Beneath this gloomy shade,
By Nature only for my sorrows made,
I’ll spend this voyce in crys,
In tears I’ll waste these eyes
By Love so vainly fed;
So Lust of old the Deluge punished.
Ah wretched youth! said I,
“Ah, wretched youth!” twice did I sadly cry:
“Ah, wretched youth!” the fields and floods reply.
When thoughts of Love I entertain,
I meet no words but “Never,” and “In vain.”
“Never” alas that dreadful name
Which fuels the infernal flame:
“Never,” My time to come must waste;
“In vain,” torments the present and the past.
“In vain, in vain!” said I;
“In vain, in vain!” twice did I sadly cry;
“In vain, in vain!” the fields and floods reply.
No more shall fields or floods do so;
For I to shades more dark and silent go:
All this world’s noise appears to me
A dull ill-acted comedy:
No comfort to my wounded sight,
In the suns busy and imperti’nent Light.
Then down I laid my head;
Down on cold earth; and for a while was dead,
And my freed soul to a strange somewhere fled.
“Ah, sottish Soul” said I,
When back to its cage again I saw it fly;
“Fool to resume her broken chain!
And row her galley here again!”
“Fool, to that body to return
Where it condemn’d and destin’d is to burn!
Once dead, how can it be,
Death should a thing so pleasant seem to thee,
That thou should’st come to live it o’re again in me?”
A few random poems:
- Николай Языков – Водопад
- Love Sonnet XXIX poem – Zora Bernice May Cross poems
- Benediction by Rabindranath Tagore
- This Lunar Beauty by W H Auden
- Владимир Орлов – Ковровые дорожки
- Николай Карамзин – Сильфида
- Robert Burns: Hey, Ca’ Thro’ – Boat song:
- My Paramour Was Loneliness
- Анатолий Жигулин – Где теперь ты, рыжая
- Владимир Высоцкий – Заключительная песня Кэрролла
- Robert Burns: A Mother’s Lament For the Death of Her Son.:
- Кондратий Рылеев – Из письма к Булгарину
- Robert Burns: Verses Intended To Be Written Below A Noble Earl’s Picture:
- A Letter To Doctor Ingelo, then With My Lord Whitlock, Amba poem – Andrew Marvell poems
- The Voice of Woman by Shahida Latif
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
- The Dunciad: Book I. poem – Alexander Pope
- The Challenge: A Court Ballad poem – Alexander Pope
- The Basset-Table : An Eclogue poem – Alexander Pope
- Summer – The Second Pastoral; or Alexis poem – Alexander Pope
- Summer – The Second Pastoral; or Alexis poem – Alexander Pope
- Spring – The First Pastoral ; or Damon poem – Alexander Pope
- Song, by a Person of Quality poem – Alexander Pope
- Sappho to Phaon (Ovid Heroid XV) poem – Alexander Pope
- Sandys Ghost ; A Proper Ballad on the New Ovid’s Metamorphosis poem – Alexander Pope
- Prayer of St. Francis Xavier poem – Alexander Pope
- On the Countess of Burlington Cutting Paper poem – Alexander Pope
- On Seeing the Ladies Crux-Easton Walk in the Woods by the Grotto. poem – Alexander Pope
- On Mr. Gay poem – Alexander Pope
- On His Grotto at Twickenham poem – Alexander Pope
- On Colley Cibber poem – Alexander Pope
- On Certain Ladies poem – Alexander Pope
- On a Fan of the Author’s Design poem – Alexander Pope
- On a Certain Lady at Court poem – Alexander Pope
- Ode on St. Cecilia’s Day poem – Alexander Pope
- Occasioned By Some Verses of His Grace the Duke of Buckingham poem – Alexander Pope
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

Abraham Cowley (1618 – 1667), the Royalist Poet.Poet and essayist Abraham Cowley was born in London, England, in 1618. He displayed early talent as a poet, publishing his first collection of poetry, Poetical Blossoms (1633), at the age of 15. Cowley studied at Cambridge University but was stripped of his Cambridge fellowship during the English Civil War and expelled for refusing to sign the Solemn League and Covenant of 1644. In turn, he accompanied Queen Henrietta Maria to France, where he spent 12 years in exile, serving as her secretary. During this time, Cowley completed The Mistress (1647). Arguably his most famous work, the collection exemplifies Cowley’s metaphysical style of love poetry. After the Restoration, Cowley returned to England, where he was reinstated as a Cambridge fellow and earned his MD before finally retiring to the English countryside. He is buried at Westminster Abbey alongside Geoffrey Chaucer and Edmund Spenser. Cowley is a wonderful poet and an outstanding representative of the English baroque.