Poems by Conrad Aiken

Here alone, unknown, in the darkness,
I watched you whirling above your shadow,
Soft in saf...

From the cold fountain's sunlit lip
A shining film of water spreads,
It is shot with sun, it ...

You are as beautiful as white clouds
Flowing among bright stars at night:
You are as beautiful...

Red leaf, red leaf, falling to float
On the blue water among the cold clouds..
If I were a ch...

In the mazes of loitering people, the watchful and furtive,
the shadows of tree-trunks and sha...

Moonlight, and shadows of leaves
On the white wall above me--
The shadows gallop and swirl wit...

Queen cleopatra, now grown old,
Watched the green grass turning brown..
The river is shrunk t...

This night I dreamed that you shone before me
Colder and paler than rose-flushed marble,
With ...

Wind, wind, wind in the old trees,
Whispering prophecies all night long..
What do the grey l...

Blue waves are driven by wind,
The leaves are driven,
And the clouds go hurrying dizzily over...

Dead Cleopatra lies in a crystal casket,
Wrapped and spiced by the cunningest of hands.
Around...

Ingratitude--the damned ingratitude!
After these years, and all he'd done for him,
To run awa...

Well, there was still a sure hand, anyway,
When she stood up alone, in a casket of light,
...

From acting profile parts in the "legit, "
He came to this; and he is sick of it.
The singing p...

Quiet, and almost bashful, and seldom looking
Into the rows of eyes below and above,
He went...