A poem by Alcaeus of Mytilene (c. 625/620 – c. 580 BC)
The rain of Zeus descends, and from high heaven
A storm is driven:
And on the running water-brooks the cold
Lays icy hold;
Then up: beat down the winter; make the fire
Blaze high and higher;
Mix wine as sweet as honey of the bee
Abundantly;
Then drink with comfortable wool around
Your temples bound.
We must not yield our hearts to woe, or wear
With wasting care;
For grief will profit us no whit, my friend,
Nor nothing mend;
But this is our best medicine, with wine fraught
To cast out thought.
A few random poems:
- The Ballad of the King’s Jest by Rudyard Kipling
- Coming To This by Mark Strand
- The Instructor by Rudyard Kipling
- A New Psalm for the Chapel of Kilmarnock by Robert Burns
- Ode To Neptune by Phillis Wheatley
- No Labor-Saving Machine. by Walt Whitman
- Юнна Мориц – Малиновая кошка
- A King’s Soliloquy [On the Night of His Funeral] by Thomas Hardy
- Robert Burns: Epitaph For Robert Aiken, Esq.:
- Константин Батюшков – Мои пенаты
- Monument by Satish Verma
- Among The Sandhills
- Sonnet CXLV by William Shakespeare
- Аля Кудряшева – Двадцать перышек за плечами
- Анатолий Жигулин – Лисенок
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
- To Gnedich poem – Alexander Pushkin
- To The Don poem – Alexander Pushkin
- To Natasha poem – Alexander Pushkin
- To Lily poem – Alexander Pushkin
- To… (Kern) poem – Alexander Pushkin
- To Chadaev poem – Alexander Pushkin
- Thou and You poem – Alexander Pushkin
- The wondrous moment of our meeting… poem – Alexander Pushkin
- The Wish poem – Alexander Pushkin
- The Water-Nymph poem – Alexander Pushkin
- The Upas Tree poem – Alexander Pushkin
- The Talisman poem – Alexander Pushkin
- The Singer poem – Alexander Pushkin
- The Prophet poem – Alexander Pushkin
- The Night poem – Alexander Pushkin
- The Name poem – Alexander Pushkin
- The Flower poem – Alexander Pushkin
- The Drowned Man poem – Alexander Pushkin
- The Dream poem – Alexander Pushkin
- The Vision poem – Alexander Pushkin
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

Alcaeus of Mytilene ( c. 625/620 – c. 580 Before Christ) ] was a lyric poet from the Greek island of Lesbos who is credited with inventing the Alcaic stanza. He was included in the canonical list of nine lyric poets by the scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria.