A poem by Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
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:
- Back To The Border
- Алишер Навои – Эти губы точно розы
- Savour Your Life by Ronald G. Auguste
- A Wandering Knight by Rixa White
- I love you by Inganathi Ntantiso
- you say you love the earth by Raj Arumugam
- Those Born In Obscure Times poem – Aleksandr Blok poems | Poetry Monster
- The Garden by Abraham Cowley
- Earth-Moon by Ted Hughes
- Died of Wounds by Siegfried Sassoon
- What We Need Is Here by Wendell Berry
- Meditation on a Bone
- In Memory of a Child by Vachel Lindsay
- I Swear by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- Николай Гумилев – Лиловый цветок
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
- Dickinson And The Alabaster Gogyohka
- Dawned Again
- Create
- Conference Swan Beauty
- Colors And Sounds
- Children039s Eyes
- Audience With A Poet Written December 13 1976 For Robert E Hayden Ph D
- Athens Stone Of Sapphire Of Ground The Ring
- As With Recitation And The Loss Of A Kuhi
- Antediluvian Kural On Twitter
- Alexander
- Acts Of Love
- A Single Man
- A Poet039s Privilege
- A Poem
- A Dialogue
- A City One Wish
- A Choka Is A Littoral Drift
- Gazebo
- All Days Seem Same
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
