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:
- To a Young Child poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- Спиридон Дрожжин – Свети мне, солнышко
- Георгий Иванов – А может быть, еще и не конец
- Morning Poem #39 by Wanda Phipps
- Виктор Гончаров – Не знаю, что делать с душою
- Illusion of Time by Ndue Ukaj
- Waking at 3 a.m. by William Stafford
- Five Ways To Kill A Man poem – Andre Breton poems
- Владимир Гиппиус – Закон чего? – закона нет
- Number 3 on the Docket poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- A Gift poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Алексей Жемчужников – Так прочен в сердце и в мозгу
- Владимир Маяковский – Последний баронишко (Главполитпросвет №324)
- Epitaph for Mr. Walter Riddell by Robert Burns
- Sonnet 104: To me, fair friend, you never can be old 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 A Little Girl That Has Told A Lie
- Guillaume de Lorris Belated: A Vision of Italy by Ezra Pound
- An Ode to the Democratic Rat
- Sonnet, an encyclopedic definition
- To A Feminist
- 对于女权主义者
- To the Rat’s Pencil
- 致老鼠的铅笔
- Toward Salvation
- My rat
- I Love My Rat
- 我爱我的老鼠
- Афанасий Фет – Сад весь в цвету
- Impostor’s Coronation
- Monster’s Cave
- 白色四月
- White April
- 我被包围了
- Surrounded
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.