It is the hour

It is the hour when from the boughs
The nightingale's high note is heard;
It is the hour -- when lover's vows
Seem sweet in every whisper'd word;
And gentle winds and waters near,
Make music to the lonely ear.
Each flower the dews have lightly wet,
And in the sky the stars are met,
And on the wave is deeper blue,
And on the leaf a browner hue,
And in the Heaven that clear obscure
So softly dark, and darkly pure,
That follows the decline of day
As twilight melts beneath the moon away.

-Lord George Gordon Byron

On a beautiful landscape

Beautiful landscape! I could look on thee
For hours,--unmindful of the storm and strife,
And mingled murmurs of tumultuous life.
Here, all is still as fair--the stream, the tree,
The wood, the sunshine on the bank: no tear
No thought of time's swift wing, or closing night
Which comes to steal away the long sweet light,
No sighs of sad humanity are here.

Here is no tint of mortal change--the day
Beneath whose light the dog and peasant-boy
Gambol with look, and almost bark, of joy--
Still seems, though centuries have passed, to stay.
Then gaze again, that shadowed scenes may teach
Lessons of peace and love, beyond all speech.

-William Lisle Bowles

The Lagoon

WE crept through reed-beds wet with dew,
The sun went down in gold;
Hoisting her round triumphantly,
The moon showed red and bold.
The unseen sea upon our right
In splendid turmoil broke;
The spindrift, driving ceaselessly,
Was vague as drifting smoke.
The grass-tree lances spiked our flesh,
The brushed ferns wet our knees;
The she-oaks, crooning steadily,
Stirred in the late salt breeze.
Thus, pushing on with velvet tread
Beneath the lavish moon,
We saw, spread wide, spread gloriously,
All gold, the still lagoon.
And on its breast (a picture this
Recalling old-time Dons
And Spanish galleons at sea)
A squadron of black swans.

-Roderic Quinn

Fragment: A Wanderer

He wanders, like a day-appearing dream,
Through the dim wildernesses of the mind;
Through desert woods and tracts, which seem
Like ocean, homeless, boundless, unconfined.

-Percy Bysshe Shelley

Flicka av pärlemor

Kärleken, den är stor,
tanken så vag;
Flicka av pärlemor,
blänker idag.
Och jag ser att du ler,
men hjärtat säger Nej!
Kärleken, den är stor och handlar om dej.

Högt över det man vet,
svävar envar;
drömmarnas hemlighet
vill stanna kvar.
Och du finns där jag finns,
men vägen är så lång.
Högt över det man vet bor kärlekens sång.

Vi är två lika barn
och från samma spröda tid.
Vävda av samma garn
som i längtan står bredvid:

Sommaren är så kort,
vintern så lång.
Våren har runnit bort,
höst är på gång.
Men jag får när du går
röra vid din kind.
Sommaren är så kort och kärlek är blind.

Flicka av pärlemor,
Var blev du av?
Längtan som var så stor,
blicken du gav?
Fast min glöd är så röd
är den allt för svag;
Flicka av pärlemor, din lyskraft och jag.

-Göran Hansson

Någon gång ska vi dö

Någon gång ska vi dö
du och jag
Alla människor ska dö
och alla djur
och alla träd ska dö
och blommorna på marken
men
inte allihop på samma gång
utan då och då
så att det knappast märks

-Barbro Lindgren

Det långa metspöets rev slår en båge i vinden
en lågkullad stråhatt och en regnmantel av gräs
skymtar bakom den späda vassen
det strida vårregnet döljer fiskaren för vår syn
berget på den motsatta stranden är höljt i flodens dimma

-Ouyang Xiu

Näcken

Kvällens gullmoln fästet kransa.
Älvorna på ängen dansa,
och den bladbekrönta Näcken
gigan rör i silverbäcken.

Liten pilt bland strandens pilar
i violens ånga vilar,
klangen hör från källans vatten,
ropar i den stilla natten:

»Arma gubbe! varför spela?
Kan det smärtorna fördela?
Fritt du skog och mark må liva,
skall Guds barn dock aldrig bliva!

Paradisets månskensnätter,
Edens blomsterkrönta slätter,
Ljusets Änglar i det höga —
aldrig skådar dem ditt öga.»

Tårar Gubbens anlet skölja,
ned han dyker i sin bölja.
Gigan tystnar. Aldrig Näcken
spelar mer i silverbäcken.»

-Erik Johan Stagnelius

Det värsta i världen
är att växa så stor
att man lämnar barnet
bakom sig.
Då vandrar man plötsligt
helt allena
utan någon vid handen
och skriker om natten
efter det förlorade -
men man har förlorat
sig själv.

-Elmer Diktonius

A choice

THE flood of utter change is loosed. A space
Is ours yet, for its coming to prepare.
Shall we build dams with cautious, clumsy care,
Or stand with idle hands and frightened face,
And so be whirled all broken from our place,
And perish with the dams we builded there?
Or shall we dig a broad, deep channel, where
Most fields may feel the flood's benign embrace?


Thus turned 'twill be a calm majestic flood
Of plenty, peace, and fertilising power,
Whose banks fresh flowers of love and joy shall deck.
Oppose it: at the inevitable hour,
Tumultuous, black with ruin, red with blood,
'Twill come--and you shall have no chance but wreck!

-Edith Nesbit

Sonnet 22

My glass shall not persuade me I am old,
So long as youth and thou are of one date;
But when in thee time's furrows I behold,
Then look I death my days should expiate.
For all that beauty that doth cover thee
Is but the seemly raiment of my heart,
Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me:
How can I then be elder than thou art?
O, therefore, love, be of thyself so wary
As I, not for myself, but for thee will;
Bearing thy heart, which I will keep so chary
As tender nurse her babe from faring ill.
Presume not on thy heart when mine is slain;
Thou gavest me thine, not to give back again.

-William Shakespeare

Full Moon

Above the tower -- a lone, twice-sized moon.
On the cold river passing night-filled homes,
It scatters restless gold across the waves.
On mats, it shines richer than silken gauze.

Empty peaks, silence: among sparse stars,
Not yet flawed, it drifts. Pine and cinnamon
Spreading in my old garden . . . All light,
All ten thousand miles at once in its light!

-Tu Fu

Under the image of Buddha

Under the image of Buddha
all these spring flowers
seem a little tiresome.

-Kobayashi Issa

A something in a summer's day

A something in a summer's Day
As slow her flambeaux burn away
Which solemnizes me.

A something in a summer's noon—
A depth—an Azure—a perfume—
Transcending ecstasy.

And still within a summer's night
A something so transporting bright
I clap my hands to see—

Then veil my too inspecting face
Lets such a subtle—shimmering grace
Flutter too far for me—

The wizard fingers never rest—
The purple brook within the breast
Still chafes it narrow bed—

Still rears the East her amber Flag—
Guides still the sun along the Crag
His Caravan of Red—

So looking on—the night—the morn
Conclude the wonder gay—
And I meet, coming thro' the dews
Another summer's Day!

-Emily Dickinson

Requiem

Where faces are hueless, where eyelids are dewless,
Where passion is silent and hearts never crave;
Where thought hath no theme, and where sleep hath no dream,
In patience and peace thou art gone-to thy grave!
Gone where no warning can wake thee to morning,
Dead tho' a thousand hands stretch'd out to save.

Thou cam'st to us sighing, and singing and dying,
How could it be otherwise, fair as thou wert?
Placidly fading, and sinking and shading
At last to that shadow, the latest desert;
Wasting and waning, but still, still remaining.
Alas for the hand that could deal the death-hurt!

The Summer that brightens, the Winter that whitens,
The world and its voices, the sea and the sky,
The bloom of creation, the tie of relation,
All-all is a blank to thine ear and thine eye;
The ear may not listen, the eye may not glisten,
Nevermore waked by a smile or a sigh.

The tree that is rootless must ever be fruitless;
And thou art alone in thy death and thy birth;
No last loving token of wedded love broken,
No sign of thy singleness, sweetness and worth;
Lost as the flower that is drowned in the shower,
Fall'n like a snowflake to melt in the earth.

-George Meredith

Den långa sommarn

Näckens dotter dyker i vassen,
tyngd av kärleksveckornas brand,
men på murarna tänder krassen
höstligt grant sin löpeldsgirland.

Innan den första askan kommer
och förtager sommarens glöd,
låt oss gå under naken himmel,
stilla blå och dallrande röd.

Låt oss gå som i solens tempel,
klädda i vitt, med stilla steg,
tyst försjunkna i gudens egen
flammande dikt på list och teg.

Innan snart var bokstav av skriften
driver i stormen lösryckt och vill,
låt oss gå där Brinnande kärlek
tryckt i arkets hörn sitt sigill.

Än en försenad turkisk vallmo
lyfter ur svedda blad sitt bloss.
Vi med de långsamt svalnande hjärtan,
än är tid och sommar för oss.

Kom i kvällen! Snårets taverna
bjuder ett sista rus av jasmin.
Här är skumt, men i himlens lunetter
skymta ljus ur kornblå gardin.

Luftens döttrar väva sitt mörka,
vattnets döttrar sitt vita flor.
Eldens döttrar rusta sitt fyrverk
till en högtid, gruvlig och stor.

Böj ditt huvud! Kanske däröver
svävar i nästa minut en egg,
och på svarta tapeter skrivas
tecken som förr på Belsasars vägg.

Innan den långa sommarn lyktar
och dess glans förbrinner som blår,
innan det korta livet flyktar
och dess enda sommar förgår...

-Erik Axel Karlfeldt

Memory of sun

Memory of sun seeps from the heart.
Grass grows yellower.
Faintly if at all the early snowflakes
Hover, hover.

Water becoming ice is slowing in
The narrow channels.
Nothing at all will happen here again,
Will ever happen.

Against the sky the willow spreads a fan
The silk's torn off.
Maybe it's better I did not become
Your wife.

Memory of sun seeps from the heart.
What is it? -- Dark?
Perhaps! Winter will have occupied us
In the night

-Anna Akhmatova

A caution to everybody

Consider the auk;
Becoming extinct because he forgot how to fly, and could only walk.
Consider man, who may well become extinct
Because he forgot how to walk and learned how to fly before he thinked.

-Ogden Nash

Before the snow

The winter is upon us, not the snow,
The hills are etched on the horizon bare,
The skies are iron grey, a bitter air,
The meagre cloudlets shudder to and fro.
One yellow leaf the listless wind doth blow,
Like some strange butterfly, unclassed and rare.
Your footsteps ring in frozen alleys, where
The black trees seem to shiver as you go.

Beyond lie church and steeple, with their old
And rusty vanes that rattle as they veer,
A sharper gust would shake them from their hold,
Yet up that path, in summer of the year,
And past that melancholy pile we strolled
To pluck wild strawberries, with merry cheer.

-Andrew Lang

A clear midnight

THIS is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,
Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,
Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best.
Night, sleep, and the stars.

-Walt Whitman

Sonnet 81

Or I shall live your epitaph to make,
Or you survive when I in earth am rotten;
From hence your memory death cannot take,
Although in me each part will be forgotten.
Your name from hence immortal life shall have,
Though I, once gone, to all the world must die:
The earth can yield me but a common grave,
When you entombed in men's eyes shall lie.
Your monument shall be my gentle verse,
Which eyes not yet created shall o'er-read,
And tongues to be your being shall rehearse
When all the breathers of this world are dead;
You still shall live--such virtue hath my pen--
Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men.

-William Shakespeare

The Mountains

The Mountains
What ails you, Ocean, that nor near nor far,
Find you a bourne to ease your burdened breast,
But throughout time inexorable are
Never at rest?

With foaming mouth and fluttering crest you leap
Impatiently towards never-shifting beach,
Then wheel, and hurry to some distant deep
Beyond your reach.

Nor golden sands nor sheltering combes can slake
Your fretful longing for some shore unknown,
And through your shrineless pilgrimage you make
Unending moan.

The Sea
Nimbused by sunlight or enwreathed in snow,
Lonely you stand, and loftily you soar,
While I immeasurably ebb and flow
From shore to shore.

I see the palm-dates mellowing in the sun,
I hear the snow-fed torrents bound and brawl,
And if, where'er I range, content with none,
I know them all.

Inward the ice-floes where the walrus whet
Their pendent tusks, I sweep and swirl my way,
Or dally where 'neath dome and minaret
The dolphins play.

Beneath or bountiful or bitter sky
If I myself can never be at rest,
I lullaby the winds until they lie
Husht on my breast.

The Mountains
Till they awake, and from your feeble lap
Whirl through the air, and in their rage rejoice:
Then you with levin-bolt and thunderclap
Mingle your voice.

But I their vain insanity survey,
And on my silent brow I let them beat.
What is there it is worth my while to say
To storm or sleet?

I hear the thunder rumbling through the rain,
I feel the lightning flicker round my head;
The blizzards buffet me, but I remain
Dumb as the dead!

Urged by the goad of stern taskmaster Time,
The Seasons come and go, the years roll round.
I watch them from my solitude sublime,
Uttering no sound.

For hate and love I have nor love nor hate;
To be alone is not to be forlorn:
The only armour against pitiless Fate
Is pitying scorn.

The Sea
Yet do I sometimes seem to hear afar
A tumult in your dark ravines as though
You weary of your loneliness, and are
Wrestling with woe.

The Mountains
When the white wolves of Winter to their lair
Throng, and yet deep and deeper sleeps the snow,
I loose the avalanche, to shake and scare
The vale below.

And, when its sprouting hopes and brimming glee
Are bound and buried in a death-white shroud,
Then at the thought that I entombed can be,
I laugh aloud.

The Sea
I grieve with grief, at anguish I repine,
I dirge the keel the hurricane destroys:
For all the sorrows of the world are mine,
And all its joys.

And when there is no space 'twixt surf and sky,
And all the universe seems cloud and wave,
It is the immitigable wind, not I,
That scoops men's grave.

I wonder how the blast can hear them moan
For pity, yet keep deaf unto their prayers.
I have too many sorrows of my own,
Not to feel theirs.

And when the season of sweet joy comes round,
My bosom to their rapture heaves and swells;
And closer still I creep to catch the sound
Of wedding bells.

I see the children digging in the sand,
I hear the sinewy mariners carouse,
And lovers in the moonlight, hand-in-hand,
Whispering their vows.

You in your lofty loneliness disdain
Suffering below and comfort from above.
The sweetest thing in all the world is pain
Consoled by Love.

-Alfred Austin

"Cities and Thrones and Powers"

Cities and Thrones and Powers,
Stand in Time's eye,
Almost as long as flowers,
Which daily die:
But, as new buds put forth
To glad new men,
Out of the spent and unconsidered Earth,
The Cities rise again.

This season's Daffodil,
She never hears,
What change, what chance, what chill,
Cut down last year's;
But with bold countenance,
And knowledge small,
Esteems her seven days' continuance,
To be perpetual.

So Time that is o'er -kind,
To all that be,
Ordains us e'en as blind,
As bold as she:
That in our very death,
And burial sure,
Shadow to shadow, well persuaded, saith,
"See how our works endure!"

-Rudyard Kipling

Hur lätt bli människornas kinder heta

Hur lätt bli människornas kinder heta!
De döma snabba, fast de litet veta,
de många rösterna, som hjärtan mäta.
Men i vart hjärta finns en dörr med lås,
ett hemligt rum, vars nyckel ingen finner,
och oljan, vilden i dess lampor brinner,
är hemligheter som med oss förgås.
I nyckelhålets strimma på vår väg
vi röra oss och vakna upp och somna.
Hon leder oss, och långt i fjärran komna
den strimman lyser våra sista steg.

-Verner von Heidenstam

On the sea

It keeps eternal whisperings around
Desolate shores, and with its mighty swell
Gluts twice ten thousand Caverns, till the spell
Of Hecate leaves them their old shadowy sound.
Often 'tis in such gentle temper found,
That scarcely will the very smallest shell
Be moved for days from where it sometime fell.
When last the winds of Heaven were unbound.
Oh, ye! who have your eyeballs vexed and tired,
Feast them upon the wideness of the Sea;
Oh ye! whose ears are dinned with uproar rude,
Or fed too much with cloying melody---
Sit ye near some old Cavern's Mouth and brood,
Until ye start, as if the sea nymphs quired!

-John Keats

Rain has fallen all the day

Rain has fallen all the day.
O come among the laden trees:
The leaves lie thick upon the way
Of memories.

Staying a little by the way
Of memories shall we depart.
Come, my beloved, where I may
Speak to your heart.

-James Joyce

Confessions

What is he buzzing in my ears?
‘Now that I come to die,
Do I view the world as a vale of tears?’
Ah, reverend sir, not I!

What I viewed there once, what I view again
Where the physic bottles stand
On the table’s edge,―is a suburb lane,
With a wall to my bedside hand.

That land sloped, much as the bottles do,
From a house you could descry
O’er the garden-wall : is the curtain blue
Or green to a healthy eye?

To mine, it serves for the old June weather
Blue above lane and wall;
And that farthest bottle labeled ‘Ether’
Is the house o’ertopping all.

At a terrace, somewhere near the stopper,
There watched for me, one June,
A girl : I know, sir, it’s improper,
My poor mind’s out of tune.

Only, there was a way . . . you crept
Close by the side, to dodge
Eyes in the house, two eyes except :
They styled their house ‘The Lodge.’

What right had a lounger up their lane?
But, by creeping very close,
With the good wall’s help,―their eyes might strain
And stretch themselves to Oes,

Yet never catch her and me together,
As she left the attic, there,
By the rim of the bottle labeled ‘Ether’,
And stole from stair to stair,

And stood by the rose-wreathed gate. Alas,
We loved, sir―used to meet :
How sad and bad and mad it was―
But then, how it was sweet!

-Robert Browning

Vid myren

Över myren mörknade kvällens skugga,
tyst och töcknigt och tomt var allt.
Blygrå molnvarv upphörde ej att dugga
silregn, ljudlöst och isigt kallt.

Ingen enslig en eller grönklädd tuva,
ingen kulle, av ljungris klädd,
störde dödens färg, som sig lagt att ruva
på den sumpiga mossans bädd.

Kretsande kring på regntunga vingar irrar
- ensam - svulten - en hök omkring.
Skogen, mörk och stum, ifrån dunklet stirrar
över tomrummets ingenting.

Blott i väster skymtar ännu den matta
sista resten av dagern fram
över klippans kala, av regnet glatta,
aldrig mossöverväxta kam.

Här är stilla vila för trötta tankar,
här kan grämelsen andas fritt,
icke störd av hoppet, som utan ankar
styr, där livsvimlets skum går vitt.

Här kan nedbränd lidelse smärtsamt kyla
heta askan i nattkall vind,
här kan ångern sorgset i skymning skyla
skammens rodnad på avtärd kind.

Här kan sinnet slita det sista bandet,
som vid sorgen och livet band,
här går vägen fram till det skumma landet,
till det eviga intets land.

-Gustaf Fröding

Inspiration

I WANDERED in the enchanted wood,
And as I wandered there, I sang
A song I never understood,
Though sweet the music rang.

I held a lily white and fair,
Its perfume was a song divine,
A song like moonlight and clear air,
No rose-hued cloud like mine.

Beneath pale moon and wind-winged skies
My lips were dumb as one drew near,
Folded warm wings across my eyes
And whispered in my ear.


He left a flame-flower in my hand,
And bade me sing as heretofore
The song I could not understand;
But I can sing no more.


His secret seals my dumb lips fast,
My lily withered 'neath his wing;
But now I understand at last
The song I used to sing.

-Edith Nesbit

406

I let go the autumn
at the edge of the broad sky,
among the fleeting clouds

-Fujiwara no Tameie

Fjällstorm

På dörren famla tunga, grova nävar,
och axlar bända hårt mot kojans knut --
bort, gråa bur, där mänskor lyssna ut
den stora natt då jordens hjärta bävar!

Nu sitta fjällens tystnadsdigra troll
och sjunga mässa mellan skilda toppar,
och molnen störta fram som svarta kroppar
och sopa marken med sin mantelfåll.

Hör öknens röst! Ej dån av upprört vatten
den bär, ej gny och brus av kvalda träd.
Blott dvärgbjörksrisets kvidan strilar späd,
ohjälpligt drunknande, i böljenatten.

Hör ödemarkens omängt äkta röst!
Nu öppnar jorden sina innandömen
och suckar ut den långa ångestdrömmen
från alla tusen år av enslig höst.

Våtögda lappdräng, öka spisens trave
av låga skogars knotigt vridna ved!
Vid offerlågan vill jag sjunka ned
som till en samisk sabbat på min lave.

Nu vill jag gråta, som jag aldrig grät,
all andaktsmättad sorg från unga tider,
ty lidelsernas mörka konung rider
förbi min dörr i naket majestät.

-Erik Axel Karlfeldt