Late, late, the prize is drawn, the goal attained,
The Heart’s Desire fulfilled, Love’s guerdon gained.
Wealth’s use is past, Fame’s crown of laurel mocks
The downward-drooping head and grizzled locks.
The end is reached-the end of toil and strife-
The end of life.
Love flowers and fades like grass, and flowers again;
The spendthrift lovers waste themselves in vain;
Their fiery passions burn out one by one,
And then, alas! when their best days are done,
Spirit and body find their perfect mate-
So late! So late!
Long-sought, long seeking, through the lonely years,
The wanderers meet to weep their useless tears
For time and chance irrevocably flown,
Dear hopes outlived and happy faiths outgrown,
Children unborn, the myriad joys unseen
That might have been.
Not for the spring and morning-time of youth
The perfect flower of slow-unfolding truth,
The perfect love, that dreams of youth foretell,
But youth knows not and youth could never tell;
That light celestial, as of sunset fires
When day expires.
Late comes the gift that crowns the hungry quest,
Like ripe wheat-harvest in a land at rest,
And comes alone, a consecrated cup,
To those proved worthy to sit down and sup.
To them-aye, aye, despite their treasure lost,
‘T’is worth the cost.
‘T’is worth the cost to reach the heights at last,
Ere eyes are dim and daylight overpast.
To see one aim achieved, one dream fulfilled,
Ere striving brain and trusting heart are stilled.
To live one glorious hour-its price of pain
Is never paid in vain.
A few random poems:
- The Shrine by Sara Teasdale
- Song poem – Ezra Pound poems
- Robert Burns: Why, Why Tell The Lover: Fragment,
- Ad Piscatorem by Robert Louis Stevenson
- Now, What is Poetry? poem – Yang Wan-Li poems | Poetry Monster
- Change of Climate by Michael S Wilson
- Василий Жуковский – К кн. Вяземскому и В.Л.Пушкину
- An Epistle to A Friend
- Oh could my Mind
- The Twins poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- Andrew Jones by William Wordsworth
- Internal Migration Being Tour
- My Soviet Passport by Vladimir Mayakovsky
- A Sort Of A Song by William Carlos Williams
- Smoke by Théophile Gautier
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
- Not out of the running by Margaret Marie Hubbard
- Nevertheless by Marianne Moore
- Nearly A Valediction by Marilyn Hacker
- My Mother’s Body by Marge Piercy
- My Daughter at 14, Christmas Dance, 1981 by Maria Mazziotti Gillan
- Morning News by Marilyn Hacker
- Love Poem to My Husband of Thirty-one Years by Maria Mazziotti Gillan
- Locked Away by Margaret Marie Hubbard
- Labyrinth by Sera Jacob
- Iva’s Pantoum by Marilyn Hacker
- Island-Hearth by M. Ivana Trevisani Bach
- Irish Love Song by Margaret Widdemer
- Invocation by Marilyn Hacker
- If you should tire of loving me by Margaret Widdemer
- I Dream of my Grandmother and Great-Grandmother by Maria Mazziotti Gillan
- I Deserve It by Margaret Marie Hubbard
- Hurry by Marie Howe
- He Made This Screen by Marianne Moore
- Forever Closed by Margaret Marie Hubbard
- For the Young Who Want To by Marge Piercy
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

Ada Cambridge (1844 – 1926), also known as Ada Cross, was an English-born Australian author and poetess. She wrote more than 25 works of fiction, three volumes of poetry and two autobiographical works.