A poem by Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
I.
In ev’ry Town, where Thamis rolls his Tyde,
A narrow pass there is, with Houses low;
Where ever and anon, the Stream is ey’d,
And many a Boat soft sliding to and fro.
There oft are heard the notes of Infant Woe,
The short thick Sob, loud Scream, and shriller Squall:
How can ye, Mothers, vex your Children so?
Some play, some eat, some cack against the wall,
And as they crouchen low, for bread and butter call.
II.
And on the broken pavement, here and there,
Doth many a stinking sprat and herring lie;
A brandy and tobacco shop is near,
And hens, and dogs, and hogs are feeding by;
And here a sailor’s jacket hangs to dry.
At ev’ry door are sun-burnt matrons seen,
Mending old nets to catch the scaly fry;
Now singing shrill, and scolding eft between;
Scolds answer foul-mouth’d scolds; bad neighbourhood I ween.
III.
The snappish cur, (the passengers’ annoy)
Close at my heel with yelping treble flies;
The whimp’ring girl, and hoarser-screaming boy,
Join to the yelping treble shrilling cries;
The scolding Quean to louder notes doth rise,
And her full pipes those shrilling cries confound;
To her full pipes the grunting hog replies;
The grunting hogs alarm the neighbours round,
And curs, girls, boys, and scolds, in the deep bass are drown’d.
IV.
Hard by a Sty, beneath a roof of thatch,
Dwelt Obloquy, who in her early days
Baskets of fish at Billingsgate did watch,
Cod, whiting, oyster, mackrel, sprat, or plaice:
There learn’d she speech from tongues that never cease.
Slander beside her, like a Mag-pie, chatters,
With Envy, (spitting Cat) dread foe to peace;
Like a curs’d Cur, Malice before her clatters,
And vexing ev’ry wight, tears clothes and all to tatters.
V.
Her dugs were mark’d by ev’ry Collier’s hand,
Her mouth was black as bull-dogs at the stall:
She scratch’d, bit, and spar’d ne lace ne band,
And bitch and rogue her answer was to all;
Nay, e’en the parts of shame by name would call:
Yea, when she passed by or lane or nook,
Would greet the man who turn’d him to the Wall,
And by his hand obscene the porter took,
Nor ever did askance like modest Virgin look.
VI.
Such place hath Deptford, navy-building town,
Woolwich and Wapping smelling strong of pitch;
Such Lambeth, envy of each band and gown,
And Twick’nam such, which fairer scenes enrich,
Grots, statues, urns, and Johnston’s Dog and Bitch,
Ne village is without, on either side,
All up the silver Thames, or all adown;
Ne Richmond’s self, from whose tall front are ey’d
Vales, spires, meandring streams, and Windsor’s tow’ry pride.
A few random poems:
- Валерий Брюсов – Идут года. Но с прежней страстью
- The Gardener LXXXIV: Over the Green by Rabindranath Tagore
- Владимир Британишский – А Новый год мы встретили в лесу
- UNREADABLE by Satish Verma
- The Mead A-Mow’d by William Barnes
- Words Of Advice by Ronald G. Auguste
- Михаил Ломоносов – На Фридриха II, короля Прусского (Сочинение господина Вольтера, переведенное господином Ломоносовым)
- Cradle Song poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Quatrain 1693 (Farsi with English Translation) by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- Николай Некрасов – Влас
- Наум Коржавин – Двадцатые годы
- Иосиф Бродский – Бюст Тиберия
- Наум Коржавин – Песня лейб-казачьей сотни
- Jerusalem by Yehuda Amichai
- Key and Knife (Two Haiku) by Mike Yuan
External links
Bat’s Poetry Page – more poetry by Fledermaus
Talking Writing Monster’s Page –
Batty Writing – the bat’s idle chatter, thoughts, ideas and observations, all original, all fresh
Poems in English
- Кондратий Рылеев – О милый друг, как внятен голос твой
- Кондратий Рылеев – Не вчера ли в хороводе
- Кондратий Рылеев – Н. М. Тевяшовой на предложение ее, дабы я написал стихи на Надежду
- Кондратий Рылеев – Мне тошно здесь, как на чужбине
- Кондратий Рылеев – Меня пленяли наши деды
- Кондратий Рылеев – Людмила
- Кондратий Рылеев – Любовь к отчизне
- Кондратий Рылеев – Луна
- Кондратий Рылеев – Князю Смоленскому
- Кондратий Рылеев – Как солнце ни блестит и как оно ни светит
- Кондратий Рылеев – К портрету
- Кондратий Рылеев – К Надежде
- Кондратий Рылеев – К N. N. (У вас в гостях бывать накладно)
- Кондратий Рылеев – К N. N. (Когда душа изнемогала)
- Кондратий Рылеев – К Фролову
- Кондратий Рылеев – К Делии
- Кондратий Рылеев – Извинение перед Н.М. Тевяшовой
- Кондратий Рылеев – Из письма к Булгарину
- Кондратий Рылеев – Гусь и змия
- Иван Крылов – Ода, выбранная из псалма 71-го
More external links (open in a new tab):
Doska or the Board – write anything
Search engines:
Yandex – the best search engine for searches in Russian (and the best overall image search engine, in any language, anywhere)
Qwant – the best search engine for searches in French, German as well as Romance and Germanic languages.
Ecosia – a search engine that supposedly… plants trees
Duckduckgo – the real alternative and a search engine that actually works. Without much censorship or partisan politics.
Yahoo– yes, it’s still around, amazingly, miraculously, incredibly, but now it seems to be powered by Bing.
Parallel Translations of Poetry
The Poetry Repository – an online library of poems, poetry, verse and poetic works
