A poem by Alexander Pope (1688-1744) , the greatest English poet of “Augustan” or Georgian period
Heav’n from all creatures hides the book of fate,
All but the page prescrib’d, their present state:
From brutes what men, from men what spirits know:
Or who could suffer being here below?
The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed today,
Had he thy reason, would he skip and play?
Pleas’d to the last, he crops the flow’ry food,
And licks the hand just rais’d to shed his blood.
Oh blindness to the future! kindly giv’n,
That each may fill the circle mark’d by Heav’n:
Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,
A hero perish, or a sparrow fall,
Atoms or systems into ruin hurl’d,
And now a bubble burst, and now a world.
Hope humbly then; with trembling pinions soar;
Wait the great teacher Death; and God adore.
What future bliss, he gives not thee to know,
But gives that hope to be thy blessing now.
Hope springs eternal in the human breast:
Man never is, but always to be blest:
The soul, uneasy and confin’d from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.
Lo! the poor Indian, whose untutor’d mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;
His soul, proud science never taught to stray
Far as the solar walk, or milky way;
Yet simple nature to his hope has giv’n,
Behind the cloud topp’d hill, an humbler heav’n;
Some safer world in depth of woods embrac’d,
Some happier island in the wat’ry waste,
Where slaves once more their native land behold,
No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold.
To be, contents his natural desire,
He asks no angel’s wing, no seraph’s fire;
But thinks, admitted to that equal sky.
A few random poems:
- The Turn O’ The Days by William Barnes
- The Loss Of The Eurydice poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- Robert Burns: Epistle To James Smith:
- A Girdle by William Strode
- Lord when the wise men came from farr by Sidney Godolphin
- Imitations of Horace: The First Epistle of the Second Book poem – Alexander Pope
- Валерий Брюсов – Фламандцам
- My Garden by Sappho
- The Given Heart
- Before Day by Siegfried Sassoon
- Sonnet 153: Cupid laid by his brand and fell asleep by William Shakespeare
- Passer-By, These Are Words by Yves Bonnefoy
- Robert Burns: To John Kennedy, Dumfries House:
- Ballad of the Old Cypress by Tu Fu
- Rock ‘N’ Roll Band by Shel Silverstein
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
- Harry Ploughman poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- God’s Grandeur poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- For A Picture Of St. Dorothea poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- Felix Randal poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- Epithalamion poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- Easter Communion poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- Duns Scotus’s Oxford poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- Denis poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- Cheery Beggar poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- Carrion Comfort poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- Brothers poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- Binsey Poplars poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- Barnfloor and Winepress poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- At The Wedding March poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- Ash-Boughs poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- As Kingfishers Catch Fire poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- Andromeda poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- You Ask Me, Why, Tho’ Ill at Ease poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Ulysses poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- To Virgil, Written at the Request of the Mantuans for the N poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
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

Alexander Pope (1688 – 1744) was a a post-Restoration English poet and satirist. He is a poet of the (British) Augustan period and one of its greatest artistic exponents.