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:
- What the Coal-Heaver Said by Vachel Lindsay
- Polly Be-en Upzides Wi’ Tom by William Barnes
- Иван Бунин – Балагула
- Ольга Седакова – Только время доходит сюда
- A Point Of Honour poem – Alfred Austin
- Алишер Навои – Не в камфарной ли одежде этот кипарис прямой
- Lonely Nights by Walter William Safar
- In The Depths Of Solitude by Tupac Shakur
- 致老鼠的铅笔
- Infelice by Stevie Smith
- Battle Salamis
- The Dreadful Has Already Happened by Mark Strand
- By The Seaside by William Wordsworth
- Notes To A Neophyte by Sylvia Plath
- The Drum-Stick Tree by Murali Sivaramakrishnan
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
- Alicante Lullaby by Sylvia Plath
- Aerialist by Sylvia Plath
- Study in Hands by Théophile Gautier
- Smoke by Théophile Gautier
- Last Wish by Théophile Gautier
- Work and Play by Ted Hughes
- Wind by Ted Hughes
- Tractor by Ted Hughes
- Thrushes by Ted Hughes
- Thistles by Ted Hughes
- The Warm and the Cold by Ted Hughes
- The Thought-Fox by Ted Hughes
- The Owl by Ted Hughes
- The Minotaur by Ted Hughes
- The Harvest Moon by Ted Hughes
- The Child Is Father To The Man by Ted Hughes
- Spring & Fall: To A Young Child by Ted Hughes
- September by Ted Hughes
- Pied Beauty by Ted Hughes
- Old Age Gets Up by Ted Hughes
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.