Where is the promise of my years;
Once written on my brow?
Ere errors, agonies and fears
Brought with them all that speaks in tears,
Ere I had sunk beneath my peers;
Where sleeps that promise now?
Naught lingers to redeem those hours,
Still, still to memory sweet!
The flowers that bloomed in sunny bowers
Are withered all; and Evil towers
Supreme above her sister powers
Of Sorrow and Deceit.
I look along the columned years,
And see Life’s riven fane,
Just where it fell, amid the jeers
Of scornful lips, whose mocking sneers,
For ever hiss within mine ears
To break the sleep of pain.
I can but own my life is vain
A desert void of peace;
I missed the goal I sought to gain,
I missed the measure of the strain
That lulls Fame’s fever in the brain,
And bids Earth’s tumult cease.
Myself! alas for theme so poor
A theme but rich in Fear;
I stand a wreck on Error’s shore,
A spectre not within the door,
A houseless shadow evermore,
An exile lingering here.

A few random poems:
- Behold, from the land of the farther suns by Stephen Crane
- Sussex by Rudyard Kipling
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Смерть
- Джон Китс – Дуралейная песня
- Yours & Mine poem – Alice Fulton
- In Memoriam A. HIn Memoriam A. H. H.: 56. So careful of the type? but no.: 55. The wish, that of the living whol poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Владимир Бенедиктов – День и две ночи
- Федор Сваровский – Слава стране моей
- Валерий Брюсов – Это я
- Boadicea. An Ode by William Cowper
- Flora by William Morris
- Владимир Высоцкий – Говорят, лезу прямо под нож
- Innocence
- Катя Пиксаева – Давай поговорим о доброте
- Sonnet IX by William Shakespeare
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
- To Sea by Martin Zakovski
- To Dorothy by Marvin Bell
- The Dreadful Has Already Happened by Mark Strand
- The Dragon and The Unicorn by Mary Etta Metcalf
- They Thought Her Crazy by Mary Etta Metcalf
- These Green-Going-to-Yellow by Marvin Bell
- The Last Wolf by Mary TallMountain
- The Homeless Man by Mary TallMountain
- The Story Of Our Lives by Mark Strand
- Telescope by Mark R Slaughter
- The Self and the Mulberry by Marvin Bell
- Sunflowers by Martin Willitts Jr.
- The Room by Mark Strand
- Speaking the Language of Deer by Martin Willitts Jr.
- The River Has Its Memories by Mary Etta Metcalf
- Some Say by Mark Miller
- The River by Mark Olynyk
- So You Say by Mark Strand
- Slag by Mark Base
- The Remains by Mark Strand
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
Adah Isaacs Menken (1835 – 1868) was an American actress and a performer, who painted painter and wrote a number of poems (31 published so far). She was supposedly the highest earning actress of her time. She was best known for her performance in the hippodrama Mazeppa (with libretto based on Pushkin’s work), it is said that the climax of the spectacle featured her apparently nude and riding a horse on stage. After great success for a few years with the play in New York and San Francisco, she appeared in a production in London and Paris, from 1864 to 1866. She was a friend of Alexander Dumas. Adah Menken died in Paris at the age of 33