“Sounding through the silent dimness
Where I faint and weary lay,
Spake a poet: ‘I will lead thee
To the land of song to-day.'”
I
O bards! weak heritors of passion and of pain!
Dwellers in the shadowy Palace of Dreams!
With your unmated souls flying insanely at the stars!
Why have you led me lonely and desolate to the Deathless Hill of Song?
You promised that I should ring trancing shivers of rapt melody down to the dumb earth.
You promised that its echoes should vibrate till Time’s circles met in old Eternity.
You promised that I should gather the stars like blossoms to my white bosom.
You promised that I should create a new moon of Poesy.
You promised that the wild wings of my soul should shimmer through the dusky locks of the clouds, like burning arrows, down into the deep heart of the dim world.
But, O Bards! sentinels on the Lonely Hill, why breaks there yet no Day to me?
II
O lonely watchers for the Light! how long must I grope with my dead eyes in the sand?
Only the red fire of Genius, that narrows up life’s chances to the black path that crawls on to the dizzy clouds.
The wailing music that spreads its pinions to the tremble of the wind, has crumbled off to silence.
From the steep ideal the quivering soul falls in its lonely sorrow like an unmated star from the blue heights of Heaven into the dark sea.
O Genius! is this thy promise?
O Bards! is this all?
A few random poems:
- Dedication To A Book Of Stories Selected From The Irish Novelists by William Butler Yeats
- You Personify God’s Message by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- He Remembers Forgotten Beauty by William Butler Yeats
- What We Need Is Here by Wendell Berry
- I Chide Not At The Seasons poem – Alfred Austin
- Words Of Advice by Ronald G. Auguste
- Robert Burns: The Fall Of The Leaf:
- I am a sculptor, a molder of form by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- My Journey by Vikki Bonyata
- Life-companion by Shailendra Chauhan
- Sacred And Profane Love poem – Alfred Austin
- Алексей Плещеев – Как солнце блещет ярко
- Robert Burns: Paraphrase Of The First Psalm:
- Holiday Letter For A Poet Gone To War
- Morning In The Hospital Solarium by Sylvia Plath
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
- Answers by Mark Strand
- And The Black Scythe With Its Beak of Ibis by Martine Morillon-Carreau
- After Forever by Mark Miller
- A World So Different by Mary Etta Metcalf
- A Poet I knew by Martin Zakovski
- A Piece Of The Storm by Mark Strand
- A Photograph on the Desk by Mary Etta Metcalf
- A Misty Morning by Mary Etta Mietcalf
- A Cozy Little Room by Mary Etta Metcalf
- À ce point du voyage by Martine Morillon-Carreau
- A Dream of Rodney King by Mary TallMountain
- You Ask Why Sometimes I Say Stop by Marge Piercy
- Yell of Pain by Maria Ivana Trevisani Bach
- Year’s End by Marilyn Hacker
- Winter Promises by Marge Piercy
- What Are Big Girls Made Of? by Marge Piercy
- Visiting a Dead Man on a Summer Day by Marge Piercy
- Upon Julia’s Breast by Marie Starr
- Unloved, unmoved by Maria Jastine Golo
- Twas’ the Night Before Christmas and Santa got Drunk by Margaret Marie Hubbard
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