Far in the Further East the skilful craftsman
Fashioned this fancy for the West’s delight.
This rose and azure Dragon, crouching softly
Upon the satin skin, close-grained and white.
And you lay silent, while his slender needles
Pricked the intricate pattern on your arm,
Combining deftly Cruelty and Beauty,
That subtle union, whose child is charm.
Charm irresistible: the lovely something
We follow in our dreams, but may not reach.
The unattainable Divine Enchantment,
Hinted in music, never heard in speech.
This from the blue design exhales towards me,
As incense rises from the Homes of Prayer,
While the unfettered eyes, allured and rested,
Urge the forbidden lips to stoop and share;
Share in the sweetness of the rose and azure
Traced in the Dragon’s form upon the white
Curve of the arm. Ah, curb thyself, my fancy,
Where would’st thou drift in this enchanted flight?
A few random poems:
- Lines on the Fall of Fyers by Robert Burns
- Fidelity by William Wordsworth
- The Gardener LV: It Was Mid-Day by Rabindranath Tagore
- Владимир Солоухин – Вдоль берегов Болгарии прошли мы
- I am not ashamed of myself by Swami Aaron Thomas
- Алексей Плещеев – Цветок
- Sonnet 91: Some glory in their birth, some in their skill by William Shakespeare
- Work and Play by Ted Hughes
- Ode To A Harmonica
- Sonnet CXLI by William Shakespeare
- Николай Заболоцкий – Сентябрь
- Behold the hour by Robert Burns
- Tablet
- Robert Burns: Elegy On Willie Nicol’s Mare:
- English Poetry. Mary Wortley Montagu. Epigram, 1734. Мэри Уортли Монтегю.
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
- Kodja Mustafa Pasha poem – Yahya Kemal Beyatli poems | Poetry Monster
- Itri poem – Yahya Kemal Beyatli poems | Poetry Monster
- He comes poem – Yehudah ha-Levi poems | Poetry Monster
- From the morrow poem – Yamabe no Akahito poems | Poetry Monster
- From the bay at Tago poem – Yamabe no Akahito poems | Poetry Monster
- Feeling Lazy poem – Yang Wan-Li poems | Poetry Monster
- A love song poem – Yehudah ha-Levi poems | Poetry Monster
- Don’t Light The Candles by Yahia Al-Samawy
- The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot
- Émigrés by Anna Barkova
- A Sure Sign by Georgi Ladonshchikov
- Civil War Songs
- I have outlived my own desires by Alexander Pushkin (Pouchkine)
- In Defense of Santa Claus
- Winter Apples by Tatiana Gusarova, translated by Fledermaus
- Такахама Кёси – О, как ночь коротка
- Такахама Кёси – Неспешно ступает
- Такахама Кёси – Мох зеленый примят
- Такахама Кёси – Мимо порта родного
- Такахама Кёси – Мацумуси пищит
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

Violet Nicolson ( 1865 – 1904); otherwise known as Adela Florence Nicolson (née Cory), was an English poetess who wrote under the pseudonym of Laurence Hope, however she became known as Violet Nicolson. In the early 1900s, she became a best-selling author. She committed suicide and is buried in Madras, now Chennai, India.