801. "Night fills the house with its funereal breeze..." by Victor Hugo

Night fills the house with its funereal breeze.
Not a sound. Darkness. Shadowy forms creep
To and fro beside those who are asleep.
While I become a thing,
                                    I feel the things nearby
Being transformed to living entities.
My wall's a face, and sees;
                                         Against the grayish sky
My two pale windows watch me slumbering.

(trans. E. H. and A. M. Blackmore)

Source: Selected Poems of Victor Hugo: A Bilingual Edition

802. Untitled, by Utpalaraja

When I think how I have known
parties where the lyre was heard
and the heavenly voice of poets,
and when I think of anguish
and of partings from my friends;
rejoicing for a moment, then despairing,
I know not what to call the world:
whether made of nectar or of poison.

(trans Daniel H. H. Ingalls)

Source: Sanskrit Poetry from Vidyakara's Treasury

803. America, by Claude McKay

Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger's tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth!
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
Giving me strength erect against her hate.
Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.
Yet as a rebel fronts a king in state,
I stand within her walls with not a shred
Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.
Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,
And see her might and granite wonders there,
Beneath the touch of Time's unerring hand,
Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.

Source: Selected Poems

804. Ebb, by Edna St. Vincent Millay

I know what my heart is like
     Since your love died:
It is like a hollow ledge
Holding a little pool
   Left there by the tide,
   A little tepid pool,
Drying inward from the edge.

Source: Collected Poems

805. The Send-Off, by Wilfred Owen

Down the close darkening lanes they sang their way
To the siding-shed,
And lined the train with faces grimly gay.

Their breasts were stuck all white with wreath and spray
As men's are, dead.

Dull porters watched them, and a casual tramp
Stood staring hard,
Sorry to miss them from the upland camp.

Then, unmoved, signals nodded, and a lamp
Winked to the guard.

So secretly, like wrongs hushed-up, they went.
They were not ours:
We never heard to which front these were sent.

Nor there if they yet mock what women meant
Who gave them flowers.

Shall they return to beatings of great bells
In wild train-loads?
A few, a few, too few for drums and yells,

May creep back, silent, to village wells,
Up half-known roads.

Source: The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry

806. Last Fruit Off an Old Tree, by Walter Savage Landor

Death stands above me, whispering low
  I know not what into my ear:
Of his strange language all I know
  Is, there is not a word of fear.

Source: Poetry & Prose

807. Song, by A. R. Ammons

Merging into place against a slope of trees,
I extended my arms and
took up the silence and spare leafage.
I lost my head first, the cervical meat
clumping off in rot,
baring the spinal heart to wind and ice

which work fast.
The environment lost no self-possession.
In spring, termites with tickling feet
aerated my veins.
A gall-nesting wren took my breath

flicking her wings, and
far into summer the termites found the heart.
No sign now shows the place,
all these seasons since,
but a hump of sod below the leaves
where chipmunks dig.

Source: Collected Poems 1951-1971