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:
- I Wake And Feel The Fell Of Dark, Not Day poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- Огюст Барбье – Барабанщик Барра
- Иван Бунин – Ночь идет, и темнеет
- Refrigerator, 1957 by Thomas Lux
- The Window Overlooking The Harbour
- And Then It Rained by Pamela Griffiths
- Free Men Of God by John Oxenham
- A Morning Letter by Stevens Cadet
- A Fairy Tale poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Deserted Gipsys Song Hillside Camp
- Piera Chen – Piera Chen
- Владимир Высоцкий – Песенка про прыгуна в длину
- Владимир Вишневский – Заявка на романс
- Sonnet 84: Who is it that says most, which can say more by William Shakespeare
- Identity Card by Mahmoud Darwish
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
- Иван Бунин – Не видно птиц
- Иван Бунин – За рекой луга зазеленели
- Иван Бунин – Надпись на могильной плите
- Иван Бунин – Богиня
- Иван Бунин – Безнадежность
- Иван Бунин – Беру твою руку и долго смотрю
- Иван Бунин – Балагула
- Иван Бунин – Апрель
- Иван Бунин – Алёнушка
- Иван Бунин – Пустыня, грусть в степных просторах
- Иван Барков – Выбор
- Иван Барков – Вопрос без ответу
- Иван Барков – Венерино оружие
- Иван Барков – Улика подьячего
- Иван Барков – Торжественным воротам
- Иван Барков – Стихи с матом без цензуры: читать матерные нецензурные стихотворения Баркова – Poetry Monster
- Исикава Такубоку – Дом
- Ирина Токмакова – Каша
- Иосиф Бродский – Бюст Тиберия
- Иосиф Бродский – Буров тракторист
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.