A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916)
So when the verdure of his life was shed,
With all the grace of ripened manlihead,
And on his locks, but now so lovable,
Old age like desolating winter fell,
Leaving them white and flowerless and forlorn:
Then from his bed the Goddess of the Morn
Softly withheld, yet cherished him no less
With pious works of pitying tenderness;
Till when at length with vacant, heedless eyes,
And hoary height bent down none otherwise
Than burdened willows bend beneath their weight
Of snow when winter winds turn temperate, —
So bowed with years — when still he lingered on:
Then to the daughter of Hyperion
This counsel seemed the best: for she, afar
By dove-gray seas under the morning star,
Where, on the wide world’s uttermost extremes,
Her amber-walled, auroral palace gleams,
High in an orient chamber bade prepare
An everlasting couch, and laid him there,
And leaving, closed the shining doors. But he,
Deathless by Jove’s compassionless decree,
Found not, as others find, a dreamless rest.
There wakeful, with half-waking dreams oppressed,
Still in an aural, visionary haze
Float round him vanished forms of happier days;
Still at his side he fancies to behold
The rosy, radiant thing beloved of old;
And oft, as over dewy meads at morn,
Far inland from a sunrise coast is borne
The drowsy, muffled moaning of the sea,
Even so his voice flows on unceasingly, —
Lisping sweet names of passion overblown,
Breaking with dull, persistent undertone
The breathless silence that forever broods
Round those colossal, lustrous solitudes.
Times change. Man’s fortune prospers, or it falls.
Change harbors not in those eternal halls
And tranquil chamber where Tithonus lies.
But through his window there the eastern skies
Fall palely fair to the dim ocean’s end.
There, in blue mist where air and ocean blend,
The lazy clouds that sail the wide world o’er
Falter and turn where they can sail no more.
There singing groves, there spacious gardens blow —
Cedars and silver poplars, row on row,
Through whose black boughs on her appointed night,
Flooding his chamber with enchanted light,
Lifts the full moon’s immeasurable sphere,
Crimson and huge and wonderfully near.
A few random poems:
- Mark Twain and Joan of Arc by Vachel Lindsay
- April Aubade by Sylvia Plath
- Георгий Иванов – То, о чем искусство лжет
- The Soldier poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- His Excellency General Washington by Phillis Wheatley
- Как просто было в юности
- Шекспир – У бедной музы красок больше нет – Сонет 103
- Love Sonnet LIV poem – Zora Bernice May Cross poems | Poetry Monster
- Poems On Beauty by Rabindranath Tagore
- Merrow Down by Rudyard Kipling
- Two Campers In Cloud Country by Sylvia Plath
- I Hoed and Trenched and Weeded poem – A. E. Housman
- Couplet 11 poem – Amir Khusro poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Legatee poem – Ambrose Bierce poems | Poems and Poetry
- Олег Бундур – Жёлудь
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
- Владимир Маяковский – Смотри, крестьянин (РОСТА №463)
- Владимир Маяковский – Смотри, чтоб праздник перешел и в будни
- Владимир Маяковский – Служака
- Владимир Маяковский – Слушай, шахтер!.. (РОСТА №843)
- Владимир Маяковский – Слушай, наводчик
- Владимир Маяковский – Слово “Товарищ” говоришь ты?! (РОСТА №449)
- Владимир Маяковский – Слегка нахальные стихи товарищам из ЭМКАХИ
- Владимир Маяковский – Славянский вопрос-то решается просто
- Владимир Маяковский – Сказка про купцову нацию, мужика и кооперацию
- Владимир Маяковский – Сказка о Пете, толстом ребенке, и о Симе, который тонкий
- Владимир Маяковский – Сказка о красной шапочке
- Владимир Маяковский – Сказка для шахтера-друга про шахтерки, чуни и каменный уголь
- Владимир Маяковский – Шумики, шумы и шумищи
- Владимир Маяковский – Шляпами панов не забить… (РОСТА №222)
- Владимир Маяковский – Шестой
- Владимир Маяковский – Севастопольский корреспондент “Матен” сообщает… (РОСТА №507)
- Владимир Маяковский – Серые! К вам орем вниз мы… (РОСТА №313)
- Владимир Маяковский – Сердитый дядя
- Владимир Маяковский – Селькор
- Владимир Маяковский – Сейчас беднее нас нет… (РОСТА №742)
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.