Here, in her elbow chair, she sits
A soul alert, alive,
A poor old body shrunk and bent-
The queen-bee of the hive.
But hives of bees and hives of men
Obey their several laws;
No fiercely-loving filial throng
This mother-head adores.
This bringer of world-wealth, whereof
None may compute the worth,
Is possibly of no account
To anyone on earth.
Her cap and spectacles, that mean
Dim eyes and scanty hairs,
The humble symbols of her state-
The only crown she wears.
Lacking a kingdom and a court,
A relic of the past,
Almost a cumberer of the ground-
That is our queen at last.
But still not wholly without place,
Nor quite bereft of power;
A useful stopgap-a resource
In many a troubled hour.
She darns the stockings, keeps the house,
The nurseless infant tends,
While the young matrons and the men
Pursue their various ends-
Too keen-set on their great affairs,
Or little plays and pranks,
The things and people of their world,
To give her thought or thanks-
The children on whom all her thought
And time and love were spent
Through half a century of years!
Yet is she well content.
The schooling of those fiery years,
It has not been for nought;
A large philosophy of life
Has self-less service taught.
The outlook from the heights attained
By climbings sore and slow
Discovers worlds of wisdom, hid
From clearest eyes below.
So calmly, in her elbow chair,
Forgotten and alone,
She knits and dreams, and sometimes sighs
But never makes a moan.
Still dwelling with her brood unseen-
Ghosts of a bygone day-
The precious daughter in her grave,
The dear son gone astray-
And others, to whom once she stood
As only light and law,
The near and living, and yet lost,
That need her love no more.
Watching their joyous setting forth
To mingle with their kind,
With scarce a pang, with ne’er a grudge,
At being left behind.
“Let them be young, as I was young,
And happy while they may” . . . .
A dog that waits the night in peace
Since it has had its day.
A few random poems:
- A Petition poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Dawn
- Sonnet 124: If my dear love were but the child of state by William Shakespeare
- The Fall of Jock Gillespie by Rudyard Kipling
- hoppity.html
- A Lover From Palestine by Mahmoud Darwish
- Hoffer by William Wordsworth
- Владимир Британишский – Инициалы: Д.Я
- Inscription For A Hermitage In The Author’s Garden by William Cowper
- The Enemies Of The Little Box by Vasko Popa
- Masks poem – Ezra Pound poems
- Шекспир – Прекрасный облик в зеркале ты видишь – Сонет 3
- Юрий Верховский – Как раненый олень кидается в поток
- May Morning by Stephen Vincent Benet
- The Terms In Which I Think Of Reality poem – Allen Ginsberg
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
- Betrayal poem – Alice Notley
- Before you knew you owned it poem – Alice Walker
- Because We Never Practiced With The Escape Chamber poem – Alice Fulton
- Ballad Of The Skeletons poem – Allen Ginsberg
- About Face poem – Alice Fulton
- A winning lot
- 30th Birthday poem – Alice Notley
- Why?
- Where Are You?
- Tell Me
- Teacher
- Sleep
- Intruder
- Inside/Outside The Window
- Why Feed The Early Signs Of Boredom? poem – Alexander Pushkin
- Upon The Hills Of Georgia poem – Alexander Pushkin
- Under The Blue Skies… poem – Alexander Pushkin
- Under A Portrait Of Jukowsky poem – Alexander Pushkin
- Under A Portrait Of Jukowsky poem – Alexander Pushkin
- To My Friends poem – Alexander Pushkin
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
Ada Cambridge (1844 – 1926), also known as Ada Cross, was an English-born Australian author and poetess. She wrote more than 25 works of fiction, three volumes of poetry and two autobiographical works.