First-born of Chaos, who so fair didst come
From the old Negro’s darksome womb!
Which, when it saw the lovely child,
The melancholy mass put on kind looks and smiled,
Thou tide of glory which no rest dost know,
But ever ebb and ever flow!
Thou golden shower of a true Jove,
Who does in thee descend, and heaven to earth make love!
Hail, active nature’s watchful life and health,
Her joy, her ornament and wealth!
Hail to thy husband Heat, and thee!
Thou the world’s beauteous bride, the lusty bridegroom he!
Say, from what golden quivers of the sky
Do all thy winged arrows fly?
Swiftness and power by birth are thine:
From thy great Sire they came, thy Sire the Word divine.
‘Tis, I believe, this archery to show,
That so much cost in colors thou,
And skill in painting, dost bestow
Upon thy ancient arms, the gaudy heavenly bow.
Swift as light thoughts their empty career run,
Thy race is finished when begun;
Let a post-angel start with thee,
And thou the goal of earth shalt teach as soon as he.
Thou in the moon’s bright chariot, proud and gay,
Dost thy bright wood of stars survey,
And all the year dost with thee bring,
Of thousand flowery lights, thine own nocturnal spring.
Thou Scythian-like dost round thy lands, above
The sun’s gilt tent, forever move,
And still, as thou in pomp dost go,
The shining pageants of the world attend thy show.
Nor amidst all these triumphs dost thou scorn
The humble glowworms to adorn,
And with those living spangles gild –
O greatness without pride! – the bushes of the field.
Night and her ugly subjects thou dost fright,
And sleep, the lazy owl of night;
Ashamed and fearful to appear,
They screen their horrid shapes with the black hemisphere.
With ’em there hastes, and wildly takes the alarm,
Of painted dreams, a busy swarm;
At the first openings of thine eye,
The various clusters break, the antic atoms fly.
The guilty serpents and obscener beasts
Creep conscious to their secret rests;
Nature to thee does reverence pay;
Ill omens and ill sights removes out of thy way.
At thy appearance, Grief itself is said
To shake his wings and rouse his head.
And cloudy Care has often took
A gentle beamy smile reflected from thy look.
At thy appearance, Fear itself grows bold;
Thy sunshine melts away his cold.
Encouraged at the sight of thee,
To the cheek color comes, and firmness to the knee.
Even Lust, the master of a hardened face,
Blushes if thou beest in the place,
To darkness’ curtains he retires;
In sympathizing night he rolls his smoky fires.
When, goddess, thou list’st up thy wakened head
Out of the morning’s purple bed,
Thy quire of birds about thee play,
And all the joyful world salutes the rising day.
The ghosts and monster spirits that did presume
A body’s privilege to assume
Vanish again invisibly,
And bodies gain again their visibility.
All the world’s bravery that delights our eyes
Is but thy several liveries;
Thou the rich dye on them bestow’st;
Thy nimble pencil paints this landscape as thou go’st.
A crimson garment in the rose thou wear’st;
A crown of studded gold thou bear’st;
The virgin blies in their white
Are clad but with the lawn of almost naked light.
The violet, spring’s little infant, stands
Girt in thy purple swaddling-bands;
On the fair tulip thou dost dote;
Thou cloth’st it in a gay and parti-colored coat.
With flame condensed thou dost the jewels fix,
And solid colors in it mix;
Flora herself envies to see
Flowers fairer than her own, and durable as she.
Ah, goddess! would thou couldst thy hand withhold
And be less liberal to gold;
Didst thou less value to it give,
Of how much care, alas! mightst thou poor man relieve!
To me the sun is more delightful far,
And all fair days much fairer are,
But few, ah wondrous few, there be
Who do not gold prefer, O goddess, even to thee.
Through the soft ways of heaven, and air, and sea,
Which open all their pores to thee,
Like a clear river thou dost glide,
And with thy living stream through the close channels slide.
But where firm bodies thy free course oppose,
Gently thy source the land o’erflows,
Takes there possession, and does make
Of colors mingled, light, a thick and standing lake.
But the vast ocean of unbounded day
In the empyrean heaven does stay.
Thy rivers, lakes, and springs below
From thence took first their rise, thither at last must flow.
A few random poems:
- Олег Григорьев – Полосатая оса
- Жан де Лафонтен – Мельник, Сын его и Осел
- How Do You Produce Original Articles?
- Вера Звягинцева – Шафрановым загаром
- A Hundred Collars by Robert Frost
- The Tree by Sara Teasdale
- Epigram on an Innkeeper (“The Marquis”) by Robert Burns
- Оливер Голдсмит – Песенка
- Diffugere Nives poem – A. E. Housman
- Life
- The Travelling Bear poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- I had a little nut-tree, by Roald Dahl
- A Fact, And An Imagination, Or, Canute And Alfred, On The Seashore by William Wordsworth
- Limbo by Seamus Heaney
- Tell Me
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
- Soul Receives From Soul by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- Some Kiss We Want by Rumi
- Sleep of the Body the Soul’s Awakening by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- Quatrain 1693 (Farsi with English Translation) by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- Passion makes the old medicine new: by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- Out of Your Love by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- Only Breath by Jelaluddin Rumi
- One Whisper of the Beloved by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- Ode 1957: An intellectual by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- O You Who’ve gone on Pilgrimage by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- Not Here by Rumi
- Not Intrigued With Evening by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- Love is a Tree by Rumi
- Love is the Water of Life by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- Love is Reckless by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- Love Has Nothing to Do with the Five Senses by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- Lord, what a Beloved is mine! by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- Like This by Rumi
- Let go of your worries by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- Late, by Myself by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
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
Abraham Cowley (1618 – 1667), the Royalist Poet.Poet and essayist Abraham Cowley was born in London, England, in 1618. He displayed early talent as a poet, publishing his first collection of poetry, Poetical Blossoms (1633), at the age of 15. Cowley studied at Cambridge University but was stripped of his Cambridge fellowship during the English Civil War and expelled for refusing to sign the Solemn League and Covenant of 1644. In turn, he accompanied Queen Henrietta Maria to France, where he spent 12 years in exile, serving as her secretary. During this time, Cowley completed The Mistress (1647). Arguably his most famous work, the collection exemplifies Cowley’s metaphysical style of love poetry. After the Restoration, Cowley returned to England, where he was reinstated as a Cambridge fellow and earned his MD before finally retiring to the English countryside. He is buried at Westminster Abbey alongside Geoffrey Chaucer and Edmund Spenser. Cowley is a wonderful poet and an outstanding representative of the English baroque.