half impaired the nameless grace
  Which waves in every raven tress,
     Or softly lightens o’er her face;
  Where thoughts serenely sweet express,
     How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

  And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,
     So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
  The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
     But tell of days in goodness spent,
  A mind at peace with all below,
     A heart whose love is innocent!</pre>
</div>


<div class="poem english">
<div class="title">When you are old</div>
<div class="author">William Butler Yeats</div>
<div class="date">October 2005</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="12">
When you are old and gray and full of sleep
    And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
    And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
    And loved your beauty with love false or true;
    But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
    Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled
    And paced upon the mountains overhead,
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem english">
<div class="title">The world is too much with us</div>
<div class="author">William Wordsworth</div>
<div class="date">October 2005</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="14">
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem english">
<div class="title">The Parable of the Old Man and the Young</div>
<div class="author">Wilfred Owen</div>
<div class="date">November 2005</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="16">
So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
and builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretchèd forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him, thy son.
Behold, caught in a thicket by its horns,
A Ram. Offer the Ram of Pride instead.

But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem english">
<div class="title">The End</div>
<div class="author">Wilfred Owen</div>
<div class="date">November 2005</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="14">
After the blast of lightning from the east,
The flourish of loud clouds, the Chariot throne,
After the drums of time have rolled and ceased
And from the bronze west long retreat is blown,
Shall Life renew these bodies? Of a truth
All death will he annul, all tears assuage?
Or fill these void veins full again with youth
And wash, with an immortal water, age?

When I do ask <span class="link" data-link="white-age">white Age</span>, he saith not so, —
"My head hangs weighed with snow."
And when I hearken to the Earth she saith
"My fiery heart sinks aching. It is death.
Mine ancient scars shall not be glorified
Nor my titanic tears, the seas, be dried."</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem latin">
<div class="title">Carmen 1</div>
<div class="author">Catullus</div>
<div class="date">December 2005</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="10">
Cui dono lepidum novum libellum
arida modo pumice expolitum?
Corneli, tibi: namque tu solebas
meas esse aliquid putare nugas,
iam tum, cum ausus es unus Italorum
omne aevum tribus explicare cartis,
doctis, Iuppiter, et laboriosis!
Quare habe tibi quidquid hoc libelli—
qualecumque, quod, o patrona virgo,
plus uno maneat perenne saeclo.</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem english">
<div class="title">Strange Meeting</div>
<div class="author">Wilfred Owen</div>
<div class="date">March 2007</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="44">
<span class="link" data-link="lethe">It seemed that out of battle I escaped</span>
Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
Through granites which titanic wars had groined.

Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,
Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.
Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared
With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,
Lifting distressful hands, as if to bless.
And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall,—
By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.

With a thousand fears that vision's face was grained;
Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,
And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.
“Strange friend,” I said, “here is no cause to mourn.”
“None,” said that other, “save the undone years,
The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,
Was my life also; I went hunting wild
After the wildest beauty in the world,
Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,
But mocks the steady running of the hour,
And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.
For by my glee might many men have laughed,
And of my weeping something had been left,
Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,
The pity of war, the pity war distilled.
Now men will go content with what we spoiled.
Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.
They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress.
None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.
Courage was mine, and I had mystery;
Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery:
To miss the march of this retreating world
Into vain citadels that are not walled.
Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels,
I would go up and wash them from sweet wells,
Even with truths that lie too deep for taint.
I would have poured my spirit without stint
But not through wounds; not on the cess of war.
Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.

“I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
I knew you in this dark: for so you frowned
Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.
<span class="link" data-link="sleep">Let us sleep now. . . .</span>”</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem english">
<div class="title">Ozymandias</div>
<div class="author">Percy Bysshe Shelley</div>
<div class="date">July 2008</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="14">
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem english">
<div class="title">This living hand</div>
<div class="author">John Keats</div>
<div class="date">July 2008</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="8">
This living hand, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
And in the icy silence of the tomb,
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
That thou would wish thine own heart dry of blood
So in my veins red life might stream again,
And thou be conscience-calm’d–see here it is–
I hold it towards you.</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem english">
<div class="title">Song of Songs</div>
<div class="author">Wilfred Owen</div>
<div class="date">November 4, 2008</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="12">
Sing me at dawn but only with your laugh:
Like sprightly Spring that laugheth into leaf;
Like Love, that cannot flute for smiling at Life.

Sing to me only with your speech all day,
As voluble leaflets do. Let viols die.
The least word of your lips is melody.

Sing me at dusk, but only with your sigh;
Like lifting seas it solaceth: breathe so,
All voicelessly, the sense that no songs say.

Sing me at midnight with your murmurous heart;
And let its moaning like a chord be heard
Surging through you and sobbing unsubdued.</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem english">
<div class="title">since feeling is first</div>
<div class="author">E.E. Cummings</div>
<div class="date">November 15, 2008</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="16">
since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
—the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem english">
<div class="title">I saw his round mouth’s crimson</div>
<div class="author">Wilfred Owen</div>
<div class="date">November 2008</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="8">
I saw his round mouth’s crimson deepen as it fell,
      Like a sun, in his last deep hour;
Watched the magnificent recession of farewell,
      Clouding, half gleam, half glower,
And a last splendour burn the heavens of his cheek.
      And in his eyes
The cold stars lighting, very old and bleak,
      In different skies.</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem latin">
<div class="title">Carmen 9</div>
<div class="author">Horace</div>
<div class="date">December 4, 2008</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="24">
Vides ut alta stet nive candidum
Soracte nec iam sustineant onus
     silvae laborantes geluque
     flumina constiterint acuto?

Dissolve frigus ligna super foco
large reponens atque benignius
     <span class="link" data-link="vinum">deprome quadrimum Sabina</span>,
     o Thaliarche, merum diota.

Permitte divis cetera, qui simul
strauere ventos aequore fervido
     deproeliantis, nec cupressi
     nec veteres agitantur orni.

Quid sit futurum cras, <span class="link" data-link="quaesieri">fuge quaerere</span>, et
quem fors dierum cumque dabit, lucro
     adpone nec dulcis amores
     sperne, puer, neque tu choreas,

donec virenti canities abest
morosa. Nunc et Campus et areae
     lenesque sub noctem susurri
     composita repetantur hora,

nunc et latentis proditor intumo
gratus puellae risus ab angulo
     pignusque dereptum lacertis
     aut digito male pertinaci.</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem latin">
<div class="title">Carmen 5</div>
<div class="author">Horace</div>
<div class="date">December 9, 2008</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="16">
Quis multa gracilis te puer in rosa
perfusus liquidis urget odoribus
     grato, Pyrrha, sub antro?
     cui flavam religas comam,

simplex munditiis? Heu quotiens fidem
mutatosque deos flebit et aspera
     nigris aequora ventis
     emirabitur insolens,

qui nunc te fruitur credulus aurea,
qui semper vacuam, semper amabilem
     sperat, nescius aurae
     fallacis. Miseri, quibus

intemptata nites. Me tabula sacer
votiva paries indicat uvida
     suspendisse potenti
     vestimenta maris deo.</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem latin">
<div class="title">Carmen 51</div>
<div class="author">Catullus</div>
<div class="date">December 9, 2008</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="16">
Ille mi par esse deo videtur,
ille, si fas est, superare divos,
qui sedens adversus identidem te
     spectat et audit
<span class="link" data-link="dulce">dulce ridentem</span>, misero quod omnis
eripit sensus mihi: nam simul te,
Lesbia, aspexi, nihil est super mi
     [vocis in ore,]
lingua sed torpet, tenuis sub artus
flamma demanat, sonitu suopte
tintinant aures gemina, teguntur
     lumina nocte.
otium, Catulle, tibi molestum est:
otio exsultas nimiumque gestis:
otium et reges prius et beatas
     perdidit urbes.</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem latin">
<div class="title">Carmen 85</div>
<div class="author">Catullus</div>
<div class="date">December 2008</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="2">
Odi et amo. quare id faciam, fortasse requiris.
     nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem english">
<div class="title">i carry your heart with me(i carry it in</div>
<div class="author">E.E. Cummings</div>
<div class="date">December 9, 2008</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="14">
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
                                                                    i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem latin">
<div class="title">Elegia 21</div>
<div class="author">Propertius</div>
<div class="date">December 2008</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="10">
Tu, qui consortem properas evadere casum,
    miles ab Etruscis saucius aggeribus,
quid nostro gemitu turgentia lumina torques?
    pars ego sum vestrae proxima militiae.
sic te servato possint gaudere parentes,
    haec soror acta tuis sentiat e lacrimis:
Gallum per medios ereptum Caesaris enses
    effugere ignotas non potuisse manus;
et quaecumque super dispersa invenerit ossa
    montibus Etruscis, haec sciat esse mea.</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem spanish">
<div class="title">Si alguien llama a tu puerta</div>
<div class="author">Gabriel García Márquez</div>
<div class="date">April 2009</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="14">
Si alguien llama a tu puerta, amiga mía,
y algo en tu sangre late y no reposa
y en su tallo de agua, temblorosa,
la fuente es una líquida armonía.

Si alguien llama a tu puerta y todavía
te sobra tiempo para ser hermosa
y cabe todo abril en una rosa
y por la rosa se desangra el día.

Si alguien llama a tu puerta una mañana
sonora de palomas y campanas
y aún crees en el dolor y en la poesía.

Si aún la vida es verdad y el verso existe.
Si alguien llama a tu puerta y estás triste,
abre, que es el amor, amiga mía.<super><a href="#amiga-mia">*</a></super></pre>
</div>

<div class="poem english">
<div class="title">La Figlia che Piange</div>
<div class="author">T.S. Eliot</div>
<div class="date">July 1, 2009</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="24">
<i>O quam te memorem virgo ...</i>

Stand on the highest pavement of the stair—
Lean on a garden urn—
Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair—
Clasp your flowers to you with a pained surprise—
Fling them to the ground and turn
With a fugitive resentment in your eyes:
But weave, weave the sunlight in your hair.

So I would have had him leave,
So I would have had her stand and grieve,
So he would have left
As the soul leaves the body torn and bruised,
As the mind deserts the body it has used.
I should find
Some way incomparably light and deft,
Some way we both should understand,
Simple and faithless as a smile and shake of the hand.

She turned away, but with the autumn weather
Compelled my imagination many days,
Many days and many hours:
Her hair over her arms and her arms full of flowers.
And I wonder how they should have been together!
I should have lost a gesture and a pose.
Sometimes these cogitations still amaze
The troubled midnight and the noon’s repose.</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem latin">
<div class="title">Carmen 11</div>
<div class="author">Horace</div>
<div class="date">July 8, 2009</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="8">
<span class="link" data-link="quaesieri">Tu ne quaesieris</span> (scire nefas) quem mihi, quem tibi
finem di dederint, Leuconoe, nec Babylonios
temptaris numeros. Ut melius, quicquid erit pati,
seu pluris hiemes seu tribuit Iuppiter ultimam,
quae nunc oppositis debilitat pumicibus mare
Tyrrhenum. Sapias, <span class="link" data-link="vinum">vina liques</span>, et spatio brevi
spem longam reseces. Dum loquimur, fugerit invida
aetas: carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem english">
<div class="title">The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock</div>
<div class="author">T.S. Eliot</div>
<div class="date">July 30, 2009</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="137">
<i>S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma percioche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.</i>

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question ...
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair —
(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin —
(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
               So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
               And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
               And should I then presume?
               And how should I begin?

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? ...

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
<span class="link" data-link="fingers">Smoothed by long fingers,</span>
Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet — and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into <span class="link" data-link="ball">a ball
To roll it</span> towards some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—
If one, settling a pillow by her head
               Should say: “That is not what I meant at all;
               That is not it, at all.”

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
               “That is not it at all,
               That is not what I meant, at all.”

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old ... I grow old ...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind?   Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have <span class="link" data-link="mermaids">heard the mermaids singing</span>, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem english">
<div class="title">Annabel Lee</div>
<div class="author">Edgar Allan Poe</div>
<div class="date">February 15, 2010</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="41">
It was many and many a year ago,
   In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
   By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
   Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
   In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than love—
   I and my Annabel Lee—
With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven
   Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
   In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
   My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsmen came
   And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
   In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,
   Went envying her and me—
Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,
   In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
   Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
   Of those who were older than we—
   Of many far wiser than we—
And neither the angels in Heaven above
   Nor the demons down under the sea
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
   Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,
   In her sepulchre there by the sea—
   In her tomb by the sounding sea.</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem english">
<div class="title">This lunar beauty</div>
<div class="author">W.H. Auden</div>
<div class="date">February 16, 2010</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="24">
This lunar beauty
Has no history
Is complete and early,
If beauty later
Bear any feature
It had a lover
And is another.

This like a dream
Keeps other time
And daytime is
The loss of this,
For time is inches
And the heart's changes
Where ghost has haunted
Lost and wanted.

But this was never
A ghost's endeavor
Nor finished this,
Was ghost at ease,
And till it pass
Love shall not near
The sweetness here
Nor sorrow take
His endless look.</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem english">
<div class="title">On First Looking Into Chapman's "Homer"</div>
<div class="author">John Keats</div>
<div class="date">February 28, 2010</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="14">
Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
  And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
  Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
  That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne,
  Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold.
—Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
  When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes
  He stared at the Pacific—and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise—
  Silent, upon a peak in Darien.</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem english">
<div class="title">Art thou pale for weariness</div>
<div class="author">Percy Bysshe Shelley</div>
<div class="date">March 2010</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="6">
         Art thou pale for weariness
Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,
         Wandering companionless
Among the stars that have a different birth,
And ever changing, like a joyless eye
That finds no object worth its constancy?</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem spanish">
<div class="title">Tengo miedo a perder la maravilla</div>
<div class="author">Federico García Lorca</div>
<div class="date">July 1, 2010</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="14">
Tengo miedo a perder la maravilla
de tus ojos de estatua, y el acento
que de noche me pone en la mejilla
la solitaria rosa de tu aliento.

Tengo pena de ser en esta orilla
tronco sin ramas; y lo que más siento
es no tener la flor, pulpa o arcilla,
para el gusano de mi sufrimiento.

Si tú eres el tesoro oculto mío,
si eres mi cruz y mi dolor mojado,
si soy el perro de tu señorío,

no me dejes perder lo que he ganado
y decora las aguas de tu río
con hojas de mi otoño enajenado.</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem english">
<div class="title">Ode to a Nightingale</div>
<div class="author">John Keats</div>
<div class="date">July 12, 2010</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="80">
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
    My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
    One minute past, and <span class="link" data-link="lethe">Lethe-wards had sunk</span>:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
    But being too happy in thine happiness,
        That thou, light-wingèd Dryad of the trees,
            In some melodious plot
    Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
        Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

O for a draught of vintage! that hath been
    Cool'd a long age in the deep-delvèd earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country-green,
    Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South!
    Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
        With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
            And purple-stainèd mouth;
    That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
        And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
    What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
    Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs,
    Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
        Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
            And leaden-eyed despairs;
    Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
        Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
    Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
    Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
    And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
        Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays
            But here there is no light,
    Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
        Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
    Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmèd darkness, guess each sweet
    Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
    White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
        Fast-fading violets cover'd up in leaves;
            And mid-May's eldest child,
    <span class="link" data-link="musk-rose">The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,</span>
        The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
    I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a musèd rhyme,
    To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
    To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
        While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
            In such an ecstasy!
    Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
        To thy high requiem become a sod.

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
    No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
    In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
    Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
        She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
            The same that ofttimes hath
    <span class="link" data-link="kipling" title="kipling">Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
        Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.</span>

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
    To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
    As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
    Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
        Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
            In the next valley-glades:
    Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
        Fled is that music:—do I wake or <span class="link" data-link="sleep">sleep</span>?
</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem spanish">
<div class="title">Soneto 17</div>
<div class="author">Pablo Neruda</div>
<div class="date">August 15, 2010</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="14">
No te amo como si fueras rosa de sal, topacio
o flecha de claveles que propagan el fuego:
te amo como se aman ciertas cosas oscuras,
secretamente, entre la sombra y el alma.

Te amo como la planta que no florece y lleva
dentro de sí, escondida, la luz de aquellas flores,
y gracias a tu amor vive oscuro en mi cuerpo
el apretado aroma que ascendió de la tierra.

Te amo sin saber cómo, ni cuándo, ni de dónde,
te amo directamente sin problemas ni orgullo:
así te amo porque no sé amar de otra manera,

sino así de este modo en que no soy ni eres,
tan cerca que tu mano sobre mi pecho es mía,
tan cerca que se cierran tus ojos con mi sueño.</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem latin">
<div class="title">Carmen 22</div>
<div class="author">Horace</div>
<div class="date">January 4, 2011</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="24">
Integer vitae scelerisque purus
non eget Mauris iaculis neque arcu
nec venenatis gravida sagittis,
     Fusce, pharetra,

sive per Syrtis iter aestuosas
sive facturus per inhospitalem
Caucasum vel quae loca fabulosus
     lambit Hydaspes.

Namque me silva lupus in Sabina,
dum meam canto Lalagem et ultra
terminum curis vagor expeditis,
     fugit inermem,

quale portentum neque militaris
Daunias latis alit aesculetis
nec Iubae tellus generat, leonum
     arida nutrix.

Pone me pigris ubi nulla campis
arbor aestiva recreatur aura,
quod latus mundi nebulae malusque
     Iuppiter urget;

pone sub curru nimium propinqui
solis in terra domibus negata:
<span class="link" data-link="dulce">dulce ridentem</span> Lalagen amabo,
     dulce loquentem.</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem english">
<div class="title">Sonnet 17</div>
<div class="author">William Shakespeare</div>
<div class="date">January 5, 2011</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="14">
Who will believe my verse in time to come,
If it were fill'd with your most high deserts?
Though yet heaven knows it is but as a tomb
Which hides your life, and shows not half your parts.
If I could write the beauty of your eyes,
And in fresh numbers number all your graces,
The age to come would say "This poet lies;
Such heavenly touches ne'er touch'd earthly faces."
So should my papers, yellow'd with their age,
Be scorn'd, like old men of less truth than tongue,
And your true rights be term'd a poet's rage
And stretched metre of an antique song:
    But were some child of yours alive that time,
    You should live twice, in it, and in my rhyme.</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem english">
<div class="title">To His Coy Mistress</div>
<div class="author">Andrew Marvell</div>
<div class="date">May 2011</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="46">
Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime
We would sit down and think which way
To walk and pass our long love's day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shouldst rubies find: I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow;
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, Lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.

But at my back I always hear
Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song: then worms shall try
That long preserved virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust:
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.

Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapt power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into <span class="link" data-link="ball">one ball</span>,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem english">
<div class="title">September 1, 1939</div>
<div class="author">W.H. Auden</div>
<div class="date">May 30, 2011</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="99">
I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism’s face
And the international wrong.

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
“I will be true to the wife,
I’ll concentrate more on my work,"
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem english">
<div class="title">Errata</div>
<div class="author">Charles Simic</div>
<div class="date">June 30, 2011</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="25">
Where it says snow
read teeth-marks of a virgin
Where it says knife read
you passed through my bones
like a police-whistle
Where it says table read horse
Where it says horse read my migrant's bundle
Apples are to remain apples
Each time a hat appears
think of Isaac Newton
reading the Old Testament
Remove all periods
They are scars made by words
I couldn't bring myself to say
Put a finger over each sunrise
it will blind you otherwise
Will there be time left to list
all errors to replace
all hands guns owls plates
all cigars ponds woods and reach
that beer-bottle my greatest mistake
the word I allowed to be written
when I should have shouted
her name</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem english">
<div class="title">How It Happens</div>
<div class="author">W.S. Merwin</div>
<div class="date">November 13, 2011</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="15">
The sky said I am watching
to see what you
can make out of nothing
I was looking up and I said
I thought you
were supposed to be doing that
the sky said Many
are clinging to that
I am giving you a chance
I was looking up and I said
I am the only chance I have
then the sky did not answer
and here we are
with our names for the days
the vast days that do not listen to us</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem english">
<div class="title">Song</div>
<div class="author">John Donne</div>
<div class="date">November 25, 2011</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="27">
Go and catch a falling star,
    Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
    Or who cleft the devil's foot,
Teach me <span class="link" data-link="mermaids">to hear mermaids singing</span>,
Or to keep off envy's stinging,
            And find
            What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.

If thou be'st born to strange sights,
    Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights,
    <span class="link" data-link="white-age">Till age snow white hairs on thee,</span>
Thou, when thou return'st, wilt tell me,
All strange wonders that befell thee,
            And swear,
            No where
Lives a woman true, and fair.

If thou find'st one, let me know,
    Such a pilgrimage were sweet;
Yet do not, I would not go,
    Though at next door we might meet;
Though she were true, when you met her,
And last, till you write your letter,
            Yet she
            Will be
False, ere I come, to two, or three.</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem english">
<div class="title">A Dream Within a Dream</div>
<div class="author">Edgar Allan Poe</div>
<div class="date">March 6, 2012</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="24">
Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow —
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less <i>gone</i>?
<i>All</i> that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand —
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep — while I weep!
O God! Can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
<i>One</i> from the pitiless wave?
Is <i>all</i> that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem english">
<div class="title">Hope is the thing with feathers</div>
<div class="author">Emily Dickinson</div>
<div class="date">March 7, 2012</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="12">
Hope is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem english">
<div class="title">I wandered lonely as a cloud</div>
<div class="author">William Wordsworth</div>
<div class="date">March 15, 2012</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="24">
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem english">
<div class="title">Love among the Ruins</div>
<div class="author">Robert Browning</div>
<div class="date">April 11, 2012</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="84">
Where the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles,
         Miles and miles
On the solitary pastures where our sheep
         Half-asleep
Tinkle homeward thro' the twilight, stray or stop
         As they crop—
Was the site once of a city great and gay,
         (So they say)
Of our country's very capital, its prince
         Ages since
Held his court in, gathered councils, wielding far
         Peace or war.

Now the country does not even boast a tree,
         As you see,
To distinguish slopes of verdure, certain rills
         From the hills
Intersect and give a name to, (else they run
         Into one)
Where the domed and daring palace shot its spires
         Up like fires
O'er the hundred-gated circuit of a wall
         Bounding all
Made of marble, men might march on nor be prest
         Twelve abreast.

And such plenty and perfection, see, of grass
         Never was!
Such a carpet as, this summer-time, o'er-spreads
         And embeds
Every vestige of the city, guessed alone,
         Stock or stone—
Where a multitude of men breathed joy and woe
         Long ago;
Lust of glory pricked their hearts up, dread of shame
         Struck them tame;
And that glory and that shame alike, the gold
         Bought and sold.

Now—the single little turret that remains
         On the plains,
By the caper overrooted, by the gourd
         Overscored,
While the patching houseleek's head of blossom winks
         Through the chinks—
Marks the basement whence a tower in ancient time
         Sprang sublime,
And a burning ring, all round, the chariots traced
         As they raced,
And the monarch and his minions and his dames
         Viewed the games.

And I know, while thus the quiet-coloured eve
         Smiles to leave
To their folding, all our many-tinkling fleece
         In such peace,
And the slopes and rills in undistinguished grey
         Melt away—
That a girl with eager eyes and yellow hair
         Waits me there
In the turret whence the charioteers caught soul
         For the goal,
When the king looked, where she looks now, breathless, dumb
            Till I come.

But he looked upon the city, every side,
         Far and wide,
All the mountains topped with temples, all the glades'
         Colonnades,
All the causeys, bridges, aqueducts,—and then
         All the men!
When I do come, she will speak not, she will stand,
         Either hand
On my shoulder, give her eyes the first embrace
         Of my face,
Ere we rush, ere we extinguish sight and speech
         Each on each.

In one year they sent a million fighters forth
         South and North,
And they built their gods a brazen pillar high
         As the sky
Yet reserved a thousand chariots in full force—
         Gold, of course.
O heart! oh blood that freezes, blood that burns!
         Earth's returns
For whole centuries of folly, noise and sin!
         Shut them in,
With their triumphs and their glories and the rest!
         Love is best.</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem english">
<div class="title">Dover Beach</div>
<div class="author">Matthew Arnold</div>
<div class="date">May 28, 2012</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="37">
The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; —on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanch'd land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Ægæan, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem greek">
<div class="title">ἀστέρας εἰσαθρεῖς Ἀστὴρ ἐμός</div>
<div class="author">Plato?</div>
<div class="date">June 21, 2012</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="2">
ἀστέρας εἰσαθρεῖς Ἀστὴρ ἐμός· εἴθε γενοίμην
οὐρανός͵ ὡς πολλοῖς ὄμμασιν εἰς σὲ βλέπω.</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem greek">
<div class="title">ἀστὴρ πρὶν μὲν ἔλαμπες</div>
<div class="author">Plato?</div>
<div class="date">June 21, 2012</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="2">
ἀστὴρ πρὶν μὲν ἔλαμπες ἐνὶ ζωοῖσιν ἑῷος,
νῦν δὲ θανὼν λάμπεις Ἕσπερος ἐν φθιμένοις.</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem english">
<div class="title">in spite of everything</div>
<div class="author">E.E. Cummings</div>
<div class="date">July 9, 2012</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="10">
in spite of everything
which breathes and moves,since Doom
(with white <span class="link" data-link="fingers">longest hands</span>
neatening each crease)
will smooth entirely our minds

-before leaving my room
i turn,and(stooping
through the morning)kiss
this pillow,dear
where our heads lived and were.</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem english greek">
<div class="title">Thrush</div>
<div class="author">George Seferis, tr. Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard</div>
<div class="date">July 30, 2012</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="227">
<i>Ephemeral issue of a vicious daemon and a harsh fate, 
why do you force me to speak of things which it would be 
better for you not to know.</i>
<h4>      I</h4>
                                                                <i>The house near the sea</i>

The houses I had they took away from me. The times
happened to be unpropitious: war, destruction, exile;
sometimes the hunter hits the migratory birds,
sometimes he doesn’t hit them. Hunting
was good in my time, many felt the pellet;
the rest circle aimlessly or go mad in the shelters.

Don’t talk to me about the nightingale or the lark
or the little wagtail
inscribing figures with his tail in the light;
I don’t know much about houses
I know they have their own nature, nothing else.
New at first, like babies
who play in gardens with the tassels of the sun,
they embroider coloured shutters and shining doors
over the day.
When the architect’s finished, they change,
they frown or smile or even grow resentful
with those who stayed behind, with those who went away
with others who’d come back if they could
or others who disappeared, now that the world’s become
an endless hotel.

I don’t know much about houses,
I remember their joy and their sorrow
sometimes, when I stop to think;
                                                       again
sometimes, near the sea, in naked rooms
with a single iron bed and nothing of my own,
watching the evening spider, I imagine
that someone is getting ready to come, that they dress him up
in white and black robes, with many-coloured jewels,
and around him venerable ladies,
grey hair and dark lace shawls, talk softly,
that he is getting ready to come and say goodbye to me;
or that a woman — eyelashes quivering, slim-waisted,
returning from southern ports,
Smyrna Rhodes Syracuse Alexandria,
from cities closed like hot shutters,
with perfume of golden fruit and herbs —
climbs the stairs without seeing
those who’ve fallen asleep under the stairs.

Houses, you know, grow resentful easily when you strip them bare.


<h4>      II</h4>
                                                                <i>Sensual Elpenor</i>

I saw him yesterday standing by the door
below my window; it was about
seven o’clock; there was a woman with him.
He had the look of Elpenor just before he fell
and smashed himself, yet he wasn’t drunk.
He was speaking fast, and she
was gazing absently towards the gramophones;
now and then she cut him short to say a word
and then would glance impatiently
towards where they were frying fish: like a cat.
He muttered with a dead cigarette-butt between his lips:

— ‘Listen. There’s this too. In the moonlight
the statues sometimes bend like reeds
in the midst of ripe fruit — the statues;
and the flame becomes a cool oleander,
the flame that burns one, I mean.’

— ‘It's just the light. . . shadows of the night.’

— ‘Maybe the night that split open, a blue pomegranate,
a dark breast, and filled you with stars,
cleaving time.
                     And yet the statues
bend sometimes, dividing desire in two,
like a peach; and the flame
becomes a kiss on the limbs, then a sob,
then a cool leaf carried off by the wind;
they bend; they become light with a human weight.
You don’t forget it.’

                              — ‘The statues are in the museum.’

— ‘No, they pursue you, why can’t you see it?
I mean with their broken limbs,
with their shape from another time, a shape you don’t recognize
yet know.
                        It’s as though
in the last days of your youth you loved
a woman who was still beautiful, and you were always afraid,
as you held her naked at noon,
of the memory aroused by your embrace;
were afraid the kiss might betray you
to other beds now of the past
which nevertheless could haunt you
so easily, so easily, and bring to life
images in the mirror, bodies once alive:
their sensuality.
                              It’s as though
returning home from some foreign country you happen to open
an old trunk that’s been locked up a long time
and find the tatters of clothes you used to wear
on happy occasions, at festivals with many-coloured lights,
mirrored, now becoming dim,
and all that remains is the perfume of the absence
of a young form.
                               Really, those statues are not
the fragments. You yourself are the relic;
they haunt you with a strange virginity
at home, at the office, at receptions for the celebrated,
in the unconfessed terror of sleep;
they speak of things you wish didn’t exist
or would happen years after your death,
and that’s difficult because. . .’

                                       — ‘The statues are in the museum.
Good night.’

      — ‘. . . because the statues are no longer
fragments. We are. The statues bend lightly. . . Good night.’

At this point they separated. He took
the road leading uphill toward the North
and she moved on towards the light-flooded beach
where the waves are drowned in the noise from the radio:

                                                                   <i>The radio</i>

— ‘Sails puffed out by the wind
are all that stay in the mind.
Perfume of silence and pine
will soon be an anodyne
now that the sailor’s set sail,
flycatcher, catfish and wagtail.
O woman whose touch is dumb,
hear the wind’s requiem.

‘Drained is the golden keg
the sun’s become a rag
round a middle-aged woman’s neck
who coughs and coughs without break;
for the summer that’s gone she sighs,
for the gold on her shoulders, her thighs.
O woman, O sightless thing,
Hear the blind man sing.

‘Close the shutters: the day recedes;
make flutes from yesteryear’s reeds
and don’t open, knock how they may:
they shout but have nothing to say.
Take cyclamen, pine-needles, the lily,
anemones out of the sea;
O woman whose wits are lost,
listen, the water’s ghost. . .

— ‘Athens. The public has heard
the news with alarm; it is feared
a crisis is near. The prime
minister declared: “There is no more time. . .”
Take cyclamen. . . needles of pine. . .
the lily. . . needles of pine. . .
O woman. . .
— . . . is overwhelmingly stronger.
The war. . .’
               <span style="font-variant: small-caps">Soulmonger</span>.


<h4>      III</h4>
                                                         <i>The wreck ‘Thrush’</i>

‘This wood that cooled my forehead
at times when noon burned my veins
will flower in other hands. Take it. I’m giving it to you;
look, it’s wood from a lemon tree. . .’
                                                                  I heard the voice
as I was gazing at the sea trying to make out
a ship they’d sunk there years ago;
it was called ‘Thrush’, a small wreck; the masts,
broken, swayed at odd angles deep underwater, like tentacles,
or the memory of dreams, marking the hull:
vague mouth of some huge dead sea-monster
extinguished in the water. Calm spread all around.

And gradually, in turn, other voices followed,
whispers thin and thirsty
emerging from the other side of the sun, the dark side;
you might say they were asking to drink a drop of blood;
familiar voices, but I couldn’t distinguish one from the other.
And then the voice of the old man reached me; I felt it
falling into the heart of day,
quietly, as though motionless:
‘And if you condemn me to drink poison, I thank you.
Your law will be my law; how can I go
wandering from one foreign country to another, a rolling stone.
I prefer death.
Whose path is for the better only God knows.’

Countries of the sun yet you cannot face the sun.
Countries of men yet you cannot face man.

                                                                     <i>The light</i>

As the years go by
the judges who condemn you grow in number;
as the years go by and you converse with fewer voices,
you see the sun with different eyes:
you know that those who stayed behind were deceiving you
the delirium of flesh, the lovely dance
that ends in nakedness.
It’s as though, turning at night into an empty highway,
you suddenly see the eyes of an animal shine,
eyes already gone; so you feel your own eyes:
you gaze at the sun, then you’re lost in darkness.
The Doric chiton
that swayed like the mountains when your fingers touched it
is a marble figure in the light, but its head is in darkness.
And those who abandoned the stadium to take up arms
struck the obstinate marathon runner
and he saw the track sail in blood,
the world empty like the moon,
the gardens of victory wither:
you see them in the sun, behind the sun.
And the boys who dived from the bowsprits
go like spindles twisting still,
naked bodies plunging into black light
with a coin between the teeth, swimming still,
while the sun with golden needles sews
sails and wet wood and colours of the sea;
even now they’re going down obliquely
toward the pebbles on the sea floor,
white oil-flasks.

Light, angelic and black,
laughter of waves on the sea’s highways
tear-stained laughter,
the old suppliant sees you
as he moves to cross the invisible fields —
light mirrored in his blood,
the blood that gave birth to Eteocles and Polynices.
Day, angelic and black;
the brackish taste of woman that poisons the prisoner
emerges from the wave a cool branch adorned with drops.
Sing little Antigone, sing, O sing. . .
I’m not speaking to you about things past, I’m speaking about love;
adorn your hair with the sun’s thorns,
dark girl;
the heart of the Scorpion has set,
the tyrant in man has fled,
and all the daughters of the sea, Nereids, Graeae,
hurry toward the shimmering of the rising goddess:
whoever has never loved will love,
in the light;
                      and you find yourself
in a large house with many windows open
running from room to room, not knowing from where to look out first,
because the pine trees will vanish, and the mirrored mountains, and the chirping of birds
the sea will empty, shattered glass, from north and south
your eyes will empty of the light of day
the way the cicadas all together suddenly fall silent.</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem french">
<div class="title">Le Cygne</div>
<div class="author">Charles Baudelaire</div>
<div class="date">October 13, 2012</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="28">
Andromaque, je pense à vous! Ce petit fleuve,
Pauvre et triste miroir où jadis resplendit
L'immense majesté de vos douleurs de veuve,
Ce Simoïs menteur qui par vos pleurs grandit,

A fécondé soudain ma mémoire fertile,
Comme je traversais le nouveau Carrousel.
Le vieux Paris n'est plus (la forme d'une ville
Change plus vite, hélas! que le coeur d'un mortel);

Je ne vois qu'en esprit tout ce camp de baraques,
Ces tas de chapiteaux ébauchés et de fûts,
Les herbes, les gros blocs verdis par l'eau des flaques,
Et, brillant aux carreaux, le bric-à-brac confus.

Là s'étalait jadis une ménagerie;
Là je vis, un matin, à l'heure où sous les cieux
Froids et clairs le Travail s'éveille, où la voirie
Pousse un sombre ouragan dans l'air silencieux,

Un cygne qui s'était évadé de sa cage,
Et, de ses pieds palmés frottant le pavé sec,
Sur le sol raboteux traînait son blanc plumage.
Près d'un ruisseau sans eau la bête ouvrant le bec

Baignait nerveusement ses ailes dans la poudre,
Et disait, le coeur plein de son beau lac natal:
«Eau, quand donc pleuvras-tu? quand tonneras-tu, foudre?»
Je vois ce malheureux, mythe étrange et fatal,

Vers le ciel quelquefois, comme l'homme d'Ovide,
Vers le ciel ironique et cruellement bleu,
Sur son cou convulsif tendant sa tête avide
Comme s'il adressait des reproches à Dieu!</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem english">
<div class="title">Sailing to Byzantium</div>
<div class="author">William Butler Yeats</div>
<div class="date">November 16, 2012</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="32">
That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem english">
<div class="title">In a dark time</div>
<div class="author">Theodore Roethke</div>
<div class="date">March 26, 2013</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="24">
In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood—
A lord of nature weeping to a tree.
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

What’s madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.
That place among the rocks—is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is—
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is <i>I</i>?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem english">
<div class="title">Reluctance</div>
<div class="author">Robert Frost</div>
<div class="date">April 20, 2013</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="24">
Out through the fields and the woods
   And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
   And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
   And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground,
   Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
   And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
   When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
   No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
   The flowers of the witch hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
   But the feet question ‘Whither?’

Ah, when to the heart of man
   Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
   To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
   Of a love or a season?</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem french">
<div class="title">El Desdichado</div>
<div class="author">Gerard de Nerval</div>
<div class="date">September 11, 2013</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="14">
Je suis le Ténébreux, – le Veuf, – l’Inconsolé,
Le Prince d’Aquitaine à la Tour abolie:
Ma seule Etoile est morte, – et mon luth constellé
Porte le Soleil noir de la Mélancolie.

Dans la nuit du Tombeau, Toi qui m’as consolé,
Rends-moi le Pausilippe et la mer d’Italie,
La fleur qui plaisait tant à mon coeur désolé,
Et la treille où le Pampre à la Rose s’allie.

Suis-je Amour ou Phébus?… Lusignan ou Biron?
Mon front est rouge encor du baiser de la Reine;
J’ai rêvé dans la Grotte où nage la sirène…

Et j’ai deux fois vainqueur traversé l’Achéron:
Modulant tour à tour sur la lyre d’Orphée
Les soupirs de la Sainte et les cris de la Fée.</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem english">
<div class="title">somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond</div>
<div class="author">E.E. Cummings</div>
<div class="date">September 11, 2013</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="20">
somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem english">
<div class="title">I think I should have loved you presently</div>
<div class="author">Edna St. Vincent Millay</div>
<div class="date">May 2014</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="14">
I think I should have loved you presently,
And given in earnest words I flung in jest;
And lifted honest eyes for you to see,
And caught your hand against my cheek and breast;
And all my pretty follies flung aside
That won you to me, and beneath your gaze,
Naked of reticence and shorn of pride,
Spread like a chart my little wicked ways.
I, that had been to you, had you remained,
But one more waking from a recurrent dream,
Cherish no less the certain stakes I gained,
And walk your memory’s halls, austere, supreme,
A ghost in marble of a girl you knew
Who would have loved you in a day or two.</pre>
</div>


<div class="poem english">
<div class="title">Lycidas</div>
<div class="author">John Milton</div>
<div class="date">April 14, 2016</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="193">
<i>In this Monody the Author bewails a
learned Friend, unfortunatly drown'd in his Passage
from Chester on the Irish Seas, 1637. And by
occasion fortels the ruine of our corrupted
Clergy then in their height.</i>

Yet once more, O ye Laurels, and once more
Ye Myrtles brown, with Ivy never-sear,
I com to pluck your Berries harsh and crude,
And with forc'd fingers rude,
Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.
Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear,
Compels me to disturb your season due:
For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime,
Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer:
Who would not sing for Lycidas? he knew
Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme.
He must not flote upon his watry bear
Unwept, and welter to the parching wind,
Without the meed of som melodious tear.

Begin then, Sisters of the sacred well,
That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring,
Begin, and somwhat loudly sweep the string.
Hence with denial vain, and coy excuse,
So may som gentle Muse
With lucky words favour my destin'd Urn,
And as he passes turn,
And bid fair peace be to my sable shrowd.
For we were nurst upon the self-same hill,
Fed the same flock, by fountain, shade, and rill.

Together both, ere the high Lawns appear'd
Under the opening eye-lids of the morn,
We drove a field, and both together heard
What time the Gray-fly winds her sultry horn,
Batt'ning our flocks with the fresh dews of night,
Oft till the Star that rose, at Ev'ning, bright
Toward Heav'ns descent had slop'd his westering wheel.
Mean while the Rural ditties were not mute,
Temper'd to th' Oaten Flute,
Rough Satyrs danc'd, and Fauns with clov'n heel,
From the glad sound would not be absent long,
And old Damœtas lov'd to hear our song.

But O the heavy change, now thou art gon,
Now thou art gon, and never must return!
Thee Shepherd, thee the Woods, and desert Caves,
With wilde Thyme and the gadding Vine o'regrown,
And all their echoes mourn.
The Willows, and the Hazle Copses green,
Shall now no more be seen,
Fanning their joyous Leaves to thy soft layes.
As killing as the Canker to the Rose,
Or Taint-worm to the weanling Herds that graze,
Or Frost to Flowers, that their gay wardrop wear,
When first the White thorn blows;
Such, Lycidas, thy loss to Shepherds ear.

Where were ye Nymphs when the remorseless deep
Clos'd o're the head of your lov'd Lycidas?
For neither were ye playing on the steep,
Where your old Bards, the famous Druids ly,
Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high,
Nor yet where Deva spreads her wisard stream:
Ay me, I fondly dream!
Had ye bin there — for what could that have don?
What could the Muse her self that Orpheus bore,
The Muse her self, for her inchanting son
Whom Universal nature did lament,
When by the rout that made the hideous roar,
His goary visage down the stream was sent,
Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore.

Alas! What boots it with uncessant care
To tend the homely slighted Shepherds trade,
And strictly meditate the thankles Muse,
Were it not better don as others use,
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
Or with the tangles of Neæra's hair?
Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise
(That last infirmity of Noble mind)
To scorn delights, and live laborious dayes;
But the fair Guerdon when we hope to find,
And think to burst out into sudden blaze,
Comes the blind Fury with th' abhorred shears,
And slits the thin spun life. But not the praise,
Phœbus repli'd, and touch'd my trembling ears;
Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil,
Nor in the glistering foil
Set off to th' world, nor in broad rumour lies,
But lives and spreds aloft by those pure eyes,
And perfet witnes of all judging Jove;
As he pronounces lastly on each deed,
Of so much fame in Heav'n expect thy meed.

O Fountain Arethuse, and thou honour'd flood,
Smooth-sliding Mincius, crown'd with vocall reeds,
That strain I heard was of a higher mood:
But now my Oate proceeds,
And listens to the Herald of the Sea
That came in Neptune's plea,
He ask'd the Waves, and ask'd the Fellon winds,
What hard mishap hath doom'd this gentle swain?
And question'd every gust of rugged wings
That blows from off each beaked Promontory,
They knew not of his story,
And sage Hippotades their answer brings,
That not a blast was from his dungeon stray'd,
The Ayr was calm, and on the level brine,
Sleek Panope with all her sisters play'd.
It was that fatall and perfidious Bark
Built in th' eclipse, and rigg'd with curses dark,
That sunk so low that sacred head of thine.

Next Camus, reverend Sire, went footing slow,
His Mantle hairy, and his Bonnet sedge,
Inwrought with figures dim, and on the edge
Like to that sanguine flower inscrib'd with woe.
Ah! Who hath reft (quoth he) my dearest pledge?
Last came, and last did go,
The Pilot of the Galilean lake,
Two massy Keyes he bore of metals twain,
(The Golden opes, the Iron shuts amain)
He shook his Miter'd locks, and stern bespake,
How well could I have spar'd for thee young swain,
Anow of such as for their bellies sake,
Creep and intrude, and climb into the fold?
Of other care they little reck'ning make,
Then how to scramble at the shearers feast,
And shove away the worthy bidden guest.
Blind mouthes! that scarce themselves know how to hold
A Sheep-hook, or have learn'd ought els the least
That to the faithfull Herdmans art belongs!
What recks it them? What need they? They are sped;
And when they list, their lean and flashy songs
Grate on their scrannel Pipes of wretched straw,
The hungry Sheep look up, and are not fed,
But swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw,
Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread:
Besides what the grim Woolf with privy paw
Daily devours apace, and nothing sed,
But that two-handed engine at the door,
Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.

Return Alpheus, the dread voice is past,
That shrunk thy streams; Return Sicilian Muse,
And call the Vales, and bid them hither cast
Their Bels, and Flourets of a thousand hues.
Ye valleys low where the milde whispers use,
Of shades and wanton winds, and gushing brooks,
On whose fresh lap the swart Star sparely looks,
Throw hither all your quaint enameld eyes,
That on the green terf suck the honied showres,
And purple all the ground with vernal flowres.
Bring the rathe Primrose that forsaken dies.
The tufted Crow-toe, and pale Jasmine,
The white Pink, and the Pansie freakt with jeat,
The glowing Violet.
<span class="link" data-link="musk-rose">The Musk-rose, and the well attir'd Woodbine,</span>
With Cowslips wan that hang the pensive hed,
And every flower that sad embroidery wears:
Bid Amaranthus all his beauty shed,
And Daffadillies fill their cups with tears,
To strew the Laureat Herse where Lycid lies.
For so to interpose a little ease,
Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise.
Ay me! Whilst thee the shores and sounding Seas
Wash far away, where ere thy bones are hurld,
Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides,
Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide
Visit'st the bottom of the monstrous world;
Or whether thou to our moist vows deny'd,
Sleep'st by the fable of Bellerus old,
Where the great vision of the guarded Mount
Looks toward Namancos and Bayona's hold;
Look homeward Angel now, and melt with ruth.
And, O ye Dolphins, waft the haples youth.

Weep no more, woful Shepherds weep no more,
For Lycidas your sorrow is not dead,
Sunk though he be beneath the watry floar,
So sinks the day-star in the Ocean bed,
And yet anon repairs his drooping head,
And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled Ore,
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky:
So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high,
Through the dear might of him that walk'd the waves;
Where other groves, and other streams along,
With Nectar pure his oozy Lock's he laves,
And hears the unexpressive nuptiall Song,
In the blest Kingdoms meek of joy and love.
There entertain him all the Saints above,
In solemn troops, and sweet Societies
That sing, and singing in their glory move,
And wipe the tears for ever from his eyes.
Now Lycidas the Shepherds weep no more;
Hence forth thou art the Genius of the shore,
In thy large recompense, and shalt be good
To all that wander in that perilous flood.

Thus sang the uncouth Swain to th' Okes and rills,
While the still morn went out with Sandals gray,
He touch'd the tender stops of various Quills,
With eager thought warbling his Dorick lay:
And now the Sun had stretch'd out all the hills,
And now was dropt into the Western bay;
At last he rose, and twitch'd his Mantle blew:
To morrow to fresh Woods, and Pastures new.</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem english">
<div class="title">Kubla Khan</div>
<div class="author">Samuel Taylor Coleridge</div>
<div class="date">February 21, 2017</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="54">
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan 
    A stately pleasure-dome decree:
  Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
  Through caverns measureless to man 
    Down to a sunless sea.
  So twice five miles of fertile ground  
  With walls and towers were girdled round:  
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills 
Where blossom'd many an incense-bearing tree;  
And here were forests ancient as the hills, 
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery. 
 
But O, that deep romantic chasm which slanted  
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!  
<span class="link" data-link="kipling" title="kipling">A savage place! as holy and enchanted  
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted 
By woman wailing for her demon-lover! </span>
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,  
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing, 
A mighty fountain momently was forced; 
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst 
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail, 
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:  
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever  
It flung up momently the sacred river.   
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion  
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,  
Then reach'd the caverns measureless to man,   
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:  
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far  
Ancestral voices prophesying war!  
 
  The shadow of the dome of pleasure   
    Floated midway on the waves;   
  Where was heard the mingled measure  
    From the fountain and the caves.   
It was a miracle of rare device, 
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!   

  A damsel with a dulcimer   
    In a vision once I saw:  
  It was an Abyssinian maid,   
    And on her dulcimer she play'd, 
  Singing of Mount Abora.  
  Could I revive within me,
  Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
  And close your eyes with holy dread,
  For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem english">
<div class="title">Epitaph on a Tyrant</div>
<div class="author">W.H. Auden</div>
<div class="date">March 22, 2017</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="6">
Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem english">
<div class="title">Stool</div>
<div class="author">Zbigniew Herbert</div>
<div class="date">October 25, 2017</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="19">
in the end one cannot keep this love concealed
tiny quadruped with oaken legs
o skin coarse and fresh beyond expression
everyday object eyeless but with a face
on which the wrinkles of the grain mark a ripe judgment
gray little mule most patient of mules
its hair has fallen out from too much fasting
and only a tuft of wooden bristle
can my hand feel when i stroke it in the morning

do you know my darling they were charlatans
who said: the hand lies the eye
lies when it touches shapes that are empty

they were bad people envious of things
they wanted to trap the world with the bait of denial

how to express to you my gratitude wonder
you come always to the call of the eye
with great immobility explaining by dumb-signs
to a sorry intellect: we are genuine
at last the fidelity of things opens our eyes</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem english">
<div class="title">The Lake Isle of Innisfree</div>
<div class="author">William Butler Yeats</div>
<div class="date">March 16, 2018</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="12">
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem latin">
<div class="title">Carmen 101</div>
<div class="author">Catullus</div>
<div class="date">May 1, 2018</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="10">
Multas per gentes et multa per aequora vectus,
  advenio has miseras, frater, ad inferias,
ut te postremo donarem munere mortis,
  et mutam nequiquam adloquerer cinerem.
Quandoquidem fortuna mihi tete abstulit ipsum,
  heu miser indigne frater adempte mihi.
Nunc tamen interea haec, prisco quae more parentum
  tradita sunt tristi munere ad inferias,
accipe fraterno multum manantia fletu,
  atque in perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale.</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem english">
<div class="title">To Autumn</div>
<div class="author">John Keats</div>
<div class="date">May 4, 2018</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="33">
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, 
   Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; 
Conspiring with him how to load and bless 
   With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; 
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees, 
   And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; 
      To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells 
   With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, 
And still more, later flowers for the bees, 
Until they think warm days will never cease, 
      For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells. 

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? 
   Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find 
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, 
   Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; 
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep, 
   Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook 
      Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers: 
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep 
   Steady thy laden head across a brook; 
   Or by a cyder-press, with patient look, 
      Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours. 

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they? 
   Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,— 
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, 
   And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; 
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn 
   Among the river sallows, borne aloft 
      Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; 
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; 
   Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft 
   The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft; 
      And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem english">
<div class="title">To Helen</div>
<div class="author">Edgar Allan Poe</div>
<div class="date">August 1, 2018</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="15">
Helen, thy beauty is to me
    Like those Nicéan barks of yore,
That gently, o&rsquo;er a perfumed sea,
    The weary, way-worn wanderer bore
    To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,
    Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
    To the glory that was Greece,
    And the grandeur that was Rome.

Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche
    How statue-like I see thee stand,
The agate lamp within thy hand!
    Ah, Psyche, from the regions which
    Are Holy-Land!</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem english">
<div class="title">Sonnet 55</div>
<div class="author">William Shakespeare</div>
<div class="date">March 19, 2019</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="14">
Not marble, nor the gilded <span class="link" data-link="monument">monuments</span>
Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme;
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone, besmear'd with sluttish time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry,
Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.
'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
    So, till the judgment that yourself arise,
    You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes.</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem english">
<div class="title">Sonnet 38</div>
<div class="author">William Shakespeare</div>
<div class="date">March 20, 2019</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="14">
How can my Muse want subject to invent,
While thou dost breathe, that pour'st into my verse
Thine own sweet argument, too excellent
For every vulgar paper to rehearse?
O, give thyself the thanks, if aught in me
Worthy perusal stand against thy sight;
For who's so dumb that cannot write to thee,
When thou thyself dost give invention light?
Be thou the tenth Muse, ten times more in worth
Than those old nine which rhymers invocate;
And he that calls on thee, let him bring forth
Eternal numbers to outlive long date.
    If my slight Muse do please these curious days,
    The pain be mine, but thine shall be the praise.</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem latin">
<div class="title">Carmen 30</div>
<div class="author">Horace</div>
<div class="date">May 8, 2019</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="16">
Exegi <span class="link" data-link="monument">monumentum</span> aere perennius
regalique situ pyramidum altius,
quod non imber edax, non aquilo impotens
possit diruere aut innumerabilis
annorum series et fuga temporum.
non omnis moriar multaque pars mei
vitabit Libitinam; usque ego postera
crescam laude recens, dum Capitolium
scandet cum tacita virgine pontifex.
dicar, qua violens obstrepit Aufidus
et qua pauper aquae Daunus agrestium
regnavit populorum, ex humili potens,
princeps Aeolium carmen ad Italos
deduxisse modos. sume superbiam
quaesitam meritis et mihi Delphica
lauro cinge volens, Melpomene, comam.</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem romanian">
<div class="title">Şi dacă</div>
<div class="author">Mihai Eminescu</div>
<div class="date">August 21, 2020</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="12">
Şi dacă ramuri bat în geam
Şi se cutremur plopii,
E ca în minte să te am
Şi-ncet să te apropii.

Şi dacă stele bat în lac
Adâncu-i luminându-l,
E ca durerea mea s-o-mpac
Înseninându-mi gândul.

Şi dacă norii deşi se duc
De iese-n luciu luna,
E ca aminte să-mi aduc
De tine-ntotdeauna.</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem english">
<div class="title">Ode on a Grecian Urn</div>
<div class="author">John Keats</div>
<div class="date">September 23, 2025</div>
  <pre class="text" data-lines="50">
Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,
    Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
    A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape
    Of deities or mortals, or of both,
        In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
    What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
        What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
    Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on:
Not to the sensual ear, but more endear'd,
    Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
    Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
        Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;
    She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
        For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
    Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unweariéd,
    For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! More happy, happy love!
    For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
        For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
    That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,
        A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
    To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
    And all her silken flanks with garlands dress'd?
What little town, by river or sea shore,
    Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
        Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore 
    Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
        Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
    Of marble men and maidens overwrought
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
    Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
    When old age shall this generation waste,
        Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st:
    “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
        Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”
</pre>
</div>

<div class="poem spanish note">
  <h5 id="amiga-mia" style="margin-top: 3rem">
    * Note on G.G. Marquez
  </h5>
  <p style="font-size: 0.8rem">
    It appears that the poem as originally written was as follows, printed in “Dos sonetos atribuídos a Gabriel García Márquez”, Donald McGrady, <em>Hispanic Review</em>, Vol. 51, No. 4 (Autumn 1983). The version above, though widespread, cannot be attested in the written record. It is possible that it is a later version. 
  </p>
  <div>
    <pre class="text" style="margin-top: 20px">
      Si alguien llama a tu puerta, amiga mía,
      si algo en tu sangre late y no reposa,
      y en su tallo de agua temblorosa
      el surtidor florece su alegría,
  
      si alguien llama a tu puerta y todavía
      te sobra tiempo para ser hermosa,
      si aún existe la arteria de la rosa
      para tomarte el pulso, poesía,
  
      si alguien llama a tu puerta una mañana
      sonora de palomas y campanas
      y aún crees en el dolor y en la alegría,
  
      si aún la vida es verdad y el beso existe,
      si alguien llama a tu puerta y estás triste,
      abre, que es el amor, amiga mía.
    </pre>
  </div>
</div>

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