诗 · CONTENT CATEGORY
World poetry
Read poetry across languages and traditions, with authors, source editions and reviewed translations kept distinct.
136 reviewed public itemsSong
A speaker whose finery and smiles have been driven off by love asks for an axe, a spade and a winding-sheet, and says that once the grave is made he will lie down as cold as clay, with the verdict that true love passes away.
Reeds of Innocence
A piper in the valleys meets a child on a cloud who has him pipe, then sing, then write his songs down, after which the piper makes a reed pen and writes the songs for every child to read.
The Little Black Boy
A black child repeats his mother's teaching that bodies are only clouds shading the soul while it learns to bear the beams of God's love, and imagines shading an English boy in heaven until that boy loves him.
Hear the Voice
A summons to hear the Bard who has heard the Holy Word walking among ancient trees, followed by that Word's own call for the fallen Earth to rise and turn back before daybreak.
The Tiger
Six stanzas of unanswered questions forge the tiger through hammer, chain, furnace, and anvil, ending by asking whether its maker also made the lamb.
Cradle Song
A lullaby over a sleeping infant traces soft desires, secret smiles and morning-like smiles stealing over its face, then turns to the cunning wiles creeping in the sleeping heart and warns that when that heart wakes a dreadful night will break.
Mary Morison
The speaker asks Mary to come to her window at the appointed hour, recalls sitting at a lighted dance seeing and hearing nothing because she was not there, and finally asks for her love or at least her pity.
Jean
Of all the directions the wind can blow the speaker prefers the west, where the lass he loves best lives beyond wild woods, rivers and many a hill, and he says that every bonnie flower that springs and every bonnie bird that sings puts him in mind of his Jean.
Auld Lang Syne
In Scots, old friends raise a cup to shared youth while acknowledging the weary years and roaring seas that have divided them.
My Bonnie Mary
Before boarding, the speaker calls for wine in a silver cup to drink a toast to his love, then says that neither the roar of sea and shore nor the noise of war, but only leaving her, makes parting hard.
John Anderson, my Jo
An aged speaker addresses a lifelong companion whose black hair has turned to snow, recalls the hill they climbed together, and looks ahead to tottering down hand in hand and sleeping at its foot.
The Banks o’ Doon
Standing by the flowering banks of Doon, the speaker reproaches the blossom and the singing bird for their brightness, recalls roving there when every bird sang of its love, and ends with a false lover who stole the rose and left the thorn.
Ae Fond Kiss
A lover marks one last kiss and a final parting, says no star of hope is left him, insists that to see her was to love her for ever, and wishes her every joy while judging that never to have met would have spared the heartbreak.
Bonnie Lesley
Watching bonnie Lesley go over the Border like Alexander gone to spread her conquests farther, the speaker says that to see her is to love her for ever since Nature never made another like her, hails her as a queen whose subjects men are, imagines even the Devil looking into her face and owning 'I canna wrang thee', and ends by asking her to return to Caledonia so her countrymen may brag of her.
A Red, Red Rose
In Scots, love begins with rose and melody, expands toward impossible duration, and closes with a promise to return across ten thousand miles.
Upon Westminster Bridge
Dawn makes London appear bare, bright, and still from Westminster Bridge, joining city, river, buildings, and sky in one composed scene.
Evening on Calais Beach
A sonnet in which the holy quiet of a seaside evening is likened to a nun breathless with adoration, before the speaker calls the listener to hear a mighty Being awake whose eternal motion makes a sound like thunder, and then turns to the child walking beside him to say that her seeming unconcern makes her nature no less divine.
On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic, 1802
The sonnet recalls Venice as a free maiden city that held the East in fee and wedded the sea, then argues that even the fading shade of what was once great must be mourned.
The Solitary Reaper
A passer-by stops to listen to a Highland girl reaping and singing alone, compares her voice to nightingale and cuckoo, wonders whether the song is about old battles or ordinary present sorrow, and carries the music with him long after it is out of hearing.
Perfect Woman
Over three stages of acquaintance the speaker moves from seeing a woman as a dazzling apparition, to noticing her human household life, to recognizing a capable, enduring person who still keeps something of angelic light.
Daffodils
A field of daffodils returns to the solitary mind after the encounter, showing how remembered beauty can continue to nourish feeling.
The Rainbow
The sight of a rainbow makes the speaker's heart leap as it did in childhood and does in manhood, and he asks that it still do so in old age, wishing his days bound each to each by natural piety.
The World
The sonnet complains that getting and spending have laid waste our powers and left us out of tune with sea and wind, and the speaker declares he would rather be a pagan of an outworn creed if that let him glimpse Proteus and hear Triton's horn.
Desideria
Surprised by a moment of joy, the speaker turns instinctively to share it with someone buried in the grave, and the return of that knowledge—together with the discovery that he had briefly forgotten—becomes the worst pang except the moment of the loss itself.