Poets

0) Bammera Vari Pothana

17-Sep-16

Bammera Vari Pothana

1) Basho

28-Jun-17


Won't you come and see
loneliness? Just one leaf
from the kiri tree.

2) Bronte

24-Jul-17

Riches I hold in light esteem (March 1, 1841)

Riches I hold in light esteem
And Love I laugh to scorn
And lust of Fame was but a dream
That vanished with the morn?

And if I pray, the only prayer 
That moves my lips for me 
Is - "Leave the heart that now I bear 
And give me liberty."

Yes, as my swift days near their goal 
'Tis all that I implore 
Through life and death, a chainless soul 
With courage to endure!

3) Dylan

4-Jun-18

Dylan

4) Emily Dickinson

16-Jun-17

To fight aloud, is very brave - 
But gallanter, I know
Who charge within the bosom
The Calvalry of Woe - 

Who win, and nations do not see - 
Who fall - and none observe - 
Whose dying eyes, no Country
Regards with patriot love - 

We trust, in plumed procession
For such, the Angels go -
Rank after Rank, with even feet -
And Uniforms of snow.

5) Frost

15-Jul-17

An Old Man's Winter Night

All out of doors looked darkly in at him
Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars,
That gathers on the pane in empty rooms.
What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze
Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand.

What kept him from remembering what it was
That brought him to that creaking room was age.
He stood with barrels round him - at a loss.
And having scared the cellar under him
In clomping there, he scared it once again
In clomping off; - and scared the outer night,
Which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar
Of trees and crack of branches, common things,
But nothing so like beating on a box.

A light he was to no one but himself
Where now he sat, concerned with he knew what,
A quiet light, and then not even that.
He consigned to the moon,- such as she was,
So late-arising,- to the broken moon
As better than the sun in any case
For such a charge, his snow upon the roof,
His icicles along the wall to keep;

And slept. The log that shifted with a jolt
Once in the stove, disturbed him and he shifted,
And eased his heavy breathing, but still slept.
One aged man - one man - can't fill a house,
A farm, a countryside, or if he can,
It's thus he does it of a winter night.

I broke the lines for better readability only.

6) Gibran

28-Jun-17

Read it and loved it. I wasn't a parent then. Worked out for my Dad pretty well. Jury is slipping from my fingers rapidly :)

Here is Gibran on children at his bohemian best:

Children


Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts, 
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, 
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, 
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, 
and He bends you with His might 
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, 
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

7) Issa

27-Jun-17

Dew evaporates
and all our world
is dew . . . So dear,
So fresh, so fleeting

8) Kant

8-Feb-18

Kant

9) Kenneth Rexroth

15-Jan-18

Kenneth Rexroth

10) Manyoshu

20-Jan-20

Manyoshu

11) Oscar Wilde

28-Jun-17

Requiescat

READ lightly, she is near
Under the snow,
Speak gently, she can hear
The daisies grow.
 
All her bright golden hair
Tarnished with rust,
She that was young and fair
Fallen to dust.
 
Lily-like, white as snow,
She hardly knew
She was a woman, so
Sweetly she grew.
 
Coffin-board, heavy stone,
Lie on her breast,
I vex my heart alone,
She is at rest.
 
Peace, peace, she cannot hear
Lyre or sonnet,
All my life's buried here,
Heap earth upon it.

12) Pasternak

28-Jun-17

Pasternak

13) Sappho

18-Jan-18

Sappho

14) Shiki

27-Jun-17


After killing
a spider, how lonely I feel
in the cold of night!

15) Some Telugu Poets

2-Mar-18

Some Telugu Poets

16) Tagore

3-Jul-17

Bless this little heart, this white soul that has won the kiss of heaven for our earth.

He loves the light of the sun, he loves the sight of his mother's face.

He has not learned to despise the dust, and to hanker after gold.

Clasp him to your heart and bless him.

He has come into this land of an hundred cross-roads.

I know not how he chose you from the crowd, came to your door, and grasped you hand to ask his way.

He will follow you, laughing the talking, and not a doubt in his heart.

Keep his trust, lead him straight and bless him.

Lay your hand on his head, and pray that though the waves underneath grow threatening, yet the breath from above may come and fill his sails and waft him to the heaven of peace.

Forget him not in your hurry, let him come to your heart and bless him.

17) Victor Hugo

28-Jul-20

Victor Hugo

18) Virginia Woolf

28-May-17

Virginia Woolf

19) W. H Davies

20-Jun-17

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this is if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

20) Walcott

28-Jun-17

Days that outgrow, like daughters


Broad sun-stoned beaches.

White heat.
A green river.

A bridge,
scorched yellow palms

from the summer-sleeping house
drowsing through August.

Days I have held,
days I have lost,

days that outgrow, like daughters,
my harboring arms.

21) William Shakespeare

21-Nov-17

From Hamlet


To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them. To die - to sleep,
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to: 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep, perchance to dream - ay, there's the rub:
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause - there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th'oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of dispriz'd love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th'unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovere'd country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action.

22) Wodehouse

27-Jun-17

It was a confusion of ideas between him and one of the lions he was hunting in Kenya that had caused A. B. Spottsworth to make the obituary column. He thought the lion was dead, and the lion thought it wasn't.

23) Yosano Akiko

14-Jan-18

Yosano Akiko