诗 · CONTENT CATEGORY
World poetry
Read poetry across languages and traditions, with authors, source editions and reviewed translations kept distinct.
136 reviewed public itemsA Farewell to the World
The speaker bids a false world good night, recounts how it abused his early years and rewarded rumour, envy and ignorance, and resolves to bear age, sickness and misfortune with strengths kept at home rather than seek peace by wandering.
The Noble Balm
Writing to a friend whose wound is already healing under better care, the speaker sends instead a moral medicine folded in the letter: having won honour in one full action, the friend should now rein in his hand and hold his fame reverently.
On Elizabeth L. H.
An epitaph stops the passing reader, states that the stone covers as much beauty and virtue as could die, asks that any fault stay buried, and withholds the second name so that only "Elizabeth" is spoken.
On Salathiel Pavy
An epitaph asks readers to weep for a boy of scarcely thirteen who had already spent three years as the stage's finest performer, and claims that the Fates, deceived by how truly he played old men, took him by mistake and now cannot get him back from Heaven.
Song
A list of impossible errands—catching a falling star, hearing mermaids sing—leads to the claim that no woman is both true and fair, and that even one reported as true would have turned false before the speaker could reach her.
The Ecstasy
Two lovers sit motionless on a violet-topped bank with hands cemented and eye-beams threaded together while their souls go out to negotiate between them, and the text stops with the pair lying silent like tomb statues all day.
The Dream
Woken from a dream of the beloved by her actual arrival, the speaker says she continued rather than broke the dream, takes her at first for an angel, and then doubts her as she rises to leave.
The Funeral
Instructing whoever will shroud his body not to disturb the wreath of hair on his arm, the speaker weighs two readings of the token and finally orders it buried with him so that some of her goes into the grave.
A Hymn to God the Father
Three stanzas ask forgiveness for successive kinds of sin, each closing with the admission that God is still not done because more remains, until the fear of perishing at death is answered by a demanded oath and the refrain can end.
Death
The speaker defies personified Death as a servant of fate and chance, ending with the paradox that death itself will die.
To the Virgins, to make much of Time
Flowers, the sun’s daily race, and passing age form a countdown toward the poem’s explicit counsel to marry before youth is spent.
To the Western Wind
The speaker envies the west wind that has kissed Perenna's lip and fanned her hair, and offers to embalm its wings and set them with flowers in exchange for one such kiss.
To Electra
The speaker refuses to ask even for a kiss or a smile, and settles instead for kissing the air that has just touched the beloved.
To Violets
Violets are greeted as maids of honour who bring in the spring and are ranked ahead of the damask roses, until the last stanza notes that they will shortly lie neglected.
To Daffodils
The speaker asks the daffodils to stay until evensong so the two can go together, then turns the address around to say that human lives run out as quickly as the flowers, the summer rain and the morning dew.
To Blossoms
Addressing blossoms falling too fast from a fruit tree, the speaker asks why they were made for an hour's delight and then reads in them how quickly showy things pass into the grave.
The Primrose
In two matched stanzas of question and answer, the speaker explains that he sends a dew-covered primrose because love's sweets are mixed with tears, and that the flower's sickly colour and bending stalk show a lover's fainting hopes.
The Funeral Rites of the Rose
A rose sickens and dies, and the other flowers wash, mourn, sing a dirge over her and finally wrap her in a linen shroud as in a tomb.
Cherry-Ripe
A street vendor's cry is turned into a compliment: asked where the cherries grow, the speaker answers that they grow where Julia's lips smile, an isle bearing fruit all year.
A Meditation for his Mistress
Seven stanzas liken the beloved to tulip, gillyflower, rosebud, vine, enclosed balm and violet, each comparison turning on how quickly the thing perishes, and close by telling her she must die, as must the maker of the song.
Delight in Disorder
A list of slightly disarranged details of dress—a thrown lawn, a straying lace, a careless shoe-string—builds to the claim that such 'wild civility' bewitches the speaker more than art that is too precise in every part.
Virtue
Day, rose, and spring are each sentenced to die, while a virtuous soul is imagined to live most fully even as the world burns away.
Easter
The speaker gathers flowers and boughs to strew the Lord's way but finds Him already risen before daybreak with His own sweets, and concludes that a heart, though late, can still make this day the date of his life.
Discipline
The speaker repeatedly asks God to throw away rod and wrath, pleads a willing though stumbling obedience, and argues that love, armed like an archer, will do what anger cannot.