HOPE, whose weak Being ruin’d is,
Alike if it succeed, and if it miss ;
Whom Good or Ill does equally confound,
And both the Horns of Fates Dilemma wound.
Vain shadow! which dost vanish quite,
Both at full Noon, and perfect Night !
The Stars have not a possibility
Of blessing Thee ;
If things then from their End we happy call,
‘Tis Hope is the most Hopeless thing of all.
Hope, thou bold Taster of Delight,
Who whilst thou shouldst but tast, devour’st it quite !
Thou bringst us an Estate, yet leav’st us Poor,
By clogging it with Legacies before !
The Joys which we entire should wed,
Come deflowr’d Virgins to our bed ;
Good fortunes without gain imported be,
Such mighty Custom’s paid to Thee.
For Joy, like Wine, kept close does better tast ;
If it take air before, its spirits wast.
Hope, Fortunes cheating Lottery !
Where for one prize an hundred blanks there be ;
Fond Archer, Hope, who tak’st thy aim so far,
That still or short, or wide thine arrows are !
Thin, empty Cloud, which th’ eye deceives
With shapes that our own Fancy gives !
A Cloud, which gilt and painted now appears,
But must drop presently in tears !
When thy false beams o’er Reasons light prevail,
By Ignes fatui for North-Stars we sail.
Brother of Fear, more gaily clad !
The merr’ier Fool o’ th’ two, yet quite as Mad :
Sire of Repentance, Child of fond Desire !
That blow’st the Chymicks, and the Lovers fire !
Leading them still insensibly’on
By the strange witchcraft of Anon !
By Thee the one does changing Nature through
Her endless Labyrinths pursue,
And th’ other chases Woman, whilst She goes
More ways and turns than hunted Nature knows.
A few random poems:
- Drying Their Wings by Vachel Lindsay
- Ольга Берггольц – Анна Ахматова в 1941 году в Ленинграде
- Robert Burns: Stanzas On The Same Occasion [Prospect of Death]:
- La Gitana poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- Sonnet 40: Take all my loves, my love, yea, take them all by William Shakespeare
- Shrodon Feäir by William Barnes
- Наум Коржавин – Неужели птицы пели
- Louisa: After Accompanying Her On A Mountain Excursion by William Wordsworth
- Loves Blindness
- Geotheos poem – Ambrose Bierce poems | Poems and Poetry
- Владимир Гиляровский – Песня Дона
- Как Муромец Илья когда-то
- A Song at Cock-Crow by Rudyard Kipling
- Шекспир – Мне показалось, что была зима – Сонет 97
- The Two Terrors poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
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
- happiness.html
- At the Zoo poem – A. A. Milne poem
- Vestiges poem – A. Van Jordan poems
- Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog) poem – A. Van Jordan poems
- The Flash Reverses Time poem – A. Van Jordan poems
- Que Sera Sera poem – A. Van Jordan poems
- Old Boy poem – A. Van Jordan poems
- Einstein Defining Special Relativity poem – A. Van Jordan poems
- A Tempest in a Teacup poem – A. Van Jordan poems | Poetry Monster
- A Tempest in a Teacup poem – A. Van Jordan poems | Best Poems
- In Memoriam
- Taylor Swift
- Wisdom in Love by Lutfi Abdallah a.k.a Laso
- Why I Do Not Miss You! by Praveen Parasar
- Weaving waves by Shailendra Singh
- Trademark by Samuel Stephen Wakdok
- Time Well-Served by Luis Estable
- This I Beg To Have by Luis Estable
- The True Lover by A. E. Housman
- The Song of My Heart by Olawuyi Mutiu
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.