A poem by Aeschylus (c. 525 – c. 456 Before Christ )

Up and lead the dance of Fate!

Lift the song that mortals hate!

Tell what rights are ours on earth,

Over all of human birth.

Swift of foot to avenge are we!

He whose hands are clean and pure,

Naught our wrath to dread hath he;

Calm his cloudless days endure.

But the man that seeks to hide

Like him (1), his gore-bedewèd hands,

Witnesses to them that died,

The blood avengers at his side,

The Furies’ troop forever stands.

O’er our victim come begin!

Come, the incantation sing,

Frantic all and maddening,

To the heart a brand of fire,

The Furies’ hymn,

That which claims the senses dim,

Tuneless to the gentle lyre,

Withering the soul within.

The pride of all of human birth,

All glorious in the eye of day,

Dishonored slowly melts away,

Trod down and trampled to the earth,

Whene’er our dark-stoled troop advances,

Whene’er our feet lead on the dismal dances.

For light our footsteps are,

And perfect is our might,

Awful remembrances of guilt and crime,

Implacable to mortal prayer,

Far from the gods, unhonored, and heaven’s light,

We hold our voiceless dwellings dread,

All unapproached by living or by dead.

What mortal feels not awe,

Nor trembles at our name,

Hearing our fate-appointed power sublime,

Fixed by the eternal law.

For old our office, and our fame,

Might never yet of its due honors fail,

Though ‘neath the earth our realm in unsunned regions pale.

divider_poems

Poetry Monster – Home

A few random poems:

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 

More external links (open in a new tab):

Russian Commerce Agency

Dealing Monster

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

Poems by Author and Category

The Poetry Repository – an online library of poems, poetry, verse and poetic works