Selected Poems

Selected Poems

by Aldous Huxley
Epub (Kobo), Epub (Adobe)
Publication Date: 24/02/2021

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HEPHERD, to yon tall poplars tune your flute: Let them pierce, keenly, subtly shrill, The slow blue rumour of the hill; Let the grass cry with an anguish of evening gold, And the great sky be mute. Then hearken how the poplar trees unfold Their buds, yet close and gummed and blind, In airy leafage of the mind, Rustling in silvery whispers the twin-hued scales That fade not nor grow old. “Poplars and fountains and you cypress spires Springing in dark and rusty flame, Seek you aught that hath a name? Or say, say: Are you all an upward agony Of undefined desires? “Say, are you happy in the golden march Of sunlight all across the day? Or do you watch the uncertain way That leads the withering moon on cloudy stairs Over the heaven’s wide arch? “Is it towards sorrow or towards joy you lift The sharpness of your trembling spears? Or do you seek, through the grey tears That blur the sky, in the heart of the triumphing blue, A deeper, calmer rift?” So; I have tuned my music to the trees, And there were voices dim below Their shrillness, voices swelling slow In the blue murmur of hills, and a golden cry And then vast silences.

ISBN:
9781465660022
9781465660022
Category:
Fiction
Format:
Epub (Kobo), Epub (Adobe)
Publication Date:
24-02-2021
Language:
English
Publisher:
Library of Alexandria
Aldous Huxley

Aldous Huxley was born on 26 July 1894 near Godalming, Surrey. He began writing poetry and short stories in his early 20s, but it was his first novel, Crome Yellow (1921), which established his literary reputation. This was swiftly followed by Antic Hay (1923), Those Barren Leaves (1925) and Point Counter Point (1928) bright, brilliant satires in which Huxley wittily but ruthlessly passed judgement on the shortcomings of contemporary society.

For most of the 1920s Huxley lived in Italy and an account of his experiences there can be found in Along the Road (1925). The great novels of ideas, including his most famous work Brave New World (published in 1932 this warned against the dehumanising aspects of scientific and material 'progress') and the pacifist novel Eyeless in Gaza (1936) were accompanied by a series of wise and brilliant essays, collected in volume form under titles such as Music at Night (1931) and Ends and Means (1937).

In 1937, at the height of his fame, Huxley left Europe to live in California, working for a time as a screenwriter in Hollywood. As the West braced itself for war, Huxley came increasingly to believe that the key to solving the world's problems lay in changing the individual through mystical enlightenment. The exploration of the inner life through mysticism and hallucinogenic drugs was to dominate his work for the rest of his life.

His beliefs found expression in both fiction (Time Must Have a Stop,1944, and Island, 1962) and non-fiction (The Perennial Philosophy, 1945; Grey Eminence, 1941; and the account of his first mescalin experience, The Doors of Perception, 1954. Huxley died in California on 22 November 1963.

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