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:
- Mortality poem – John Betjeman poems
- Love’s Fitfulness poem – Alfred Austin
- Владимир Маяковский – Советская азбука (Железо куй, пока горячее…)
- E.A. Nov. 6, 1900 by John Oxenham
- On The Death Of J. C. An Infant by Phillis Wheatley
- The Garden By The Bridge
- Василий Жуковский – Тоска по милом
- Picture by Nijole Miliauskaite
- Cigarettes And Whiskey And Wild, Wild Women by Anne Sexton
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Что ж делать
- Song Of The Parao Camping Ground
- On The Bus
- Николай Гумилев – Никогда не сделаю я так
- Омар Хайям – Благородство страданием, друг, рождено
- Paradise Lost: Book 10 poem – John Milton poems
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
- Three Songs Of Zahir U Din
- Thoughts Mahomed Akram
- Though In My Firmament Thou Wilt Not Shine
- This Month The Almonds Bloom At Kandahar
- There Is No Breeze To Cool The Heat Of Love
- The Window Overlooking The Harbour
- The Tom Toms
- The Temple Dancing Girl
- The Teak Forest
- The Singer
- The River Of Pearls At Fez Translation
- The Rice Was Under Water
- The Rice Boat
- The Regret Of The Ranee In The Hall Of Peacocks
- The Rao Of Ilore
- The Plains
- The Net Of Memory
- The Masters
- The Lute Player Of Casa Blanca
- The Lament Of Yasmini The Dancing Girl
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.