The HyperTexts

English Translations of French Poets by Michael R. Burch

These are modern English translations of poems by the French poets Charles Baudelaire, Charles d'Orleans, Victor Hugo, Stephane Mallarme, Arthur Rimbaud, Paul Valery, Paul Verlaine, Renee Vivien and Voltaire.



We cannot hope to build a better world without improving individuals. Toward that end, we must work on self-improvement, while, at the same time, sharing a general responsibility for all humanity, with our primary duty being to those we can help the most. — Marie Curie, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch



CHARLES BAUDELAIRE

Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) was a major French poet and early Symbolist.

Les Bijoux (The Jewels)
by Charles Baudelaire
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

My lover nude and knowing my heart's whims
Wore nothing more than a few bright-flashing gems;
Her art was saving men despite their sins—
She ruled like harem girls crowned with diadems!

She danced for me with a gay but mocking air,
My world of stone and metal sparking bright;
I discovered in her the rapture of everything fair—
Nay, an excess of joy where the spirit and flesh unite!

Naked she lay and offered herself to me,
Parting her legs and smiling receptively,
As gentle and yet profound as the rising sea—
Till her surging tide encountered my cliff, abruptly.

A tigress tamed, her eyes met mine, intent …
Intent on lust, content to purr and please!
Her breath, both languid and lascivious, lent
An odd charm to her metamorphoses.

Her limbs, her loins, her abdomen, her thighs,
Oiled alabaster, sinuous as a swan,
Writhed pale before my calm clairvoyant eyes;
Like clustered grapes her breasts and belly shone.

Skilled in more spells than evil imps can muster,
To break the peace which had possessed my heart,
She flashed her crystal rocks' hypnotic luster
Till my quietude was shattered, blown apart.

Her waist awrithe, her breasts enormously
Out-thrust, and yet … and yet, somehow, still coy …
As if stout haunches of Antiope
Had been grafted to a boy …

The room grew dark, the lamp had flickered out.
Mute firelight, alone, lit each glowing stud;
Each time the fire sighed, as if in doubt,
It steeped her pale, rouged flesh in pools of blood.

Le Balcon (The Balcony)
by Charles Baudelaire, a French poet
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Paramour of memory, ultimate mistress,
source of all pleasure, my only desire;
how can I forget your ecstatic caresses,
the warmth of your breasts by the roaring fire,
paramour of memory, ultimate mistress?

Each night illumined by the burning coals
we lay together where the rose-fragrance clings—
how soft your breasts, how tender your soul!
Ah, and we said imperishable things,
each night illumined by the burning coals.

How beautiful the sunsets these sultry days,
deep space so profound, beyond life's brief floods …
then, when I kissed you, my queen, in a daze,
I thought I breathed the bouquet of your blood
as beautiful as sunsets these sultry days.

Night thickens around us like a wall;
in the deepening darkness our irises meet.
I drink your breath, ah! poisonous yet sweet!,
as with fraternal hands I massage your feet
while night thickens around us like a wall.

I have mastered the sweet but difficult art
of happiness here, with my head in your lap,
finding pure joy in your body, your heart;
because you're the queen of my present and past
I have mastered love's sweet but difficult art.

O vows! O perfumes! O infinite kisses!
Can these be reborn from a gulf we can't sound
as suns reappear, as if heaven misses
their light when they sink into seas dark, profound?
O vows! O perfumes! O infinite kisses!

Duellem (The Duel)
by Charles Baudelaire
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Two combatants charged!
                                         Their fearsome swords
brightened the air with fiery sparks and blood.
Their clashing blades
                                 clinked odd serenades,
reminding us: youth's inspired by overloud love.
But now their blades lie broken, like our hearts!
Still, our savage teeth and talon-like fingernails
can do more damage than the deadliest sword
when lovers lash about with such natural flails.
In a deep ravine haunted by lynxes and panthers,
our heroes roll around in a cozy embrace,
leaving their blood to redden the colorless branches.
This abyss is pure hell; our friends occupy the place.
Come, let us roll likewise here, cruel Amazon,
let our hatred's ardor never be over and done!

Invitation to the Voyage
by Charles Baudelaire
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

My child, my sister,
Consider the rapture
Of living together!
To love at our leisure
Till the end of all pleasure,
Then in climes so alike you, to die!

The misty sunlight
Of these hazy skies
Charms my spirit:
So mysterious
Your treacherous eyes,
Shining through tears.

There, order and restraint redress
Opulence, voluptuousness.

Gleaming furniture
Burnished by the years
Would decorate our bedroom
Where the rarest flowers
Mingle their fragrances
With vague scents of amber.

The sumptuous ceilings,
The limpid mirrors,
The Oriental ornaments …
Everything would speak
To our secretive souls
In their own indigenous language.

There, order and restraint redress
Opulence, voluptuousness.

See, rocking on these channels:
The sleepy vessels
Whose vagabond dream
Is to satisfy
Your merest desire.

They come from the ends of the world:
These radiant suns
Illuminating fields,
Canals, the entire city,
In hyacinth and gold.
The world falls asleep
In their warming light.

There, order and restraint redress
Opulence, voluptuousness.

More Baudelaire translations can be read here: Charles Baudelaire



CHARLES D'ORLEANS

Charles d'Orleans (c. 1394-1465) was a medieval French poet who also wrote poems in Middle English. The Duke of Orleans was a master of the ballade, the chanson (song), the rondeaux/rondel, the complaint and the carol. He has been called the “father of French lyric poetry” and has also been credited with writing the first Valentine’s Day poem.

Le Primtemps (“Spring” or “Springtime”)
by Charles d'Orleans
loose translation/interpretation/modernization by Michael R. Burch

Young lovers,
greeting the spring
fling themselves downhill,
making cobblestones ring
with their wild leaps and arcs,
like ecstatic sparks
struck from coal.

What is their brazen goal?

They grab at whatever passes,
so we can only hazard guesses.

But they rear like prancing steeds
raked by brilliant spurs of need,
Young lovers.

The text of the original French poem can be found here.

Oft in My Thought
by Charles d'Orleans
loose translation/interpretation/modernization by Michael R. Burch

So often in my busy mind I sought,
    Around the advent of the fledgling year,
For something pretty that I really ought
    To give my lady dear;
    But that sweet thought's been wrested from me, clear,
        Since death, alas, has sealed her under clay
    And robbed the world of all that's precious here―
         God keep her soul, I can no better say.

For me to keep my manner and my thought
    Acceptable, as suits my age's hour?
While proving that I never once forgot
    Her worth? It tests my power!
    I serve her now with masses and with prayer;
        For it would be a shame for me to stray
    Far from my faith, when my time's drawing near—
         God keep her soul, I can no better say.

Now earthly profits fail, since all is lost
    And the cost of everything became so dear;
Therefore, O Lord, who rules the higher host,
    Take my good deeds, as many as there are,
    And crown her, Lord, above in your bright sphere,
        As heaven's truest maid! And may I say:
    Most good, most fair, most likely to bring cheer—
         God keep her soul, I can no better say.

When I praise her, or hear her praises raised,
I recall how recently she brought me pleasure;
    Then my heart floods like an overflowing bay
And makes me wish to dress for my own bier—
    God keep her soul, I can no better say.

The text of the original poem can be found here.

Rondel: Your Smiling Mouth
by Charles d'Orleans
loose translation/interpretation/modernization by Michael R. Burch

Your smiling mouth and laughing eyes, bright gray,
Your ample breasts and slender arms' twin chains,
Your hands so smooth, each finger straight and plain,
Your little feet—please, what more can I say?

It is my fetish when you're far away
To muse on these and thus to soothe my pain—
Your smiling mouth and laughing eyes, bright gray,
Your ample breasts and slender arms' twin chains.

So would I beg you, if I only may,
To see such sights as I before have seen,
Because my fetish pleases me. Obscene?
I'll be obsessed until my dying day
By your sweet smiling mouth and eyes, bright gray,
Your ample breasts and slender arms' twin chains!

The translations below can be read here: Charles d'Orleans

In My Imagined Book by Charles d’Orleans
Winter has cast his cloak away by Charles d'Orleans
The year lays down his mantle cold by Charles d'Orleans
The First Valentine by Charles d’Orleans
My Very Gentle Valentine by Charles d’Orleans

The translations above, and more, can be read here: Charles d'Orleans



VICTOR HUGO

Love Stronger than Time
by Victor Hugo
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Since I first set my lips to your full cup,
Since my pallid face first nested in your hands,
Since I sensed your soul and every bloom lit up—
Till those rare perfumes were lost to deepening sands;

Since I was first allowed these pleasures deep—
To hear your heart speak mysteries, divine;
Since I have seen you smile, have watched you weep,
Your lips pressed to my lips, your eyes on mine;

Since I have sensed above my thoughts the gleam
Of a ray, a single ray, of your bright star
(If sometimes veiled), and felt light, falling, stream
Like one rose petal plucked from high, afar;

I now can say to time's swift-changing hours:
"Pass, pass upon your way, for you grow old;
Flee to the dark abyss with your drear flowers,
but one unmarred within my heart I hold.

Your flapping wings may jar but cannot spill
The cup fulfilled of love, from which I drink;
My heart has fires your frosts can never chill,
My soul more love to fly than you can sink."



STEPHANE MALLARME

Stéphane Mallarmé was a French symbolist widely considered to have been a major French poet of the second half of the 19th century, along with Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud.

The Tomb of Edgar Poe
by Stéphane Mallarmé
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Transformed into himself by Death, at last,
the Bard unsheathed his Art’s recondite blade
to duel with dullards, blind & undismayed,
who’d never heard his ardent Voice, aghast!

Like dark Medusan demons of the past
who’d failed to heed such high, angelic words,
men called him bendered, his ideas absurd,
discounting all the warlock’s spells he’d cast.

The wars of heaven and hell? Earth’s senseless grief?
Can sculptors carve from myths a bas-relief
to illuminate the sepulcher of Poe?

No, let us set in granite, here below,
a limit and a block on this disaster:
this Blasphemy, to not acknowledge a Master!

The original French poem:

Le tombeau d’Edgar Poe
Stéphane Mallarmé

Tel qu’en Lui-même enfin l’éternité le change,
Le Poète suscite avec un glaive nu
Son siècle épouvanté de n’avoir pas connu
Que la mort triomphait dans cette voix étrange!
Eux, comme un vil sursaut d’hydre oyant jadis l’ange
Donner un sens plus pur aux mots de la tribu,
Proclamèrent très haut le sortilège bu
Dans le flot sans honneur de quelque noir mélange.
Du sol et de la nue hostiles, ô grief!
Si notre idée avec ne sculpte un bas-relief
Dont la tombe de Poe éblouissante s’orne
Calme bloc ici-bas chu d’un désastre obscur
Que ce granit du moins montre à jamais sa borne
Aux noirs vols du Blasphème épars dans le futur.

"Le Cygne" ("The Swan")
by Stéphane Mallarmé
this untitled poem is also called Mallarmé's "White Sonnet"
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The virginal, the vivid, the vivacious day:
can its brilliance be broken by a wild wing-blow
delivered to this glacial lake
whose frozen ice-falls impede flight? No.

In past reflections on its thoughts today
the Swan remembers freedom, yet can't make
a song from its surroundings, only take
on the winter's ghostly hue of snow.

In the Swan's white agony its bared neck lies
within an icy guillotine its sense denies.
Slowly being frozen to its inner being,
the body ignores the phantom spirit fleeing …

Cold contempt for its captor
does not avail the raptor.

The original French poem:

Le vierge, le vivace et le bel aujourd'hui
Va-t-il nous déchirer avec un coup d'aile ivre
Ce lac dur oublié que hante sous le givre
Le transparent glacier des vols qui n'ont pas fui !

Un cygne d'autrefois se souvient que c'est lui
Magnifique mais qui sans espoir se délivre
Pour n'avoir pas chanté la région où vivre
Quand du stérile hiver a resplendi l'ennui.

Tout son col secouera cette blanche agonie
Par l'espace infligée à l'oiseau qui le nie,
Mais non l'horreur du sol où le plumage est pris.

Fantôme qu'à ce lieu son pur éclat assigne,
Il s'immobilise au songe froid de mépris
Que vêt parmi l'exil inutile le Cygne.

Toute l'âme résumée (“The Whole Soul Summed Up”)
by Stéphane Mallarmé
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

We express our souls, whole,
when we slowly exhale
circling rings of smoke
wafted through other rings

all blown from some chance cigar
briefly and brilliantly smoldering,
ash falling from ash
at the clear kiss of fire

as the choir of romances
warms your lips;
exclude, when you begin,
vile reality

because being too precise erases
your vague literature.

The original French poem:

Toute l'âme résumée
Quand lente nous l'expirons
Dans plusieurs ronds de fumée
Abolis en autres ronds

Atteste quelque cigare
Brûlant savamment pour peu
Que la cendre se sépare
De son clair baiser de feu

Ainsi le chœur des romances
À la lèvre vole-t-il
Exclus-en si tu commences
Le réel parce que vil

Le sens trop précis rature
Ta vague littérature.



RIMBAUD

Ophélie (“Ophelia”), an Excerpt
by Arthur Rimbaud
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

On pitiless black waves unsinking stars abide
… while pale Ophelia, a lethargic lily, drifts by …
Here, tangled in her veils, she floats on the tide …
Far-off, in the woods, we hear the strident bugle’s cry.

For a thousand years, or more, sad Ophelia,
This albescent phantom, has rocked here, to and fro.
For a thousand years, or more, in her gentle folly,
Ophelia has rocked here when the night breezes blow.

For a thousand years, or more, sad Ophelia,
Has passed, an albescent phantom, down this long black river.
For a thousand years, or more, in her sweet madness
Ophelia has made this river shiver.

Le Bateau ivre (“The Drunken Boat”), an Excerpt
by Arthur Rimbaud
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The impassive river carried me downstream
as howling warriors slashed the bargemen's throats,
then nailed them, naked, to their former posts,
while I observed all idly, in a dream.

What did I care about the slaughtered crew,
the Flemish barley or the English freight?
The river had taught me how to navigate,
but otherwise? It seemed so much “ado.”

Drunken Morning, or, Morning of Drunkenness
by Arthur Rimbaud
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Oh, my Beautiful! Oh, my Good!
Hideous fanfare wherein I won’t stumble!
Oh, rack of splendid enchantments!

Huzzah for the virginal!
Huzzah for the immaculate work!
For the marvelous body!

The rest of "Drunken Morning" and the poems below can be read, free of charge and without annoying ads, here: Arthur Rimbaud

L'Eternité (“ Eternity”) by Arthur Rimbaud
Les Illuminations II: Enfance (“Childhood”) by Arthur Rimbaud
Illuminations VIII: Départ (“Departure”) by Arthur Rimbaud
Sensation by Arthur Rimbaud
Antico (“Ancient” or “Antique”) by Arthur Rimbaud
Song of the Highest Tower by Arthur Rimbaud
Rêvé Pour l'hiver (“Winter Dream”) by Arthur Rimbaud
Dawn by Arthur Rimbaud

The poems above can be read, free of charge and without annoying ads, here: Arthur Rimbaud



PAUL VALERY

Paul Valéry was buried in the seaside cemetery evoked in his best-known poem. From the vantage of the cemetery, the tombs seemed to “support” a sea-ceiling dotted with white sails. Valéry begins and ends his poem with this image …

Excerpts from “Le cimetière marin”(“The graveyard by the sea”)
from Charmes ou poèmes (1922)
by Paul Valery
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Do not, O my soul, aspire to immortal life, but exhaust what is possible.
—Pindar, Pythian Ode 3

1.
This tranquil ceiling, where white doves are sailing,
stands propped between tall pines and foundational tombs,
as the noonday sun composes, with its flames,
sea-waves forever forming and reforming …
O, what a boon, when some lapsed thought expires,
to reflect on the placid face of Eternity!

5.
As a pear dissolves in the act of being eaten,
transformed, through sudden absence, to delight
relinquishing its shape within our mouths,
even so, I breathe in vapors I’ll become,
as the sea rejoices and its shores enlarge,
fed by lost souls devoured; more are rumored.

6.
Beautiful sky, my true-blue sky, ’tis I
who alters! Pride and indolence possessed me,
yet, somehow, I possessed real potency …
But now I yield to your ephemeral vapors
as my shadow steals through stations of the dead;
its delicate silhouette crook-fingering “Forward!”

8.
… My soul still awaits reports of its nothingness …

9.
… What corpse compels me forward, to no end?
What empty skull commends these strange bone-heaps?
A star broods over everything I lost …

10.
… Here where so much antique marble
shudders over so many shadows,
the faithful sea slumbers …

11.
… Watchful dog …
Keep far from these peaceful tombs
the prudent doves, all impossible dreams,
the angels’ curious eyes …

12.
… The brittle insect scratches out existence …
… Life is enlarged by its lust for absence …
… The bitterness of death is sweet and the mind clarified.

13.
… The dead do well here, secured here in this earth …
… I am what mutates secretly in you …

14.
I alone can express your apprehensions!
My penitence, my doubts, my limitations,
are fatal flaws in your exquisite diamond …
But here in their marble-encumbered infinite night
a formless people sleeping at the roots of trees
have slowly adopted your cause …

15.
… Where, now, are the kindly words of the loving dead? …
… Now grubs consume, where tears were once composed …

16.
… Everything dies, returns to earth, gets recycled …

17.
And what of you, great Soul, do you still dream
there’s something truer than deceitful colors:
each flash of golden surf on eyes of flesh?
Will you still sing, when you’re as light as air?
Everything perishes and has no presence!
I am not immune; Divine Impatience dies!

18.
Emaciate consolation, Immortality,
grotesquely clothed in your black and gold habit,
transfiguring death into some Madonna’s breast,
your pious ruse and cultivated lie:
who does not know and who does not reject
your empty skull and pandemonic laughter?

24.
The wind is rising! … We must strive to live!
The immense sky opens and closes my book!
Waves surge through shell-shocked rocks, reeking spray!
O, fly, fly away, my sun-bedazzled pages!
Break, breakers! Break joyfully as you threaten to shatter
this tranquil ceiling where white doves are sailing!

Ode secrète (“Secret Ode”)
by Paul Valéry
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The fall so exquisite, the ending so soft,
the struggle’s abandonment so delightful:
depositing the glistening body
on a bed of moss, after the dance!

Who has ever seen such a glow
illuminate a triumph
as these sun-brightened beads
crowning a sweat-drenched forehead!

Here, touched by the dusk's last light,
this body that achieved so much
by dancing and outdoing Hercules
now mimics the drooping rose-clumps!

Sleep then, our all-conquering hero,
come so soon to this tragic end,
for now the many-headed Hydra
reveals its Infiniteness …

Behold what Bull, what Bear, what Hound,
what Visions of limitless Conquests
beyond the boundaries of Time
the soul imposes on formless Space!

This is the supreme end, this glittering Light
beyond the control of mere monsters and gods,
as it gloriously reveals
the matchless immensity of the heavens!



PAUL VERLAINE

Paul Verlaine (1844-1896) was a major French poet associated with the Symbolist and Decadent movements.

Il pleure dans mon coeur ("It rains in my heart")
by Paul Verlaine
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

It rains in my heart
As it rains on the town;
Heavy languor and dark
Drenches my heart.

Oh, the sweet-sounding rain
Cleansing pavements and roofs!
For my listless heart's pain
The pure song of the rain!

Still it rains without reason
In my overcast heart.
Can it be there's no treason?
That this grief's without reason?

As my heart floods with pain,
Lacking hatred, or love,
I've no way to explain
Such bewildering pain!

Spleen
by Paul Verlaine
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The roses were so very red;
The ivy, impossibly black.

Dear, with a mere a turn of your head,
My despair's flooded back!

The sky was too gentle, too blue;
The sea, far too windswept and green.

Yet I always imagined—or knew—
I'd again feel your spleen.

Now I'm tired of the glossy waxed holly,
Of the shimmering boxwood too,

Of the meadowland's endless folly,
When all things, alas, lead to you!

The translations with the original French text can be read here: Paul Verlaine



RENEE VIVIEN

Renée Vivien, born Pauline Mary Tarn (1877-1909), was a British poet and high-profile lesbian of the Belle Époque who wrote French poems in the style of the Symbolistes and Parnassiens.

Undine
by Renee Vivien
loose translation/interpretation by Kim Cherub (an alias of Michael R. Burch)

Your laughter startles, your caresses rake.
Your cold kisses love the evil they do.
Your eyes—blue lotuses drifting on a lake.
Lilies are less pallid than your face.

You move like water parting.
Your hair falls in rootlike tangles.
Your words like treacherous rapids rise.
Your arms, flexible as reeds, strangle,

Choking me like tubular river reeds.
I shiver in their enlacing embrace.
Drowning without an illuminating moon,
I vanish without a trace,
lost in a nightly swoon.

Song
by Renee Vivien
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

When the moon weeps,
illuminating flowers on the graves of the faithful,
my memories creep
back to you, wrapped in flightless wings.

It's getting late; soon we will sleep
(your eyes already half closed)
steeped
in the shimmering air.

O, the agony of burning roses:
your forehead discloses
a heavy despondency,
though your hair floats lightly …

In the night sky the stars burn whitely
as the Goddess nightly
resurrects flowers that fear the sun
and die before dawn …

You can read the translations below and the original French poems here: Renee Vivien

Amazone by Renée Vivien
Nous nous sommes assises (“We Sat Down”) by Renée Vivien



VOLTAIRE

Voltaire was one of the world's most prolific and most influential writers.

Les Vous et Les Tu (“You, then and now”)
by Voltaire
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Phyllis, whatever became of those days
We spent riding in your carriage,
Lacking both lackeys and trappings,
Accompanied only by your graceful charms
And content with a humble supper
Which you (of course) transformed into ambrosia …
Days when you abandoned yourself in your folly
To the happily deceived lover
Who so earnestly pledged you his life?

Heaven had bequeathed you, then,
In lieu of prestige and riches,
The enchanting enticements of youth:
A tender heart, an adventurous mind,
An alabaster breast and exquisite eyes.
Well, with so many luring allurements,
Ah! what girl would have not been mischievous?
And so you were, graceful creature.
And thus (and may Love forgive me!)
You know I desired you all the more.

Ah, Madame! How your life,
So filled with honors today,
Differs from those lost enchantments!
This hulking guardian with the powdered hair
Who lies incessantly at your door,
Phyllis, is the very avatar of Time:
See how he dismisses the escorts
Of tender Love and Laughter;
Those orphans no longer dare show their faces
Beneath your magnificent paneled ceilings.
Alas! in happier days I saw them
Enter your home through a glassless window
To frolic in your hovel.

No, Madame, all these carpets
Spun at the Savonnerie
And so elegantly loomed by the Persians;
And all your golden jewelry;
And all this expensive porcelain
Germain engraved with his divine hand;
And all these cabinets in which Martin
Surpassed the art of China;
And all your white vases,
Such fragile Japanese wonders!;
And the twin chandeliers of diamonds
Dangling from your ears;
And your costly chokers and necklaces;
And all this spellbinding pomp;
Are not worth a single kiss
You blessed me with when you were young.



The following are links to other translations by Michael R. Burch:

Michael R. Burch Main Translation Page & Index:

The Best Poetry Translations of Michael R. Burch
The Best Poetry Translations of Michael R. Burch (sans links)

Translation Pages by Language:

English Translations of Anglo-Saxon Poems by Michael R. Burch
English Translations of Chinese Poets by Michael R. Burch
English Translations of Female Chinese Poets
English Translations of French Poets by Michael R. Burch
Germane Germans: English Translations by Michael R. Burch
English Translations of German Poets by Michael R. Burch
English Translations of Japanese Poets by Michael R. Burch
English Translations of Japanese Zen Death Poems
English Translations of Ancient Mayan Love Poems
English Translations of Native American Poems, Proverbs and Blessings
English Translations of Roman, Latin and Italian Poets by Michael R. Burch
English Translations of Urdu Poets by Michael R. Burch
English Translations of Uyghur Poets by Michael R. Burch

Related Pages in Roughly Chronological Order:

Ancient Egyptian Harper's Songs
Ancient Japanese Waka and Haiku
Ancient Greek Epigrams and Epitaphs
Sappho of Lesbos Shorter Poems and Fragments
Sappho of Lesbos Longer Poems
Antipater of Sidon
Martial Translations
Catullus Translations
Song of Amergin
Caedmon's Hymn
Bede's Death Song
Deor's Lament
Wulf and Eadwacer
The Wife's Lament
The Ruin
The Seafarer
The Rhyming Poem
Anglo-Saxon Poems
Anglo-Saxon Riddles and Kennings
Middle English Poems
How Long the Night
Ballads
Sumer is Icumen in
Fowles in the Frith
Ich am of Irlaunde
Dante Translations by Michael R. Burch
Geoffrey Chaucer
Charles d'Orleans
Tom O'Bedlam's Song
Now Goeth Sun Under Wood
Pity Mary
Sweet Rose of Virtue
Lament for the Makaris
Adam Lay Ybounden
This World's Joy
Medieval Poetry Translations (476-1486)
MICHELANGELO (1475-1564)
Basho (1644-1694)
Yosa Buson (1716-1764)
Tegner's Drapa (1820)
Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867)
Paul Verlaine (1844-1896)
Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941)
Allama Iqbal (1877-1938)
Miklós Radnóti
Bertolt Brecht
Ber Horvitz
Paul Celan
Primo Levi
Poetry by Michael R. Burch
Michael R. Burch Free Verse
My Influences by Michael R. Burch
Michael R. Burch Early Poems Timeline
Bemused by Muses
Poems for Poets
Timeline of Rhyme
Best Poetry Translations sans links

The HyperTexts