A poem by Alexander Pope (1688-1744) , the greatest English poet of “Augustan” or Georgian period
True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learned to dance.
‘Tis not enough no harshness gives offense,
The sound must seem an echo to the sense:
Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows,
And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;
But when loud surges lash the sounding shore,
The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar;
When Ajax strives some rock’s vast weight to throw,
The line too labors, and the words move slow;
Not so, when swift Camilla scours the plain,
Flies o’er the unbending corn, and skims along the main.
Hear how Timotheus’ varied lays surprise,
And bid alternate passions fall and rise!

A few random poems:
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Е. А. Карлгоф
- Омар Хайям – О, кумир, Дружбу ты почему прервала
- Ольга Седакова – Всё, и сразу
- The Kiss — English Translation by Rabindranath Tagore
- Владимир Лифшиц – Баллада о черством куске
- The Magic Wand
- As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free. by Walt Whitman
- Cuckoo Song by Rudyard Kipling
- Sonnet II: When Forty Winters Shall Besiege Thy Brow by William Shakespeare
- Владимир Маяковский – С винтовкой, но без знания – нет побед (РОСТА № 115)
- Федор Тютчев – Анненковой (D’une fille du Nord, chetive et languissante)
- Portrait of a Lady by T. S. Eliot
- Владимир Маяковский – Протекция
- Алексей Толстой – Ты почто, злая кручинушка
- Why Write? by Mark Olynyk
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
- Forty Years Later by Martin Willitts, Jr
- Life by Marvin Bell
- Farmers Market by Mary TallMountain
- Let Him Free by Mary Etta Metcalf
- Eternal Existence by Mark Miller
- Keeping Things Whole by Mark Strand
- Et Le Marbre Creuse… by Martine Morillon-Carreau
- Important thing’s in life by Martin Smith
- Images by Mary Etta Metcalf
- Illusions by Mark R Slaughter
- If Only by Mary Etta Metcalf
- I, or Someone Like Me by Marvin Bell
- He Said To by Marvin Bell
- Grumpy Old Man by Mary Etta Metcalf
- Giving Myself Up by Mark Strand
- Ghosts by Martina Reisz Newberry
- From The Long Sad Party by Mark Strand
- Forty Years Later by Martin Willitts, Jr
- Farmers Market by Mary TallMountain
- Eternal Existence by Mark Miller
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
Alexander Pope (1688 – 1744) was a a post-Restoration English poet and satirist. He is a poet of the (British) Augustan period and one of its greatest artistic exponents.