Part Of A Ghazal

Lonely rose out-splendouring legions of roses,
How could the nightingales behold you and not sing?

By Rustwell of Georgia (from the Tariel, twelfth century).

Edward Powys Mathers

Edward Powys Mathers was an English translator and poet, best known for translating the French Orientalist J.C. Mardrus's translation of 'The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night' in 1923. In addition to translations, Powys Mathers was an influential figure in the realm of cryptic crosswords, devising some of the most challenging puzzles for 'The Observer'. His translations have been lauded for their literary beauty and for introducing English-speaking audiences to classic Persian, Arabic, and Turkish poetry.

Edward Powys Mathers

In The Cold Night

Edward Powys Mathers, Simple Poetry

Two Similes

Edward Powys Mathers, Simple Poetry

The Morning Shower

Edward Powys Mathers, Simple Poetry

The Bamboo Garden

Edward Powys Mathers, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

Only Roses!

To a garden full of posies
Cometh one to gather flowers,
And he wanders through its bowers
Toying with the wanton roses,
Who, uprising from their beds,
Hold on high their shameless heads
With their pretty lips a-pouting,
Never doubting never doubting
That for Cytherean posies
He would gather aught but roses!

In a nest of weeds and nettles,
Lay a violet, half hidden,
Hoping that his glance unbidden
Yet might fall upon her petals,
Though she lived alone, apart,
Hope lay nestling at her heart,
But, alas! the cruel awaking
Set her little heart a-breaking,
For he gathered for his posies
Only roses only roses!

William Schwenck Gilbert

By The Side Of Rydal Mere

The linnet's warble, sinking towards a close,
Hints to the thrush 'tis time for their repose;
The shrill-voiced thrush is heedless, and again
The monitor revives his own sweet strain;
But both will soon be mastered, and the copse
Be left as silent as the mountain-tops,
Ere some commanding star dismiss to rest
The throng of rooks, that now, from twig or nest,
(After a steady flight on home-bound wings,
And a last game of mazy hoverings
Around their ancient grove) with cawing noise
Disturb the liquid music's equipoise.

O Nightingale! Who ever heard thy song
Might here be moved, till Fancy grows so strong
That listening sense is pardonably cheated
Where wood or stream by thee was never greeted.
Surely, from fairest spots of favoured lands,
Were not som...

William Wordsworth

Perturbation At Dawn

Day comes....

And when she sees the withering of the violet garden
And the saffron garden flowering,
The stars escaping on their black horse
And dawn on her white horse arriving,
She is afraid.

Against the sighing of her frightened breasts
She puts her hand;
I see what I have never seen,
Five perfect lines on a crystal leaf
Written with coral pens.

From the Arabic of Ebn Maatuk (seventeenth century).

Edward Powys Mathers

The Woodman And The Nightingale.

A woodman whose rough heart was out of tune
(I think such hearts yet never came to good)
Hated to hear, under the stars or moon,

One nightingale in an interfluous wood
Satiate the hungry dark with melody; -
And as a vale is watered by a flood,

Or as the moonlight fills the open sky
Struggling with darkness - as a tuberose
Peoples some Indian dell with scents which lie

Like clouds above the flower from which they rose,
The singing of that happy nightingale
In this sweet forest, from the golden close

Of evening till the star of dawn may fail,
Was interfused upon the silentness;
The folded roses and the violets pale

Heard her within their slumbers, the abyss
Of heaven with all its planets; the dull ear
Of the night-cradled earth...

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Song Of A Poor Pilgrim

Roses all the rosy way!
    Roses to the rosier west
Where the roses of the day
    Cling to night's unrosy breast!

Thou who mak'st the roses, why
    Give to every leaf a thorn?
On thy rosy highway I
    Still am by thy roses torn!

Pardon! I will not mistake
    These good thorns that make me fret!
Goads to urge me, stings to wake,
    For my freedom they are set.

Yea, on one steep mountain-side,
    Climbing to a fancied fold,
Roses grasped had let me slide
    But the thorns did keep their hold.

Out of darkness light is born,
    Out of weakness make me strong:
One glad day will every thorn
    Break into a rose of song.

Though like sparrow sit thy bird
    Lonely on the house-top dark,
By the rosy...

George MacDonald

The Roses

Roses are a wandering scent from heaven.
Rose-seller, why do you sell your roses?
For silver? But with the silver from your roses
What can you buy so precious as your roses?

From the Persian of Abu-Yshac (middle of the tenth century).

Edward Powys Mathers