THE thirsty earth soaks up the rain,
And drinks and gapes for drink again;
The plants suck in the earth, and are
With constant drinking fresh and fair;
The sea itself (which one would think
Should have but little need of drink)
Drinks twice ten thousand rivers up,
So fill’d that they o’erflow the cup.
The busy Sun (and one would guess
By ‘s drunken fiery face no less)
Drinks up the sea, and when he ‘s done,
The Moon and Stars drink up the Sun:
They drink and dance by their own light,
They drink and revel all the night:
Nothing in Nature ‘s sober found,
But an eternal health goes round.
Fill up the bowl, then, fill it high,
Fill all the glasses there-for why
Should every creature drink but I?
Why, man of morals, tell me why?
A few random poems:
- Evening wind by Yosa Buson
- Easter, 1916 by William Butler Yeats
- Владимир Британишский – По Иртышу
- Николай Карамзин – Из письма к И. И. Дмитриеву (Но что же скажем мы о времени прошедшем)
- The First Part: Sonnet 5 – How that vast heaven intitled First is roll’d, by William Drummond
- An Early Audience at the Palace of Light. (Harmonizing a poem for Secretary Jia Zhi.) by Wang Wei
- Solitude poem – Alexander Pope poems | Poetry Monster
- Sonnet IX. Keen, Fitful Gusts Are poem – John Keats poems
- Memoriam A. H. H.: 44. How fares it with the happy dead? poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Владимир Высоцкий – Не бывает кораблей без названия
- Exposure by Seamus Heaney
- Аля Кудряшева – Я тут недавно встретила свое прошлое
- The Voice of Robert Desnos by Robert Desnos
- absent-mindedness; or I Dream of Spices by Raj Arumugam
- Юлий Даниэль – Ах, недостреляли, недобили
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
- Warm are the Still and Lucky Miles by W H Auden
- Voltaire At Ferney by W H Auden
- Underneath an Abject Willow by W H Auden
- This Lunar Beauty by W H Auden
- They Wondered Why the Fruit had Been Forbidden by W H Auden
- The Waters by W H Auden
- The Wanderer by W H Auden
- The Two by W H Auden
- The Riddle by W H Auden
- The Quest by W H Auden
- The Quest XII (Vocation) by W H Auden
- The Novelist by W H Auden
- The Labyrinth by W H Auden
- The Hidden Law by W H Auden
- The Geography of the House by W H Auden
- The Dream by W H Auden
- The Common Life by W H Auden
- Thanksgiving for a Habitat by W H Auden
- Taller To-day by W H Auden
- Song Of The Master And Boatswain by W H Auden
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.