A poem by Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
When simple Macer, now of high renown,
First fought a Poet’s Fortune in the Town,
‘Twas all th’ Ambition his high soul could feel,
To wear red stockings, and to dine with Steele.
Some Ends of verse his Betters might afford,
And gave the harmless fellow a good word.
Set up with these he ventur’d on the Town,
And with a borrow’d Play, out-did poor Crown.
There he stopp’d short, nor since has write a tittle,
But has the wit to make the most of little;
Like stunted hide-bound Trees, that just have got
Sufficient sap at once to bear and rot.
Now he begs Verse, and what he gets commends,
Not of the Wits his foes, but Fools his friends.
So some coarse Country Wench, almost decay’d,
Trudges to town, and first turns Chambermaid;
Awkward and supple, each devoir to pay;
She flatters her good Lady twice a day;
Thought wond’rous honest, tho’ of mean degree,
And strangely lik’d for her Simplicity:
In a translated Suit, then tries the Town,
With borrow’d Pins, and Patches not her own:
But just endur’d the winter she began,
And in four months a batter’d Harridan.
Now nothing left, but wither’d, pale, and shrunk,
To bawd for others, and go shares with Punk.

A few random poems:
- My Mistress Commanding Me to Return Her Letters. by Thomas Carew
- Vertumnus and Pomona : Ovid’s Metamorphoses, book 14 [v. 623-771] poem – Alexander Pope
- A Grace after Dinner by Robert Burns
- I Want To Write by Margaret Walker
- I was Looking a Long While. by Walt Whitman
- Hey, the Dusty Miller (Song) by Robert Burns
- Ballade Of Youth And Age by William Ernest Henley
- Robert Burns: My Highland Lassie, O:
- To My Friends poem – Alexander Pushkin
- Ballade Of Queen Anne poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Epistle To John Hamilton Reynolds poem – John Keats poems
- We know this much by Sappho
- Владимир Высоцкий – Куплеты нечистой силы
- Second Epistle to Robert Graham, Esq., of Fintry by Robert Burns
- Sonnet: “It is not to be thought of” by William Wordsworth
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
- Phantasm
- Long I waited in vain
- was_then.html
- phantasm.html
- long_i_waited_in_vain.html
- Wind on the Hill by A. A. Milne
- Us Two by AA Milne
- twinkletoes.html
- The Morning Walk
- the_kings_breakfast.html
- the_dormouse_and_the_doctor.html
- the_christening.html
- Teddy Bear
- rice_pudding.html
- politeness.html
- Missing
- market_square.html
- lines_and_squares.html
- if_i_were_king.html
- hoppity.html
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