A poem by Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
Semichorus.
Oh Tyrant Love! hast thou possest
The prudent, learn’d, and virtuous breast?
Wisdom and wit in vain reclaim,
And Arts but soften us to feel thy flame.
Love, soft intruder, enters here,
But ent’ring learns to be sincere.
Marcus with blushes owns he loves,
And Brutus tenderly reproves.
Why, Virtue, dost thou blame desire,
Which Nature has imprest?
Why, Nature, dost thou soonest fire
The mild and gen’rous breast?
Chorus.
Love’s purer flames the Gods approve;
The Gods and Brutus bent to love:
Brutus for absent Portia sighs,
And sterner Cassius melts at Junia’s eyes.
What is loose love? a transient gust,
Spent in a sudden storm of lust,
A vapour fed from wild desire,
A wand’ring, self-consuming fire,
But Hymen’s kinder flames unite;
And burn for ever one;
Chaste as cold Cynthia’s virgin light,
Productive as the Sun.
Semichorus.
Oh source of ev’ry social tie,
United wish, and mutual joy!
What various joys on one attend,
As son, as father, brother husband, friend?
Whether his hoary sire he spies,
While thousand grateful thoughts arise;
Or meets his spouse’s fonder eye;
Or views his smiling progeny;
What tender passions take their turns,
What home-felt raptures move?
His heart now melts, now leaps, now burns,
With rev’rence, hope, and love.
Chorus.
Hence guilty joys, distastes, surmises,
Hence false tears, deceits, disguises,
Dangers, doubts, delays, surprises;
Fires that scorch, yet dare not shine
Purest love’s unwasting treasure,
Constant faith, fair hope, long leisure,
Days of ease, and nights of pleasure;
Sacred Hymen! these are thine.

A few random poems:
- day_dream.html
- Exiles by Marilyn Hacker
- A Palanquin Of Love by Vaishnavi Prakash
- Sir Hugh; Or The Jew’s Daughter poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Олег Бундур – Старания
- from In Time of War by W H Auden
- Виктор Гусев – Песня о Москве
- A Song: When June is Past, the Fading Rose by Thomas Carew
- Robert Burns: On The Birth Of A Posthumous Child: Born in peculiar circumstances of family distress.
- What Place is Besieged? by Walt Whitman
- Аля Кудряшева – Дождь напевает, искрясь по зарослям
- Николай Заболоцкий – Царица мух
- The Self and the Mulberry by Marvin Bell
- The Dancer At Cruachan And Cro-Patrick by William Butler Yeats
- At First. To Charlotte Cushman. by Sidney Lanier
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
- I Heard You, Solemn-sweet Pipes of the Organ. by Walt Whitman
- I hear it was Charged against Me. by Walt Whitman
- I Hear America Singing. by Walt Whitman
- I Dream’d in a Dream. by Walt Whitman
- I am He that Aches with Love. by Walt Whitman
- Hush’d be the Camps To-day. by Walt Whitman
- How Solemn as One by One. by Walt Whitman
- Hours Continuing Long. by Walt Whitman
- Here the Frailest Leaves of Me. by Walt Whitman
- Here, Sailor. by Walt Whitman
- Hast Never Come to Thee an Hour. by Walt Whitman
- Great are the Myths. by Walt Whitman
- Gods. by Walt Whitman
- Gliding Over All. by Walt Whitman
- Give me the Splendid, Silent Sun. by Walt Whitman
- Germs. by Walt Whitman
- Full of Life, Now. by Walt Whitman
- From Paumanok Starting. by Walt Whitman
- From My Last Years. by Walt Whitman
- From Far Dakota’s Cañons. by Walt Whitman
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