Poems in English
William Shakespeare
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love,
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
Oh, no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests.. and is never shaken.
It is the star to every wandering bark
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love is not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come.
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out.. even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
Robert Herrick
Bid me to live, and I will live
Thy Protestant to be;
Or bid me love, and I will give
A loving heart to thee.
A heart as soft, a heart as kind,
A heart as sound and free
As in the whole world thou canst find,
That heart I'll give to thee.
Bid that heart stay, and it will stay
To honour thy decree;
Or bid it languish quite away,
And't shall do so for thee.
Bid me to weep, and I will weep,
While I have eyes to see;
And having none, yet I will keep
A heart to weep for thee.
Bid me despair, and I'll despair,
Under that cypress tree;
Or bid me die, and I will dare
E'en death, to die for thee.
--Thou art my life, my love, my heart,
The very eyes of me;
And hast command of every part,
To live and die for thee.
SHAME
by Jila Mosa'ed, Translated by: Mahmood Kianoosh
Unfamiliar with the blue of the sky,
Unfamiliar with the shining green
of the earth,
Unfamiliar with the history
of man's covering his body,
I am standing
Inside a circle of ice,
Surrounded by sorrow and anxiety;
And naked, ancient and alone,
I carry on my shoulders
the thousand-year-old burden
of shame,
of coveredness,
of modesty.
O mothers of sleep
Whose bones
Are the ancient hiding place
of the dead instincts,
Look how my bare, ancient roots,
Slowly but with resolution,
Penetrate the ice.
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