A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916)
If I was drawn here from a distant place,
‘Twas not to pray nor hear our friend’s address,
But, gazing once more on your winsome face,
To worship there Ideal Loveliness.
On that pure shrine that has too long ignored
The gifts that once I brought so frequently
I lay this votive offering, to record
How sweet your quiet beauty seemed to me.
Enchanting girl, my faith is not a thing
By futile prayers and vapid psalm-singing
To vent in crowded nave and public pew.
My creed is simple: that the world is fair,
And beauty the best thing to worship there,
And I confess it by adoring you.
A few random poems:
- Владимир Корнилов – Муки свободы
- Олег Бундур – Дедушка воспитывает папу
- Book Twelfth [Imagination And Taste, How Impaired And Restored ] by William Wordsworth
- The First Part: Sonnet 5 – How that vast heaven intitled First is roll’d, by William Drummond
- Memorial Day For The War Dead by Yehuda Amichai
- When I Looked At You by Patrick Neo Mabiletsa
- America, America by Saadi Youssef
- On the Idle Hill of Summer poem – A. E. Housman
- Thomas Lux – Thomas Lux
- Олег Бундур – Дома
- Not Youth Pertains to Me. by Walt Whitman
- Ок Мельникова – Карниз
- Whoever You are, Holding Me now in Hand. by Walt Whitman
- Владимир Набоков – Я на море гляжу из мраморного храма
- Михаил Кузмин – Звезда Афродиты
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
- Phantasm
- Long I waited in vain
- was_then.html
- phantasm.html
- long_i_waited_in_vain.html
- Wind on the Hill by A. A. Milne
- Us Two by AA Milne
- twinkletoes.html
- The Morning Walk
- the_kings_breakfast.html
- the_dormouse_and_the_doctor.html
- the_christening.html
- Teddy Bear
- rice_pudding.html
- politeness.html
- Missing
- market_square.html
- lines_and_squares.html
- if_i_were_king.html
- hoppity.html
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

Alan Seeger (1888-1916) was an American war poet who fought and died in World War I during the Battle of the Somme, serving in the French Foreign Legion. Seeger was the brother of Charles Seeger, a noted American pacifist and musicologist and the uncle of folk musician, Pete Seeger.