A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916)
I have sought Happiness, but it has been
A lovely rainbow, baffling all pursuit,
And tasted Pleasure, but it was a fruit
More fair of outward hue than sweet within.
Renouncing both, a flake in the ferment
Of battling hosts that conquer or recoil,
There only, chastened by fatigue and toil,
I knew what came the nearest to content.
For there at least my troubled flesh was free
From the gadfly Desire that plagued it so;
Discord and Strife were what I used to know,
Heartaches, deception, murderous jealousy;
By War transported far from all of these,
Amid the clash of arms I was at peace.

A few random poems:
- Robert Burns: Montgomerie’s Peggy:
- Between going and staying the day wavers by Octavio Paz
- Алексей Жемчужников – Воспоминание в деревне о Петербурге
- Николай Заболоцкий – Осенний клен
- The Dance At Darmstadt poem – Alfred Austin
- My angel’s face by Vinko Kalinić
- Юнна Мориц – Это да, это нет
- Sonnet 01
- Владимир Британишский – Меня благословил старик Бажов
- Grace by Sappho
- Great Men Have Been Among Us by William Wordsworth
- Яков Полонский – Откуда
- Lord Gregory: A Ballad by Robert Burns
- Philip Levine – Philip Levine
- Yarrow Unvisited by William Wordsworth
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
- Woken Up By Beautiful Dreams
- The Poet Angels Who Came To Dinner
- The Nomad039s Vision Ode To A Skylark Dressed In Black
- The Man That Poetry Made
- Power Of Thought
- Once Was A Singer For God Remembering Nekia
- My Aroma
- Lost Love Is Never Lost
- Holiday Letter For A Poet Gone To War
- Gratitudes Of A Dozen Roses
- Every Hour Henceforth
- Cell Mate
- Calling The Spirits
- Angel Of Christmas Love Shining Bright
- Angel Of Better Days To Come
- All Night In Savannah The Wind Wrote Poetry
- The Solitary Oak On Mount Kremlin Bicetre
- The Prison Of The Past
- The Dead Woman
- Pathos Is The Skyward Tanka
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.