"Le Bateau ivre" is a 100-line verse-poem written in 1871 by Arthur Rimbaud. The poem describes the drifting and sinking of a boat lost at sea in a fragmented first-person narrative saturated with vivid imagery and symbolism.

As I was floating down unconcerned Rivers I no longer felt myself steered by the haulers:
 Gaudy Redskins had taken them for targets Nailing them naked to coloured stakes. 
I cared nothing for all my crews, Carrying Flemish wheat or English cottons. 
When, along with my haulers those uproars were done with
 The Rivers let me sail downstream where I pleased. 
Into the ferocious tide-rips Last winter, more absorbed than the minds of children, I ran! 
And the unmoored Peninsulas Never endured more triumphant clamourings 
The storm made bliss of my sea-borne awakenings. Lighter than a cork, 
I danced on the waves Which men call eternal rollers of victims, 
For ten nights, without once missing the foolish eye of the harbor lights! 
Sweeter than the flesh of sour apples to children, 
The green water penetrated my pinewood hull And washed me clean of the bluish wine-stains and the splashes of vomit, Carring away both rudder and anchor. And from that time on I bathed in the Poem Of the Sea, star-infused and churned into milk, Devouring the green azures; where, entranced in pallid flotsam, A dreaming drowned man sometimes goes down; Where, suddenly dyeing the bluenesses, deliriums And slow rhythms under the gleams of the daylight, Stronger than alcohol, vaster than music Ferment the bitter rednesses of love! I have come to know the skies splitting with lightnings, and the waterspouts And the breakers and currents; I know the evening, And Dawn rising up like a flock of doves, And sometimes I have seen what men have imagined they saw! I have seen the low-hanging sun speckled with mystic horrors. Lighting up long violet coagulations, Like the performers in very-antique dramas Waves rolling back into the distances their shiverings of venetian blinds! I have dreamed of the green night of the dazzled snows The kiss rising slowly to the eyes of the seas, The circulation of undreamed-of saps, And the yellow-blue awakenings of singing phosphorus! I have followed, for whole months on end, the swells Battering the reefs like hysterical herds of cows, Never dreaming that the luminous feet of the Marys Could force back the muzzles of snorting Oceans! I have struck, do you realize, incredible Floridas Where mingle with flowers the eyes of panthers In human skins! Rainbows stretched like bridles Under the seas' horizon, to glaucous herds! I have seen the enormous swamps seething, traps Where a whole leviathan rots in the reeds! Downfalls of waters in the midst of the calm And distances cataracting down into abysses! Glaciers, suns of silver, waves of pearl, skies of red-hot coals! Hideous wrecks at the bottom of brown gulfs Where the giant snakes devoured by vermin Fall from the twisted trees with black odours! I should have liked to show to children those dolphins Of the blue wave, those golden, those singing fishes. - Foam of flowers rocked my driftings And at times ineffable winds would lend me wings. Sometimes, a martyr weary of poles and zones, The sea whose sobs sweetened my rollings Lifted its shadow-flowers with their yellow sucking disks toward me And I hung there like a kneeling woman... Almost an island, tossing on my beaches the brawls And droppings of pale-eyed, clamouring birds, And I was scudding along when across my frayed cordage Drowned men sank backwards into sleep! But now I, a boat lost under the hair of coves, Hurled by the hurricane into the birdless ether, I, whose wreck, dead-drunk and sodden with water, neither Monitor nor Hanse ships would have fished up; Free, smoking, risen from violet fogs, I who bored through the wall of the reddening sky Which bears a sweetmeat good poets find delicious, Lichens of sunlight [mixed] with azure snot, Who ran, speckled with lunula of electricity, A crazy plank, with black sea-horses for escort, When Julys were crushing with cudgel blows Skies of ultramarine into burning funnels; I who trembled, to feel at fifty leagues' distance The groans of Behemoth's rutting, and of the dense Maelstroms Eternal spinner of blue immobilities I long for Europe with it's aged old parapets! I have seen archipelagos of stars! and islands Whose delirious skies are open to sailor: - Do you sleep, are you exiled in those bottomless nights, Million golden birds, O Life Force of the future? - But, truly, I have wept too much! The Dawns are heartbreaking. Every moon is atrocious and every sun bitter: Sharp love has swollen me up with heady langours. O let my keel split! O let me sink to the bottom! If there is one water in Europe I want, it is the Black cold pool where into the scented twilight A child squatting full of sadness, launches A boat as fragile as a butterfly in May. I can no more, bathed in your langours, O waves, Sail in the wake of the carriers of cottons, Nor undergo the pride of the flags and pennants, Nor pull past the horrible eyes of the hulks.(transl.Oliver Bernard)

 Alexander Puskin - Prophet  (translation by Yevgeni Bonver)

Longing for spiritual springs, 

I dragged myself through desert sands... 

An angel with three pairs of wings 

Arrived to me at cross of lands; 

With fingers so light and slim 

He touched my eyes as in a dream: 

And opened my prophetic eyes 

Like eyes of eagle in surprise.

He touched my ears in movement, single, 

And they were filled with noise and jingle:

I heard a shuddering of heavens, 

And angels' flight on azure heights 

And creatures' crawl in long sea nights, 

And rustle of vines in distant valleys.

And he bent down to my chin, 

And he tore off my tongue of sin, 

In cheat and idle talks aroused, 

And with his hand in bloody specks 

He put the sting of wizard snakes 

Into my deadly stoned mouth.

With his sharp sword he cleaved my breast, 

And plucked my quivering heart out, 

And coals flamed with God's behest, 

Into my gaping breast were ground. 

Like dead I lay on desert sands, 

And listened to the God's commands: 

'Arise, O prophet, hark and see, 

Be filled with utter My demands, 

And, going over Land and Sea, 

Burn with your Word the humane hearts.'

There is a music which has no sound; 

the soul is restless for such silent music. 
There is a love in which the body is not; 
the soul longs for such unembodied love.
There is a truth which has no form; 
the soul longs for this formless truth. 

                                                devapremalmiten - Osho

To see a World in a Grain of Sand 

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, 

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand 

And Eternity in an hour.

William Blake - Eternity

He who binds to himself a joy 

Does the winged life destroy 

Βut he who kisses the joy as it flies

 Lives in eternity’s sunrise

 Robert Burns is Scotland's greatest poet and songwriter.  Abraham Lincoln was also a Burns fan, reciting his poetry from memory and perhaps being influenced to emancipate American slaves by the great Scottish poet's passionately-stated belief in human equality:

“The rank is but the guinea’s stamp; 
the man’s the gowd [gold] for a’ [all] that!”
Burns was saying that the common man is as good as any king or lord

     Robert Burns

Is there for honest Poverty

That hings his head, an' a' that;

The coward slave-we pass him by,

We dare be poor for a' that!

For a' that, an' a' that.

Our toils obscure an' a' that,

The rank is but the guinea's stamp,

The Man's the gowd for a' that.

What though on hamely fare we dine,

Wear hodden grey, an' a that;

Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine;

A Man's a Man for a' that:

For a' that, and a' that,

Their tinsel show, an' a' that;

The honest man, tho' e'er sae poor,

Is king o' men for a' that.

Ye see yon birkie, ca'd a lord,

Wha struts, an' stares, an' a' that;

Tho' hundreds worship at his word,

He's but a coof for a' that:

For a' that, an' a' that,

His ribband, star, an' a' that:

The man o' independent mind

He looks an' laughs at a' that.

A prince can mak a belted knight,

A marquis, duke, an' a' that;

But an honest man's abon his might,

Gude faith, he maunna fa' that!

For a' that, an' a' that,

Their dignities an' a' that;

The pith o' sense, an' pride o' worth,

Are higher rank than a' that.

Then let us pray that come it may,

(As come it will for a' that,)

That Sense and Worth, o'er a' the earth,

Shall bear the gree, an' a' that.

For a' that, an' a' that,

It's coming yet for a' that,

That Man to Man, the world o'er,

Shall brothers be for a' that.

"The heart benevolent and kind
The most resembles God".  —Robert Burns

 Burns joined a dancing club at age 17, and a few years later he co-founded the Tarbolton Bachelor’s Club. The rules stated: “Every man proper for a member of this Society, must have a frank, honest, open heart; above anything dirty or mean; and must be a professed lover of one or more of the female sex. No haughty, self-conceited person, who looks upon himself as superior to the rest of the club, and especially no mean spirited, worldly mortal, whose only will is to heap up money shall upon any pretence whatever be admitted.”

 I Love My Jean   by Robbie Burns

Of a' the airts the wind can blaw,
I dearly like the west,
For there the bonnie lassie lives,
The lassie I lo'e best:
There wild-woods grow, and rivers row,
And mony a hill between;
But day and night my fancy's flight
Is ever wi' my Jean.

II.

I see her in the dewy flowers,
I see her sweet and fair:
I hear her in the tunefu' birds,
I hear her charm the air:
There's not a bonnie flower that springs
By fountain, shaw, or green,
There's not a bonnie bird that sings,
But minds me o' my Jean.

III.

O blaw, ye westlin winds, blaw saft
Among the leafy trees,
Wi' balmy gale, frae hill and dale
Bring hame the laden bees;
And bring the lassie back to me
That's aye sae neat and clean;
Ae smile o' her wad banish care,
Sae charming is my Jean.

IV.

What sighs and vows amang the knowes
Hae passed atween us twa!
How fond to meet, how wae to part,
That night she gaed awa!
The powers aboon can only ken,
To whom the heart is seen,
That nane can be sae dear to me
As my sweet lovely Jean!

“There is no such uncertainty as a sure thing.” - Robert Burns

When asked to name the source of his greatest creative inspiration, Bob Dylan selected "A Red, Red Rose." 

Red Red Rose

Oh my luve is like a red, red rose,
That's newly sprung in June:
Oh my luve is like the melodie,
That's sweetly play'd in tune.

As fair art thou, my bonie lass,
So deep in luve am I;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a' the seas gang dry.

Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi' the sun;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands o' life shall run.

And fare thee weel, my only luve!
And fare thee weel a while!
And I will come again, my luve,
Tho' it were ten thousand mile!

Red Red Rose I believe that Robert Burns had written this poem in late June 1786  to sung it to Jean Armour who was 6 months pregnant while he was planning to set off  for Jamaica along with Mary Campbell. Burns constructed the poem, stanza by stanza, by “deconstructing” old songs and ballads to use parts that he could revise and improve. For example, Burns’s first stanza may be compared with his source, “The Wanton Wife of Castle Gate”: “Her cheeks are like the roses/ That blossom fresh in June;/ O, she’s like a new-strung instrument/ That’s newly put in tune.” Clearly, Burns’s version is more delicate

Lang hae we partit been 
Lassie my dearie 
Noo we are met again 
Lassie lie near me 
Near me, near me 
Lassie lie near me 
Lang hast thou lain thy lane 
Lassie lie near me 

All that I have endured 
Lassie my dearie 
Here in thine arms is cured 
Lassie lie near me 
Near me, near me 
Lassie lie near me 
Lang hast thou lain thy lane 
Lassie lie near me.

Chor. - Green grow the rashes, O; 
Green grow the rashes, O; 
The sweetest hours that e'er I spend, 
Are spent amang the lasses, O. 

There's nought but care on ev'ry han', 
In ev'ry hour that passes, O: 
What signifies the life o' man, 
An' 'twere na for the lasses, O. 
Green grow, &c. 

The war'ly race may riches chase, 
An' riches still may fly them, O; 
An' tho' at last they catch them fast, 
Their hearts can ne'er enjoy them, O. 
Green grow, &c. 

But gie me a cannie hour at e'en, 
My arms about my dearie, O; 
An' war'ly cares, an' war'ly men, 
May a'gae tapsalteerie, O! 
Green grow, &c. 

For you sae douce, ye sneer at this; 
Ye're nought but senseless asses, O: 
The wisest man the warl' e'er saw, 
He dearly lov'd the lasses, O. 
Green grow, &c. 

Auld Nature swears, the lovely dears 
Her noblest work she classes, O: 
Her prentice han' she try'd on man, 
An' then she made the lasses, O. 

Green grow the rashes, O; 
Green grow the rashes, O; 

The sweetest hours that e'er I spend, 
Are spent amang the lasses, O. 

O, were I on Parnassus hill, 
Or had o' Helicon my fill, 
That I might catch poetic skill, 
To sing how dear I love thee! 
But Nith maun be my Muse's well, 
My Muse maun be thy bonie sel', 
On Corsincon I'll glowr and spell, 
And write how dear I love thee. 

Then come, sweet Muse, inspire my lay! 
For a' the lee-lang simmer's day 
I couldna sing, I couldna say, 
How much, how dear, I love thee, 
I see thee dancing o'er the green, 
Thy waist sae jimp, thy limbs sae clean, 
Thy tempting lips, thy roguish een- 
By Heaven and Earth I love thee! 

By night, by day, a-field, at hame, 
The thoughts o' thee my breast inflame: 
And aye I muse and sing thy name- 
I only live to love thee. 
Tho' I were doom'd to wander on, 
Beyond the sea, beyond the sun, 
Till my last weary sand was run; 
Till then-and then I love thee!

 When You Are Old  -  William Butler Yeats

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim Soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

It is so long since my heart has been with yours  

shut by our mingling arms through

a darkness where new lights begin and
increase,
since your mind has walked into
my kiss as a stranger
into the streets and colours of a town–

that i have perhaps forgotten
how,always(from
these hurrying crudities
of blood and flesh)Love
coins His most gradual gesture,

and whittles life to eternity         by   e.e. cummings

La Belle Dame Sans Merci  -  John Keats

Sonnet 108  -  william Shakespeare

 What's in the brain that ink may character, 

Which hath not figur'd to thee my true spirit?
What's new to speak, what new to register, 
That may express my love or thy dear merit? 
Nothing sweet boy; but yet, like prayers divine,
I must, each day say o'er the very same; 
Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine,
Even as when first I hallow'd thy fair name. 
So that eternal love in love's fresh case 
Weighs not the dust and injury of age, 
Nor gives to necessary wrinkles place, 
But makes antiquity for aye his page, 
Finding the first conceit of love there bred
Where time and outward form would show it dead. 

  Sara Teasdale - The Look

Stephen kissed me in the spring,
Robin in the fall,
But Colin only looked at me
And never kissed at all.

Stephen’s kiss was lost in jest,
Robin’s lost in play,
But the kiss in Colin’s eyes
Haunts me night and day

 Jewels  by Sara Teasdale

 If I should see your eyes again,     

I know how far their look would go --

Back to a morning in the park     

With sapphire shadows on the snow.

Or back to oak trees in the spring     

When you unloosed my hair and kissed

The head that lay against your knees     

In the leaf shadow's amethyst.

And still another shining place     

We would remember -- how the dun

Wild mountain held us on its crest     

One diamond morning white with sun.

But I will turn my eyes from you     

As women turn to put away

The jewels they have worn at night

 And cannot wear in sober day.           

Song at Evenfall by Clark Ashton Smith 

I have no silver gifts for thee,

No scented words nor frankincense:
Only this love, that burns in me
Like a vain fire in valleys whence
The sun has flown beyond the sea.

Though moon and dawn alike delay,
Let love the mobled ways illume,
As once, on evening roads, the ray
Of Venus thrilled athwart the gloom
And led us home from far away.

Love Song - Rilke

Love - Pablo Neruda

Because of you, in gardens of blossoming
Flowers I ache from the perfumes of spring.
I have forgotten your face, I no longer
Remember your hands; how did your lips
Feel on mine?

Because of you, I love the white statues
Drowsing in the parks, the white statues that
Have neither voice nor sight.

I have forgotten your voice, your happy voice;
I have forgotten your eyes.

Like a flower to its perfume, I am bound to
My vague memory of you. I live with pain
That is like a wound; if you touch me, you will
Make to me an irreperable harm.

Your caresses enfold me, like climbing
Vines on melancholy walls.

I have forgotten your love, yet I seem to
Glimpse you in every window.

Because of you, the heady perfumes of
Summer pain me; because of you, I again
Seek out the signs that precipitate desires:
Shooting stars, falling objects.

Pablo Neruda

En güzel deniz:  
Henüz gidilmemiş olanıdır.  
En güzel çocuk:  
Henüz büyümedi.  
En güzel günlerimiz:  
Henüz yaşamadıklarımız.  
Ve sana söylemek istediğim en güzel söz:  
Henüz söylememiş olduğum sözdür... 

Nazım Hikmet Ran

The most beautiful sea:

                   hasn´t been crossed yet.
The most beautiful child:
                   hasn´t grown up yet.
Our most beautiful days:
                   we haven´t seen yet.
And the most beautiful words I wanted to tell you
                   I haven´t said yet...                                             Nazım Hikmet

Ar lan y môr mae rhosys cochion
Ar lan y môr mae lilis gwynion
Ar lan y môr mae 'nghariad inne
Yn cysgu'r nos a chodi'r bore.
Ar lan y môr mae carreg wastad
Lle bum yn siarad gair âm cariad
O ddeutu hon fe dyf y lili
Ac ambell sprig o rosmari.
Ar lan y mor mae tawod melyn
Ar lan y mor mae ton ac ewin
Ar lan y mor mae hen atgofion
sydd o hyd yn torri nghalon
Ar lan y mor mae cri'r wylan
Ar lan y mor mae mam a'i baban
Ar lan y mor ymhell o Gymru
Mae na un y rwyf ei garu

By the sea shore there are red roses
By the sea shore there are white lilies
By the sea shore my love and I
Sleep the night and rise at daybreak

By the sea shore there's a flat stone
where we spoke about love
around it grow the lilies
and a few sprigs of rosemary

By the sea shore there is yellow sand
By the sea shore there are waves and foam
By the sea shore there are old memories
that still break my heart

By the sea shore the cry of the seagull
By the sea shore there's a mother and her baby
By the sea shore far from Wales
there's someone who I love

A Dream for Winter - Arthur Rimbaud

In the winter, we shall travel in a little pink railway carriage
With blue cushions,
We shall be comfortable. A nest of mad kisses lies in wait
In each soft corner

You will close your eyes, so as not to  see...

Then you'll feel your cheek tickled quite hard
A little kiss, like a maddened spider will run round your neck

And you'll say to me : "Find it !" bending your head...

And we'll take a long time to find that creature which travels so far

Mario Benedetti - Rostro de Vos

Mario Benedetti - No te salves

Sonnet XVII
Pablo Neruda

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

Sonnet XI
Pablo Neruda

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets. 
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day 
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps. 

I hunger for your sleek laugh, 
your hands the color of a savage harvest, 
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails, 
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond. 

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body, 
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face, 
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes, 

and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight, 
hunting for you, for your hot heart, 
Like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue  -  Neruda

Here I Love You   Pablo Neruda  (trans. W.S. Merwin)

Here I love you.

In the dark pines the wind disentangles itself.
The moon glows like phosphorous on the vagrant waters.
Days, all one kind, go chasing each other.

The snow unfurls in dancing figures.
A silver gull slips down from the west.
Sometimes a sail. High, high stars.
Oh the black cross of a ship.
Alone.

Sometimes I get up early and even my soul is wet.
Far away the sea sounds and resounds.
This is a port.

Here I love you.
Here I love you and the horizon hides you in vain.
I love you still among these cold things.
Sometimes my kisses go on those heavy vessels
that cross the sea towards no arrival.
I see myself forgotten like those old anchors.

The piers sadden when the afternoon moors there.
My life grows tired, hungry to no purpose.
I love what I do not have. You are so far.
My loathing wrestles with the slow twilights.
But night comes and starts to sing to me.

The moon turns its clockwork dream.
The biggest stars look at me with your eyes.
And as I love you, the pines in the wind
want to sing your name with their leaves of wire.

Moonlight Sonata - Giannis Ritsos(transl. Peter Green & Beverly Bardsley)

Let me come with you. What a moon there is tonight! 

The moon is kind – it won’t show that my hair turned white. The moon will turn my hair to gold again. You wouldn’t understand. 

Let me come with you. When there’s a moon the shadows in the house grow larger,  invisible hands draw the curtains,  a ghostly finger writes forgotten words in the dust on the piano – I don’t want to hear them. Hush. 

Let me come with you
a little farther down, as far as the brickyard wall, 
to the point where the road turns and the city appears
concrete and airy, whitewashed with moonlight, 
so indifferent and insubstantial
so positive, like metaphysics, 
that finally you can believe you exist and do not exist, 
that you never existed, that time with its destruction never existed. 
Let me come with you. 

We’ll sit for a little on the low wall, up on the hill, 
and as the spring breeze blows around us
perhaps we’ll even imagine that we are flying, 
because, often, and now especially, I hear the sound of my own dress
like the sound of two powerful wings opening and closing, 
you feel the tight mesh of your throat, your ribs, your flesh, 
and when you enclose yourself within the sound of that flight
you feel the tight  mesh of your throat, your birds, your flesh, 
and thus constricted amid the muscles of the azure air, 
amid the strong nerves of the heavens, 
it makes no difference whether you go or return
it makes no difference whether you go or return
and it makes no difference that my hair has turned white
(that is not my sorrow – my sorrow is
that my heart too does not turn white). 
Let me come with you. 

I know that each one of us travels to love alone, 
alone to faith and to death. 
I know it... I’ve tried it... It doesn’t help... 
Let me come with you!    

Τhe poet Giannis Ritsos plays piano in his house on the steep cliffs of Monemvasia Mani in Lakonia Greece, and recites one of his poems about the desire of all humane to extend life and consiousness into Eternity 

Photo,  me in the yard of Yiannis Ritsos house in Monemvasia 20 years ago

I spent my honeymoon there, in a neighboring house, every day I was going there to look at the sea, breathe the cool breeze and feel the air, it was such a nice place