Songs Of Darkness
Most of these are poems, and most have a theme of darkness; those that are not I just happen to like. They are grouped by their author's nationality and in rough chronological order, from the oldest to the newest; since Britain gave us the English language, the British authors come first, beginning with the ones from medieval and Renaissance times, followed by the authors from Britain's former colonies, starting with the U.S.; and then others, starting with countries where the dominant language is some other Indo-European language besides English.
The picture is a painting of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's called Persephone.
Britain
(He reportedly wrote this on the night before his country's monarch, Queen Elizabeth I, had his head chopped off for treason. He was only in his twenties.)
(The original Robinson Crusoe.)
By William Drummond:
By Thomas Gray:
By Percy Bysshe Shelley:
By William Blake:
From Poetical Sketches:
From Songs of Experience:
By William Wordsworth:
By Samuel Taylor Coleridge:
(This moderately long poem is on two pages; use the links and/or the back button.)
By Leigh Hunt:
By Robert Browning:
By Algernon Charles Swinburne:
From Atalanta In Calydon:
By Matthew Arnold:
By Charles Dodgson aka Lewis Carroll:
(Kind of long, but it's been divided into eight separate pages. Again, just use the links at the bottom and/or the back and forward buttons to navigate through this mini-epic.)
From Alice In Wonderland:
By Charles Dickens:
Short story
By George Gissing:
Short story
By Edward Lear:
By Christina Rossetti:
By Dante Gabriel Rossetti:
From The House of Life:
By Amy Levy:
By William Ernest Henley:
By Gerard Manley Hopkins:
By George Meredith:
By Oscar Wilde:
By G.K. Chesterton:
Essay
By William Butler Yeats:
By Rudyard Kipling:
By D.H. Lawrence:
By Louis MacNeice:
By Thomas Hardy:
(The Titanic and the iceberg that sank her.)
By Siegfried Sassoon:
By Isaac Rosenberg:
By Wilfred Owen:
By Lascelles Abercrombie:
By Robert Service:
By Walter De La Mare:
By Dylan Thomas:
By W.H. Auden:
By Philip Larkin:
By Stevie Smith:
Ireland
By Thomas Keohler:
By William Allingham:
The U.S.
(A protest poem from the [Jewish] author of "The New Colossus", the much better-known poem which graces the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty.)
(Some of the language of this turn-of-the-20th-century poem might be confusing to us who live 100-odd years later, but once you get past that, the poem is pretty good satire: nature labored for millions of years to produce...a little drunk ["jagged"] guy. Sad.)
By Nathaniel Hawthorne:
Short stories
By Emily Dickinson:
(She hardly ever titled her poems; they were published titled with numbers. I've given the first line of each poem after its number to help in identifying it.)
By Edgar Allan Poe:
Short stories
By Fitz-James O'Brien:
Short stories
By Paul Hamilton Hayne:
By Kate Chopin:
Short stories
By Stephen Crane:
By Madison Cawein:
Check out my Madison Cawein fan page on Facebook, and like it while you're at it.
By Ambrose Bierce:
Short stories
By Edwin Arlington Robinson:
By E.E. Cummings:
By Conrad Aiken:
(Another rather long poem, but I like it. It's on three pages.)
Short story
By Elinor Wylie:
By Hart Crane:
By T.S. Eliot:
By Dorothy Parker:
By Ezra Pound:
By Clark Ashton Smith:
By Wallace Stevens:
By John Ciardi:
By Karl Shapiro:
Canada
By Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau:
(Translated from French by me.)
By Charles Heavysege:
By Emily Pauline Johnson (aka Tekahionwake):
(She was Canadian First Nations [Mohawk].)
Australia
By Enid Derham:
By Roderic Quinn:
South Africa
By Roy Campbell:
(Tristan da Cunha is a tiny, remote volcanic island in the South Atlantic; when the volcano on it erupted about 40 years ago, the residents were evacuated to England, but ended up moving back out of homesickness.)
Nigeria
By Nkiru Njoku:
By Kunle Olawale:
By Bernard Otumun:
By Karo Umukoro:
By Obaro Unukogbon:
Germany
By Andreas Gryphius:
By Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:
By Göttfried August Bürger:
By Johann Ludwig Uhland:
By Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff:
By Rainer Maria Rilke:
By Bertolt Brecht:
By Hermann Hesse:
By Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche:
Essay
(The famous "God is dead" parable.)
Austria
By Georg Trakl:
Switzerland
By Alfonsina Storni:
Netherlands
By Gerrit Achterberg:
Denmark
By Hans Christian Andersen:
Story
France
By Charles Baudelaire:
By Hilaire Belloc:
(I think Vladimir Nabokov may have quoted this poem in Lolita.)
By René Daumal:
By René Char:
By Guy De Maupassant:
Short stories
By Emile Zola:
Short stories
By Paul Eluard:
Belgium
By Emile Verhaeren:
Spain
By Juan Boscán:
By Lupercio Leonardo de Argensola:
By Juan de Arguijo:
By Luis Martín De La Plaza:
By Francisco de Quevedo y Villegas:
By Juan de Tasis, Count Villamediana:
By Luis de Carrillo y Sotomayor:
By Pedro Calderon de la Barca:
By Antonio Enriquez Gomez:
By Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer:
By Rosalía Castro:
By Antonio Machado:
By Juan Ramon Jimenez:
By Federico Garcia Lorca:
Mexico
By Sor Juana Ines De La Cruz:
By José Emilio Pacheco:
By Juan de Dios Peza
By Xavier Villaurrutia:
By Manuel Acu#&241;a:
Nicaragua
By Ruben Dario:
Colombia
By José Asunción Silva:
Chile
By Pablo Neruda:
(I translated these next two.)
From One Hundred Love Sonnets:
Argentina
By Jorge Luis Borges:
Short stories
Uruguay
By Delmira Agustini:
By Horacio Quiroga:
(My own translations.)
Poems:
And check out and like my Horacio Quiroga Facebook page, Horacio Quiroga Appreciation Society!
Equatorial Guinea
By Marcelo A. Ndongo Mba
By Juan Chema Muero
Portugal
By Antero Tarquinio de Quental:
By Mario Cesariny de Vasconcelos:
Italy
By Ugo Foscolo:
By Gabriele D'Annunzio:
(These two poems are my own translations.)
Short story:
By Giuseppe Ungaretti:
Ancient Rome
By Ovid:
(This passage tells the story of how Pluto kidnapped Persephone and made her his wife.)
Romania
By George Bacovia:
By George Cosbuc:
By Mihai Eminescu:
Greece
By Posidippus:
By Praxilla of Sicyon:
By Constantine Cavafy:
By George Seferis:
By Kostas Karyotakis:
Russia
(Part of the former Soviet Union, like the three countries immediately following.)
By Mikhail Lermontov:
By Gavril Derzhavin:
By Fyodor Tyutchev:
By Vyacheslav Ivanov:
By Afanasy Fet:
By Innokenty Annensky:
Estonia
By Marie Under:
Lithuania
By Albinas Bernotas:
Armenia
By Atom Yarjanian:
Poland
By Czeslaw Milosz:
Hungary
By Endre Ady:
By Frigyes Karinthy:
Czech Republic
By Bohuslav Hasi�tejnsk� z Lobkovic:
(Pope Alexander VI; the Italian for this infamously corrupt Spanish-born Renaissance pope's real name, Roderic de Borja i Borja, was Rodrigo Borgia; his son was the equally infamous Cesare Borgia.)
Bulgaria
By Peyo Yavarov:
Slovenia
By Srecko Kosovel:
Iraq
By the Caliph Radhi Billah:
By Ibn Alalaf Al-Naharwany:
Lebanon
By Ilya Abu Madi:
Palestine
By Imam Shafay Mohammed bin Idris:
Saudi Arabia
By Ali bin Mohammed Al-Tahmany:
India
(A former British colony, but that doesn't matter too much, at least not to me. India existed long before the British came along and took it over for a while; and Pakistan was carved out of India.)
By Jibanananda Das:
By Sankha Ghosh:
By Premendra Mitra:
By Sarojini Naidu:
By Rabindranath Tagore:
Pakistan
By Sir Muhammed Iqbal:
China
By Bai Juyi:
By Su Tung-Po:
(Despite those Chinese titles, these are all in English.)
By Li Po:
By Li Tai-po:
By Du Fu:
Japan
By Ki no Tsurayuki:
By Ono no Komachi:
The death haikus of three unidentified samurai:
South Korea
By So Chong-Ju:
By Shin Kyong-Nim:
Philippines
By Emmanuel S. Torres:
Indonesia
By Chairil Anwar:
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