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:
- Yadwigha, On A Red Couch, Among Lillies by Sylvia Plath
- Владимир Высоцкий – Солдат и привидение
- Ок Мельникова – Обет молчания
- Олег Бундур – Папа пристал
- Константин Бальмонт – Чудовище с клеймом
- The Secrets Of Divine Love Are To Be Kept by William Cowper
- The Flash Reverses Time poem – A. Van Jordan poems
- I know you will remember ME by Neelam Sinha
- Reveille poem – A. E. Housman
- Denner’s Old Woman by William Cowper
- Addressed To Miss Macartney, Afterwards Mrs. Greville, On Reading The Prayer For Indifference by William Cowper
- Федор Сологуб – Волна морская – веселый шум
- Danse Russe by William Carlos Williams
- Giving Myself Up by Mark Strand
- Monday by Vishü Rita Krocha
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
- first_light.html
- excerpt_from_the_quotgertrude_steinquot_collaborative_series.html
- eudaemonism_in_a_senryu_novel.html
- drunkenness.html
- do_not_get_angry.html
- dickinson_and_the_alabaster_gogyohka.html
- dawned_again.html
- create.html
- conference_swan_beauty.html
- colors_and_sounds.html
- children039s_eyes.html
- athens_stone_of_sapphire_of_ground_the_ring.html
- as_with_recitation_and_the_loss_of_a_kuhi.html
- antediluvian_kural_on_twitter.html
- alexander.html
- acts_of_love.html
- a_single_man.html
- a_poem.html
- a_dialogue.html
- a_city_one_wish.html
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
