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:
- The Starlight Night poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- Epitaph on the same by Robert Burns
- Stray Pleasures by William Wordsworth
- Ольга Берггольц – Ты будешь ждать
- Sonnet CXIII by William Shakespeare
- Нина Стожкова – Подарки деда Мороза
- Jock O The Side poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Николай Заболоцкий – Горийская симфония
- Юргис Балтрушайтис – Метель
- Psalm 07 poem – John Milton poems
- Владимир Маяковский – Что делать?.. (РОСТА №193)
- The Despair
- Morning Song by Sylvia Plath
- Blue flower by Tanisha Avarsekar
- I have been tricked by flying too close by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
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
- Considering The Snail by Thom Gunn
- Broken Love by Talha Jafri
- Black Market Love by Taisha Destin
- Attention please! Attention please! by Roald Dahl
- An Act of Faith by Talha Jafri
- After Years by Ted Kooser
- Abd el-Hadi Fights a Superpower by Taha Muhammad Ali
- A Ghost in the Shell by Talha Jafri
- 10 Things I Do Every Day by Ted Berrigan
- Zermatt To The Matterhorn. by Thomas Hardy
- A Woman’s Fancy by Thomas Hardy
- The Woman In The Rye by Thomas Hardy
- A Week by Thomas Hardy
- The Year’s Awakening by Thomas Hardy
- The Workbox by Thomas Hardy
- The Wistful Lady by Thomas Hardy
- The Puzzled Game-Birds by Thomas Hardy
- A Spot by Thomas Hardy
- A Sign-Seeker by Thomas Hardy
- “The Curtains Now Are Drawn” by Thomas Hardy
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.