“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:
- Sonnet 92: But do thy worst to steal thy self away by William Shakespeare
- Conversation
- Владимир Набоков – Простая песня, грусть простая
- When The Two Sisters Go To Fetch Water by Rabindranath Tagore
- Ярослав Смеляков – Стихи, написанные на почте
- Gray Dawn by Satish Verma
- Sitting atop the mountain hill by Swami Aaron Thomas
- Владимир Высоцкий – Расскажи, дорогой
- In Neglect by Robert Frost
- Robert Burns: To Daunton Me:
- Николай Языков – Элегия (День ненастный, темный; тучи)
- “Veruca Salt…” by Roald Dahl
- A Scot To Jeanne D’Arc poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Зинаида Александрова – Молодой месяц
- Олег Бундур – Учительница открыла журнал
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
- Harrow-on-the-Hill poem – John Betjeman poems | Poems and Poetry
- Guilt poem – John Betjeman poems | Poems and Poetry
- Felixstowe, or The Last of Her Order poem – John Betjeman poems | Poems and Poetry
- Executive poem – John Betjeman poems | Poems and Poetry
- Dilton Marsh Halt poem – John Betjeman poems | Poems and Poetry
- Diary of a Church Mouse poem – John Betjeman poems | Poems and Poetry
- Devonshire Street W.1 poem – John Betjeman poems | Poems and Poetry
- Death In Leamington poem – John Betjeman poems | Poems and Poetry
- Dawlish poem – John Betjeman poems | Poems and Poetry
- Cornish Cliffs poem – John Betjeman poems | Poems and Poetry
- Christmas poem – John Betjeman poems | Poems and Poetry
- Business Girls poem – John Betjeman poems | Poems and Poetry
- Back From Australia poem – John Betjeman poems | Poems and Poetry
- An Edwardian Sunday, Broomhill, Sheffield poem – John Betjeman poems | Poems and Poetry
- A Subaltern’s Love Song poem – John Betjeman poems | Poems and Poetry
- A Shropshire Lad poem – John Betjeman poems | Poems and Poetry
- A Bay In Anglesey poem – John Betjeman poems | Poems and Poetry
- Free the Holy Land — a poem about Palestine
- Sepukku
- Did Shakespeare write his own plays and poems?
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