The sins of Youth are hardly sins,
So frank they are and free.
‘T is but when Middle-age begins
We need morality.
Ah, pause and weigh this bitter truth:
That Middle-age, grown cold,
No comprehension has of Youth,
No pity for the Old.
Youth, with his half-divine mistakes,
She never can forgive,
So much she hates his charm which makes
Worth while the life we live.
She scorns Old Age, whose tolerance
And calm, well-balanced mind
(Knowing how crime is born of chance)
Can pardon all mankind.
Yet she, alas! has all the power
Of strength and place and gold,
Man’s every act, through every hour,
Is by her laws controlled.
All things she grasps with sordid hands
And weighs in tarnished scales.
She neither feels, nor understands,
And yet her will prevails!
Cold-blooded vice and careful sin,
Gold-lust, blind selfishness,–
The shortest, cheapest way to win
Some, worse than cheap, success.
Such are her attributes and aims,
Yet meekly we obey,
While she to guide and order claims
All issues of the day.
You seek for honour, friendship, truth?
Let Middle-age be banned!
Go, for warm-hearted acts, to Youth;
To Age,–to understand!

A few random poems:
- Why Write? by Mark Olynyk
- Boots by Rudyard Kipling
- Under Cover of Night by Robert Desnos
- AN EPITAPH UPON A CHILD by Robert Herrick
- Sappho to Phaon (Ovid Heroid XV) poem – Alexander Pope poems | Poetry Monster
- I Awake and Choose To Live by P.J.Reed
- gum tree loved by the sky by Raj Arumugam
- Ten Years After by Graham Rowlands
- On The Astrologers (From The Greek) by William Cowper
- Вера Полозкова – Манипенни, твой мальчик, видно, неотвратим
- Clinic by Rob Leatherman Sr.
- Lover’s Gifts LVIII: Things Throng and Laugh by Rabindranath Tagore
- When the Lad for Longing Sigh poem – A. E. Housman
- Жан де Лафонтен – Дафнис и Алцимадура
- Николай Гумилев – Маскарад
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
- Book Leaf by Shaunna Harper
- Blue Period by Shaunna Harper
- Amoraphobia by Shaunna Harper
- A Eulogy by Shaunna Harper
- Welcome To My World © by Shannen Wrass
- Time Out To Cry by Shannen Wrass
- The Wrath of Love by Shawn Ervin
- The Voice of Woman by Shahida Latif
- The Victory by Shahida Latif
- The Spring passing away by Shailendra Chauhan
- The Ineffectual Dives by Shahida Latif
- The Earth Trembles by Shahida Latif
- The Demon by Shawn Ervin
- The Callous Statues by Shahida Latif
- Sheppard’s Quest by Shawn Ervin
- Selfish World, Selfish People by Shahbaz Khan
- Repentance by Shailendra Chauhan
- “Wishing to float” by Seema Gupta
- Serendipity by Seema Gupta
- Tiny Warrior by Sharmagne Leland-St. John
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
Violet Nicolson ( 1865 – 1904); otherwise known as Adela Florence Nicolson (née Cory), was an English poetess who wrote under the pseudonym of Laurence Hope, however she became known as Violet Nicolson. In the early 1900s, she became a best-selling author. She committed suicide and is buried in Madras, now Chennai, India.