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:
- What Place is Besieged? by Walt Whitman
- Юлия Друнина – Стал холоден мой тёплый старый дом
- Untitled XXIII by Yunus Emre
- God Neither Known Nor Loved By The World by William Cowper
- Robert Burns Country: O Tibbie, I Hae Seen The Day:
- Вера Павлова – Удобряю ресницы снами
- Николай Заболоцкий – Старость
- Николай Языков – Разбойники
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Отзыв на вызов
- Miserimus
- O Hymen! O Hymenee! by Walt Whitman
- In A Letter To C. P. Esq. Ill With The Rheumatism by William Cowper
- Владимир Степанов – Как живете? Что жуете?
- Lament Two Brothers Slain Each Other039s Hand
- Юрий Коринец – Старухи
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
- Return Of The Heroes by Siegfried Sassoon
- In An Underground Dressing Station by Siegfried Sassoon
- Return Of The Heroes by Siegfried Sassoon
- Grandeur Of Ghosts by Siegfried Sassoon
- Prelude: The Troops by Siegfried Sassoon
- On Passing The New Menin Gate by Siegfried Sassoon
- In An Underground Dressing Station by Siegfried Sassoon
- Grandeur Of Ghosts by Siegfried Sassoon
- ‘Blighters’ by Siegfried Sassoon
- At The Cenotaph by Siegfried Sassoon
- Wraiths by Siegfried Sassoon
- Wraiths by Siegfried Sassoon
- Wonderment by Siegfried Sassoon
- Wisdom by Siegfried Sassoon
- Wirers by Siegfried Sassoon
- Wind in the Beechwood by Siegfried Sassoon
- When I’m among a Blaze of Lights by Siegfried Sassoon
- What the Captain Said at the Point-to-Point by Siegfried Sassoon
- Vision by Siegfried Sassoon
- Villon by Siegfried Sassoon
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.