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Famous Translated Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Translated poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous translated poems. These examples illustrate what a famous translated poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...ssing in...
Pressure
That's how diamonds are made
And that's WHERE it sometimes all collapses
Down in on you

5/
Then I translated your muttered lyrics
And the phrases were curious:
Like "incognito libido"
And "Chalk Skin Bending"

The words kept getting smaller and smaller
Until
Separated from their music
Each letter spilled out into a cartridge
Which fit only in the barrel of a gun

6/
And you shoved the barrel in as far as possible
Because that's where the pain came from
T...Read more of this...
by Carroll, Jim



...e with piteous eye
The ruines of her conquest to espie?
Will she take time before all wracked be?
Her eyes-speech is translated thus by thee,
But failst thou not in phrases so heau'nly hye?
Looke on againe, the faire text better prie;
What blushing notes dost thou in Margent see?
What sighes stolne out, or kild before full-borne?
Hast thou found such and such-like arguments,
Or art thou else to comfort me forsworne?
Well, how-so thou interpret the contents,
I am re...Read more of this...
by Sidney, Sir Philip
...ll stay up, read, write long letters,
and wander the avenues, up and down,
restlessly, while the leaves are blowing. 


Translated by Galway Kinnell and Hannah Liebmann, 
"The Essential Rilke" (Ecco) 



Lord, it is time. The summer was too long.
Lay your shadow on the sundials now,
and through the meadow let the winds throng.

Ask the last fruits to ripen on the vine;
give them further two more summer days
to bring about perfection and to raise
the final sweetness in the hea...Read more of this...
by Rilke, Rainer Maria
...
 Hid them in some flowery cave,
 Tell me but where,
 Sweet Queen of Parley, Daughter of the Sphere!
 So may'st thou be translated to the skies,
And give resounding grace to all Heaven's harmonies!


 COMUS. Can any mortal mixture of earthUs mould
Breathe such divine enchanting ravishment?
Sure something holy lodges in that breast,
And with these raptures moves the vocal air
To testify his hidden residence.
How sweetly did they float upon the wings
Of silence, through the emp...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...vague—the face—
My own—so patient—covers—
Too far—the strength—
My timidness enfolds—
Haunting the Heart—
Like her translated faces—
Teasing the want—
It—only—can suffice!

271

A solemn thing—it was—I said—
A woman—white—to be—
And wear—if God should count me fit—
Her blameless mystery—

A hallowed thing—to drop a life
Into the purple well—
Too plummetless—that it return—
Eternity—until—

I pondered how the bliss would look—
And would it feel as big—
W...Read more of this...
by Dickinson, Emily



...heir lips alone, but their hearts; and the Ave Maria
Sang they, and fell on their knees, and their souls, with devotion translated,
Rose on the ardor of prayer, like Elijah ascending to heaven.

Meanwhile had spread in the village the tidings of ill, and on all sides
Wandered, wailing, from house to house the women and children.
Long at her father's door Evangeline stood, with her right hand
Shielding her eyes from the level rays of the sun, that, descending,
Lighted the vill...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...ct disappear from the Louvre. The two friends were
reunited in Vienna in 1951 and traveled to Peking together in 1952. 
Translated into Chinese, this poem was later burned-along with Hsiao's
works- in the Cultural Revolution....Read more of this...
by Hikmet, Nazim
...enth century BCE, served for centuries thereafter as the canonical hymn of the Eleusinian Mysteries. The text below was translated from the Greek by Hugh G. Evelyn-White and first published by the Loeb Classical Library in 1914. This text has been scanned and proof-read by Edward A. Beach, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.]

I begin to sing of rich-haired Demeter, awful goddess -- of her and her trim-ankled daughter whom Aid...Read more of this...
by Homer,
...alousy, the shyness—though in vain—
Made up a love so tender and so true
As may God grant you to be loved again.


Translated by Genia Gurarie, 11/10/95. Copyright retained by Genia Gurarie....Read more of this...
by Pushkin, Alexander
...e now again release me from
this pain everything my spirit longs 
to have fulfilled fulfill and you
be my ally 

--Translated by Diane Rayor 
...Read more of this...
by Sappho,
...rm is increasing,
Nightfall brings a hurricane -
And the drowned man knocks, unceasing,
By the gates and at the pane.


Translated by: Genia Gurarie, 11/95
Copyright retained by Genia Gurarie.
email: egurarie@princeton.edu
http://www.princeton.edu/~egurarie/
For permission to reproduce, write personally to the translator....Read more of this...
by Pushkin, Alexander
...he still with her?
Where is their haven at this hour?
Or did they both already wither,
Like this unfathomable flower?

Translated by: Genia Gurarie, summer of 1995
Copyright retained by Genia Gurarie.
email: egurarie@princeton.edu
http://www.princeton.edu/~egurarie/
For permission to reproduce, write personally to the translator....Read more of this...
by Pushkin, Alexander
...entified the
introduction describing the sorrows of poverty, along with the
other moralising interludes in the tale, as translated from "De
Contemptu Mundi" ("On the contempt of the world") by Pope
Innocent.)

2. Transcriber' note: This refers to the game of hazard, a dice
game like craps, in which two ("ambes ace") won, and eleven
("six-cinque") lost.

3. Purpose: discourse, tale: French "propos".

4. "Peace" rhymed with "lese" and "chese", the old forms of
"lose" and "choos...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...og) to-bi-ko-mu (jumping into) 
mi-zu (water) no o-to (sound)






 The old pond--
a frog jumps in,
 sound of water.


Translated by Robert Hass



Old pond...
a frog jumps in
water's sound.


Translated by William J. Higginson



An old silent pond...
A frog jumps into the pond,
splash! Silence again.


Translated by Harry Behn



There is the old pond!
Lo, into it jumps a frog:
hark, water's music!


Translated by John Bryan



The silent old pond
a mirror of ancient calm,...Read more of this...
by Basho, Matsuo
...r him to Fielding's 'Journey from the World to the next,' and to the Visions of myself, the said Quevedo, in Spanish or translated. The reader is also requested to observe, that no doctrinal tenets are insisted upon or discussed; that the person of the Deity is carefully withheld from sight, which is more than can be said for the Laureate, who hath thought proper to make him talk, not 'like a school-divine,' but like the unscholarlike Mr. Southey. The whole action passes on t...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)
...ire Sermon (which
corresponds
in importance to the Sermon on the Mount) from which these words are taken,
will be found translated in the late Henry Clarke Warren's Buddhism
in Translation (Harvard Oriental Series). Mr. Warren was one
of the great pioneers of Buddhist studies in the Occident.
309. From St. Augustine's Confessions again. The
collocation
of these two representatives of eastern and western asceticism,
as the culmination of this part of the poem, is not an accide...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...'s emergence;
Our monk had wholly disappeared -
Before a crowd of local urchins,
While fishing, found his hoary beard.

Translated by: Genia Gurarie, summer of 1995
Copyright retained by Genia Gurarie.
email: egurarie@princeton.edu
http://www.princeton.edu/~egurarie/
For permission to reproduce, write personally to the translator....Read more of this...
by Pushkin, Alexander
...for it 
      cannot be learned in any school. 
From: ‘Hush Don’t Say Anything to God: Passionate Poems of Rumi’
Translated by Sharam Shiva NEXT Poem Links 

Things I Didnt Know I Loved

...er me

I didn't know I loved the sky 
cloudy or clear
the blue vault Andrei studied on his back at Borodino
in prison I translated both volumes of War and Peace into Turkish 
I hear voices
not from the blue vault but from the yard 
the guards are beating someone again
I didn't know I loved trees
bare beeches near Moscow in Peredelkino
they come upon me in winter noble and modest 
beeches are Russian the way poplars are Turkish 
"the poplars of Izmir
losing their leaves. . .
t...Read more of this...
by Hikmet, Nazim
...has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.


translated by W.S. Merwin...Read more of this...
by Neruda, Pablo

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry