A poem by Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963)
Sitting on the top of the ‘bus,
I bite my pipe and look at the sky.
Over my shoulder the smoke streams out
And my life with it.
“Conservation of energy,” you say.
But I burn, I tell you, I burn;
And the smoke of me streams out
In a vanishing skein of grey.
Crash and bump … my poor bruised body!
I am a harp of twittering strings,
An elegant instrument, but infinitely second-hand,
And if I have not got phthisis it is only an accident.
Droll phenomena!
A few random poems:
- Николай Карамзин – Часто здесь в юдоли мрачной
- Sonnet 91: Some glory in their birth, some in their skill by William Shakespeare
- Sonnet: On seeing Miss Helen Maria Williams weep at a tale of distress by William Wordsworth
- An April Love poem – Alfred Austin
- Огюст Барбье – Лев
- My Eyes in the Time of Apparition by Rachel McKibbens
- Владимир Луговской – Баллада о пустыне
- Faith and Faiths by Tomás Ó Cárthaigh
- Ольга Берггольц – Твоя молодость
- Юргис Балтрушайтис – Нарядно выстлав дол, взбегая на холмы
- Atavism by William Stafford
- Sonnet CXLV by William Shakespeare
- Валерий Брюсов – Пифия
- Birth Story by Rabindranath Tagore
- Conversation With My Heart by Russ Pergram
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
- Wind on the Hill by AA Milne
- us_two_by_a_a_milne.html
- twinkletoes.html
- the_morning_walk.html
- the_kings_breakfast.html
- the_dormouse_and_the_doctor.html
- the_christening.html
- rice_pudding.html
- politeness.html
- missing.html
- market_square.html
- lines_and_squares.html
- if_i_were_king.html
- hoppity.html
- happiness.html
- come_out_with_me.html
- buckingham_palace.html
- brownie.html
- at_the_zoo.html
- Water Strider by Aaron Baker
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

Alcaeus of Mytilene ( c. 625/620 – c. 580 Before Christ) ] was a lyric poet from the Greek island of Lesbos who is credited with inventing the Alcaic stanza. He was included in the canonical list of nine lyric poets by the scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria.