“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:
- Verses Printed By Himself On A Flood At Olney by William Cowper
- The Fisherman by William Butler Yeats
- Владимир Маяковский – Точеные слоны
- Prelude by Rudyard Kipling
- Ярослав Смеляков – Стихи, написанные в псковской гостинице
- Lesbos by Sylvia Plath
- Story Of Udaipore Told By Lalla Ji The Priest
- A Wren’s Nest by William Wordsworth
- Summer – The Second Pastoral; or Alexis poem – Alexander Pope
- Владимир Британишский – Чюрлёнис
- Song—Awa’, Whigs, Awa’ by Robert Burns
- Friendship poem – Alexander Pushkin
- Scars on Paper by Marilyn Hacker
- Robert Burns: Verses On The Destruction Of The Woods Near Drumlanrig:
- Стефан Малларме – Записка Уистлеру
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
- Youth and Love poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- Twilight poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- Translated from Geibel poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- To Vernon Lee poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- To E. poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- To Death poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- To Clementina Black poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Village Garden poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Two Terrors poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Sick Man and the Nightingale poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Sequel to a Reminiscence poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Promise of Sleep poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Piano-Organ poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Old Poet poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Old House poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Lost Friend poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Last Judgment poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- The First Extra poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- The End of the Day poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Dream poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
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