Whilst what I write I do not see,
I dare thus, ev’n to you, write poetry.
Ah, foolish Muse! which dost so high aspire,
And know’st her judgment well,
How much it does thy power excel,
Yet dar’st be read by, thy just doom, the fire.
Alas! thou think’st thyself secure,
Because thy form is innocent and pure:
Like hypocrites, which seem unspotted here;
But, when they sadly come to die,
And the last fire their truth must try,
Scrawled o’er like thee, and blotted, they appear.
Go then, but reverently go,
And, since thou needs must sin, confess it too:
Confess ‘t, and with humility clothe thy shame;
For thou, who else must burned be
An heretick, if she pardon thee,
Mayst like a martyr then enjoy the flame.
But, if her wisdom grow severe,
And suffer not her goodness to be there;
If her large mercies cruelly it restrain;
Be not discourag’d, but require
A more gentle ordeal fire,
And bid her by love’s flames read it again.
Strange power of heat! thou yet dost show
Like winter-earth, naked, or cloth’d with snow:
But as, the quickening sun approaching near,
The plants arise up by degrees;
A sudden paint adorns the trees,
And all kind Nature’s characters appear.
So, nothing yet in thee is seen;
But, when a genial heat warms thee within,
A new-born wood of various lines there grows;
Here buds an A, and there a B,
Here sprouts a V, and there a T,
And all the flourishing letters stand in rows.
Still, silly paper! thou wilt think
That all this might as well be writ with ink:
Oh, no; there’s sense in this, and mystery-
Thou now mayst change thy author’s name,
And to her hand lay noble claim;
For, as she reads, she makes, the words in thee.
Yet – if thine own unworthiness
Will still that thou art mine, not hers confess-
Consume thy self with fire before her eyes,
And so her grace or pity move:
The gods, though beasts they do not love,
Yet like them when they ‘re burnt in sacrifice.
A few random poems:
- The Sacrifice of Er-Heb by Rudyard Kipling
- Why Should Not Old Men Be Mad? by William Butler Yeats
- Star-Gazers by William Wordsworth
- Владимир Маяковский – Неразбериха
- In The Village Of My Ancestors by Vasko Popa
- The School of Night
- Robert Burns: The Banks O’ Doon: Second Version
- The Two Churches by William Barnes
- To His Mistress In Absence by Torquato Tasso
- O Sing, Fair Lady, When With Me poem – Alexander Pushkin
- The Bridge by Russell Edson
- Of the Visage of Things. by Walt Whitman
- Parabola
- Futility by Wilfred Owen
- Many Inventions by Rudyard Kipling
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
- O, Were I Loved As I Desire To Be! poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- O Beauty, Passing Beauty! poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Northern Farmer: New Style poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Move Eastward, Happy Earth poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Morte D’Arthur poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Minnie and Winnie poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Milton (Alcaics) poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Memoriam A. H. H.: 72. Risest thou thus, dim dawn, again poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Memoriam A. H. H.: 67. When on my bed the moonlight fall poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Memoriam A. H. H.: 44. How fares it with the happy dead? poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Mariana In The South poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Mariana poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Lucretius poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Locksley Hall poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Lilian poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Late, Late, So Late poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Lady Clare poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- In the Valley of Cauteretz poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- In Memoriam A. HIn Memoriam A. H. H.: 56. So careful of the type? but no.: 55. The wish, that of the living whol poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
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.