Find and share the perfect poems.
The leaves fall, fall as from far, Like distant gardens withered in the heavens; They fall with slow and lingering descent. And in the nights the heavy Earth, too, falls From out the stars into the Solitude. Thus all doth fall. This hand of mine must fall And lo! the other one:—it is the law. But there is One who holds this falling Infinitely softly in His hands.
This poem is in the public domain. From Poems (Tobias A. Wright, 1918), translated by Jessie Lamont.
We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,
translated from the German by Jessie Lamont
Oh! All things are long passed away and far.
A light is shining but the distant star
From which it still comes to me has been dead
A thousand years . . . In the dim phantom boat
That glided past some ghastly thing was said.
When my soul touches yours a great chord sings!
How shall I tune it then to other things?
O! That some spot in darkness could be found
That does not vibrate when’er your depth sound.
But everything that touches you and me
Welds us as played strings sound one melody.
Where is the instrument whence the sounds flow?