I.
Philosophy the great and only heir
Of all that human knowledge which has bin
Unforfeited by man’s rebellious sin,
Though full of years he do appear,
(Philosophy, I say, and call it, he,
For whatso’ere the painter’s fancy be,
It a male-virtue seems to me)
Has still been kept in nonage till of late,
Nor manag’d or enjoy’d his vast estate:
Three or four thousand years one would have thought,
To ripeness and perfection might have brought
A science so well bred and nurst,
And of such hopeful parts too at the first.
But, oh, the guardians and the tutors then,
(Some negligent, and some ambitious men)
Would ne’er consent to set him free,
Or his own natural powers to let him see,
Lest that should put an end to their authority.
II.
That his own business he might quite forget,
They’ amus’d him with the sports of wanton wit,
With the desserts of poetry they fed him,
Instead of solid meats t’ encrease his force;
Instead of vigorous exercise they led him
Into the pleasant labyrinths of ever-fresh discourse:
Instead of carrying him to see
The riches which do hoarded for him lie
In Nature’s endless treasury,
They chose his eye to entertain
(His curious but not covetous eye)
With painted scenes, and pageants of the brain.
Some few exalted spirits this latter age has shown,
That labour’d to assert the liberty
(From guardians, who were now usurpers grown)
Of this old minor still, captiv’d Philosophy;
But ’twas rebellion call’d to fight
For such a long oppressed right.
Bacon at last, a mighty man, arose
Whom a wise King and Nature chose
Lord Chancellor of both their laws,
And boldly undertook the injur’d pupil’s cause.
III.
Authority, which did a body boast,
Though ’twas but air condens’d, and stalk’d about,
Like some old giant’s more gigantic ghost,
To terrify the learned rout
With the plain magic of true reason’s light,
He chas’d out of our sight,
Nor suffer’d living men to be misled
By the vain shadows of the dead:
To graves, from whence it rose, the conquer’d phantom fled;
He broke that monstrous god which stood
In midst of th’ orchard, and the whole did claim,
Which with a useless scythe of wood,
And something else not worth a name,
(Both vast for show, yet neither fit
Or to defend, or to beget;
Ridiculous and senseless terrors!) made
Children and superstitious men afraid.
The orchard’s open now, and free;
Bacon has broke that scarecrow deity;
Come, enter, all that will,
Behold the ripen’d fruit, come gather now your fill.
Yet still, methinks, we fain would be
Catching at the forbidden tree,
We would be like the Deity,
When truth and falshood, good and evil, we
Without the senses aid within our selves would see;
For ’tis God only who can find
All Nature in his mind.
IV.
From words, which are but pictures of the thought,
Though we our thoughts from them perversely drew
To things, the mind’s right object, he it brought,
Like foolish birds to painted grapes we flew;
He sought and gather’d for our use the true;
And when on heaps the chosen bunches lay,
He press’d them wisely the mechanic way,
Till all their juice did in one vessel join,
Ferment into a nourishment divine,
The thirsty soul’s refreshing wine.
Who to the life an exact piece would make,
Must not from other’s work a copy take;
No, not from Rubens or Vandyke;
Much less content himself to make it like
Th’ ideas and the images which lie
In his own fancy, or his memory.
No, he before his sight must place
The natural and living face;
The real object must command
Each judgment of his eye, and motion of his hand.
From these and all long errors of the way,
In which our wand’ring predecessors went,
And like th’ old Hebrews many years did stray
In deserts but of small extent;
Bacon, like Moses, led us forth at last,
The barren wilderness he past,
Did on the very border stand
Of the blest promis’d land,
And from the mountain’s top of his exalted wit,
Saw it himself, and shew’d us it.
But life did never to one man allow
Time to discover worlds, and conquer too;
Nor can so short a line sufficient be
To fathom the vast depths of Nature’s sea:
The work he did we ought t’ admire,
And were unjust if we should more require
From his few years, divided ‘twixt th’ excess
Of low affliction, and high happiness.
For who on things remote can fix his sight,
That’s always in a triumph, or a fight?
V.
From these and all long errors of the way
In which our wandering predecessors went,
And like the old Hebrews many years did stray
In deserts but of small extent,
Bacon, like Moses, led us forth at last;
The barren wilderness he passed,
Did on the very border stand
Of the best promised land,
And, from the mountain’s top of his exalted wit,
Saw it himself, and showed us it.
But life did never to one man allow
Time to discover worlds, and conquer too;
Nor can so short a line sufficient be
To fathom the vast depths of nature’s sea.
The work he did we ought to admire,
And were unjust if we should more require
From his few years, divided ‘twixt excess
Of low affliction and high happiness.
For who on things remote can fix his sight
That’s always in a triumph or a fight?
VI.
From you, great champions, we expect to get
These spacious countries but discover’d yet;
Countries where yet in stead of Nature, we
Her images and idols worshipp’d see:
These large and wealthy regions to subdue,
Though learning has whole armies at command,
Quarter’d about in every land,
A better troop she ne’re together drew.
Methinks, like Gideon’s little band,
God with design has pick’d out you,
To do these noble wonders by a few:
When the whole host he saw, they are (said he)
Too many to o’ercome for me;
And now he chooses out his men,
Much in the way that he did then:
Not those many whom he found
Idly extended on the ground,
To drink with their dejected head
The stream just so as by their mouths it fled:
No, but those few who took the waters up,
And made of their laborious hands the cup.
VII.
Thus you prepared; and in the glorious fight
Their wondrous pattern, too, you take:
Their old and empty pitchers first they brake,
And with their hands then lifted up the light.
Io! Sound too the trumpets here!
Already your victorious lights appear;
New scenes of heaven already we espy,
And crowds of golden worlds on high,
Which, from the spacious plains of earth and sea,
Could never yet discovered be
By sailor’s or Chaldean’s watchful eye.
Nature’s great works no distance can obscure;
No smallness her near objects can secure.
You’ve taught the curious sight to press
Into the privatest recess
Of her imperceptible littleness.
You’ve learned to read her smallest hand,
And well begun her deepest sense to understand.
VIII.
Mischief and true dishonor fall on those
Who would to laughter or to scorn expose
So virtuous and so noble a design,
So human for its use, for knowledge so divine.
The things which these proud men despise, and call
Impertinent, and vain, and small,
Those smallest things of nature met me know,
Rather than all their greatest actions do.
Whoever would deposed truth advance
Into the throne usurped from it,
Must feel at first the blows of ignorance
And the sharp points of envious wit.
So when, by various turns of the celestial dance,
In many thousand years
A star, so long unknown, appears,
Though heaven itself more beauteous by it grow,
It troubles and alarms the world below,
Does to the wise a star, to fools a meteor show.
IX.
With courage and success you the bold work begin;
Your cradle has not idle bin:
None e’re but Hercules and you could be
At five years age worthy a history.
And ne’re did fortune better yet
Th’ historian to the story fit:
As you from all old errors free
And purge the body of philosophy;
So from all modern follies he
Has vindicated eloquence and wit.
His candid style like a clean stream does slide,
And his bright fancy all the way
Does like the sun-shine in it play;
It does like Thames, the best of rivers, glide,
Where the god does not rudely overturn,
But gently pour the crystal urn,
And with judicious hand does the whole current guide.
‘T has all the beauties Nature can impart,
And all the comely dress without the paint of art.
A few random poems:
- Низами Гянджеви – Если б радость не лучилась
- Edgar Allan Poe by Timothy Thomas Fortune
- Robert Burns: A Mother’s Lament For the Death of Her Son.:
- What is Forged Steel Roll and How is it Involved in Industry?
- Stir in Stillness by Shruti Talnikar
- Never Sure Which You Are by Mary Etta Metcalf
- In a Sombre Mood by Satish Verma
- Иван Крылов – Ода, выбранная из псалма 71-го
- Камышева Ю. – На далёком полюсе, где метёт пурга
- The Rowing Song by Roald Dahl
- I’m Sexy and I Know It by Aiyah De Torres
- Владимир Маяковский – Вперед, комсомольцы
- Solar Eclipse by Siegfried Sassoon
- Sonnet 120: That you were once unkind befriends me now by William Shakespeare
- On the Portrait of Two Beautiful Young People poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins 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
- Вера Полозкова – И тут он приваливается к оградке
- Вера Полозкова – И пока он вскакивает с кровати
- Вера Полозкова – И катись бутылкой по автостраде
- Вера Полозкова – Губы плавя в такой ухмылке
- Вера Полозкова – Горький запах полыни
- Вера Полозкова – Гонево
- Вера Полозкова – Францу Кафке
- Вера Полозкова – Это не прихоть, это не блажь
- Вера Полозкова – Есть дерево, в лесу всего древней
- Вера Полозкова – Для неровного счета
- Вера Полозкова – Детство
- Вера Полозкова – Декабрь
- Вера Полозкова – Да что у меня, нормально всё, так, условно
- Вера Полозкова – Мой великий кардиотерапевт
- Вера Полозкова – Мне бы только хотелось
- Вера Полозкова – Манипенни, твой мальчик, видно, неотвратим
- Вера Полозкова – Мало ли кто
- Вера Звягинцева – Всхожу на мост
- Вера Звягинцева – Ты не снись мне
- Вера Звягинцева – Стоишь, не поднимая глаз
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
Abraham Cowley (1618 – 1667), the Royalist Poet.Poet and essayist Abraham Cowley was born in London, England, in 1618. He displayed early talent as a poet, publishing his first collection of poetry, Poetical Blossoms (1633), at the age of 15. Cowley studied at Cambridge University but was stripped of his Cambridge fellowship during the English Civil War and expelled for refusing to sign the Solemn League and Covenant of 1644. In turn, he accompanied Queen Henrietta Maria to France, where he spent 12 years in exile, serving as her secretary. During this time, Cowley completed The Mistress (1647). Arguably his most famous work, the collection exemplifies Cowley’s metaphysical style of love poetry. After the Restoration, Cowley returned to England, where he was reinstated as a Cambridge fellow and earned his MD before finally retiring to the English countryside. He is buried at Westminster Abbey alongside Geoffrey Chaucer and Edmund Spenser. Cowley is a wonderful poet and an outstanding representative of the English baroque.