A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916)
I who, conceived beneath another star,
Had been a prince and played with life, instead
Have been its slave, an outcast exiled far
From the fair things my faith has merited.
My ways have been the ways that wanderers tread
And those that make romance of poverty —
Soldier, I shared the soldier’s board and bed,
And Joy has been a thing more oft to me
Whispered by summer wind and summer sea
Than known incarnate in the hours it lies
All warm against our hearts and laughs into our eyes.
I know not if in risking my best days
I shall leave utterly behind me here
This dream that lightened me through lonesome ways
And that no disappointment made less dear;
Sometimes I think that, where the hilltops rear
Their white entrenchments back of tangled wire,
Behind the mist Death only can make clear,
There, like Brunhilde ringed with flaming fire,
Lies what shall ease my heart’s immense desire:
There, where beyond the horror and the pain
Only the brave shall pass, only the strong attain.
Truth or delusion, be it as it may,
Yet think it true, dear friends, for, thinking so,
That thought shall nerve our sinews on the day
When to the last assault our bugles blow:
Reckless of pain and peril we shall go,
Heads high and hearts aflame and bayonets bare,
And we shall brave eternity as though
Eyes looked on us in which we would seem fair —
One waited in whose presence we would wear,
Even as a lover who would be well-seen,
Our manhood faultless and our honor clean.
A few random poems:
- Владимир Высоцкий – Величальная отцу
- athens_stone_of_sapphire_of_ground_the_ring.html
- Василий Жуковский – Гомер
- The Gardener LXXXIV: Over the Green by Rabindranath Tagore
- Владимир Степанов – Галочка-считалочка
- A Prayer in the Prospect of Death by Robert Burns
- Федор Сологуб – В его саду растет рябина
- Changing Of The Seasons by Shel Silverstein
- Robert Burns: A Dream: Thoughts, words, and deeds, the Statute blames with reason; But surely Dreams were ne’er indicted Treason. On reading, in the public papers, the Laureate’s Ode, with the other parade of June 4th, 1786, the Author was no sooner dropt asleep, than he imagined himself transported to the Birth-day Levee: and, in his dreaming fancy, made the following Address:
- To a Sky-Lark by William Wordsworth
- An Epistle To Robert Lloyd, Esq. by William Cowper
- Вера Звягинцева – Пойдёте пешком на кладбище
- Apples of Hesperides poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Низами Гянджеви – Коль мы на весах любви
- A Soldier’s Reprieve by William Topaz McGonagall
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
Alan Seeger (1888-1916) was an American war poet who fought and died in World War I during the Battle of the Somme, serving in the French Foreign Legion. Seeger was the brother of Charles Seeger, a noted American pacifist and musicologist and the uncle of folk musician, Pete Seeger.