A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916)
Purged, with the life they left, of all
That makes life paltry and mean and small,
In their new dedication charged
With something heightened, enriched, enlarged,
That lends a light to their lusty brows
And a song to the rhythm of their tramping feet,
These are the men that have taken vows,
These are the hardy, the flower, the elite, —
These are the men that are moved no more
By the will to traffic and grasp and store
And ring with pleasure and wealth and love
The circles that self is the center of;
But they are moved by the powers that force
The sea forever to ebb and rise,
That hold Arcturus in his course,
And marshal at noon in tropic skies
The clouds that tower on some snow-capped chain
And drift out over the peopled plain.
They are big with the beauty of cosmic things.
Mark how their columns surge! They seem
To follow the goddess with outspread wings
That points toward Glory, the soldier’s dream.
With bayonets bare and flags unfurled,
They scale the summits of the world
And fade on the farthest golden height
In fair horizons full of light.
Comrades in arms there — friend or foe —
That trod the perilous, toilsome trail
Through a world of ruin and blood and woe
In the years of the great decision — hail!
Friend or foe, it shall matter nought;
This only matters, in fine: we fought.
For we were young and in love or strife
Sought exultation and craved excess:
To sound the wildest debauch in life
We staked our youth and its loveliness.
Let idlers argue the right and wrong
And weigh what merit our causes had.
Putting our faith in being strong —
Above the level of good and bad —
For us, we battled and burned and killed
Because evolving Nature willed,
And it was our pride and boast to be
The instruments of Destiny.
There was a stately drama writ
By the hand that peopled the earth and air
And set the stars in the infinite
And made night gorgeous and morning fair,
And all that had sense to reason knew
That bloody drama must be gone through.
Some sat and watched how the action veered —
Waited, profited, trembled, cheered —
We saw not clearly nor understood,
But yielding ourselves to the masterhand,
Each in his part as best he could,
We played it through as the author planned.
A few random poems:
- We put the urn aboard ship by Sappho
- Second Poem by Peter Orlovsky
- Владимир Маяковский – Слово “Товарищ” говоришь ты?! (РОСТА №449)
- Autumn Days by Will McKendree Carleton
- A Dream by William Blake
- Ольга Берггольц – Дорога на фронт
- On Glenriddell’s Fox breaking his chain: A Fragment by Robert Burns
- Владимир Корнилов – Вечер Гарри Каспарова в Политехническом
- Tell Me
- Анатолий Жигулин – Москва
- I Want Those Words Today by Pandian Chelliah
- I Dream of my Grandmother and Great-Grandmother by Maria Mazziotti Gillan
- Fragment – Wee Willie Gray (Song) by Robert Burns
- Sonnet CXXI by William Shakespeare
- Владимир Костров – Бедное сердце болит спозаранку
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
- Омар Хайям – Не горюй, что забудется имя твое
- Омар Хайям – Не для веселости я пью вино
- Омар Хайям – Не бойтесь дарить согревающих слов
- Омар Хайям – Мы влюбчивая голь, здесь нету мусульман
- Омар Хайям – Мы пешки, небо же игрок
- Омар Хайям – Мы источник веселья, и скорби рудник
- Омар Хайям – Мы больше в этот мир вовек не попадем
- Омар Хайям – Муки старят красавиц
- Омар Хайям – Моя любовь к тебе достигла совершенства
- Омар Хайям – Мой друг, о завтрашнем заботиться не след
- Омар Хайям – Много зла и коварства таится кругом
- Омар Хайям – Мне с похмелья лекарство одно принеси
- Омар Хайям – Мир любви обрести без терзаний нельзя
- Омар Хайям – Миг придёт, и смерть исторгнет жадно
- Омар Хайям – Меняем реки, страны, города
- Омар Хайям – Люди тлеют в могилах, ничем становясь
- Омар Хайям – Любя тебя, сношу я все упрёки
- Омар Хайям – Любовь роковая беда
- Омар Хайям – Люблю вино, ловлю веселья миг
- Омар Хайям – Лучше впасть в нищету, голодать или красть
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
Alan Seeger (1888-1916) was an American war poet who fought and died in World War I during the Battle of the Somme, serving in the French Foreign Legion. Seeger was the brother of Charles Seeger, a noted American pacifist and musicologist and the uncle of folk musician, Pete Seeger.