Why stand dumbfounded and aghast,
As at invading armies sweeping by,
Surprised by haggard face and threatening cry,
The storm unheralded, that rose so fast?
Men, with gaunt wives and hungry children, cast
Upon the wintry streets to thieve or die,
They cannot always suffer silently;
Patience gives out. The poor worm turns at last.
And not ear listens to the warning call.
No eye awakes to see the portent dread.
Must brute force reign and social order fall
Ere these starved millions can be clothed and fed?
A strange phenomenon, this unconcern-
To live so fast and be so slow to learn!

A few random poems:
- Exposure by Seamus Heaney
- A Poet’s Epitaph by William Wordsworth
- Between going and staying the day wavers by Octavio Paz
- Down By The Salley Gardens by William Butler Yeats
- That Is by Satish Verma
- Ballad of the Army Carts by Tu Fu
- Before you knew you owned it poem – Alice Walker
- Fragment
- Федор Тютчев – А. Н. М.
- Above the Battle’s Front by Vachel Lindsay
- Константин Батюшков – На поэмы Петру Великому
- Владимир Британишский – Лохматую белую собаку
- Olney Hymn 5: Jehovah-Shalom: The Lord Send Peace by William Cowper
- Владимир Маяковский – Пожарные лозунги (1928)
- Владимир Маяковский – Вот какое обещание молодой солдат дает… (Главполитпросвет №376)
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
- Afridi Love
- Adoration
- Whispering In Wattle Boughs
- Thoras Song Ashtaroth
- The Swimmer
- The Sick Stockrider
- The Last Leap
- Gone
- An Exiles Farewell
- A Song Of Autumn
- A Dedication
- Medical Ethics
- Vain
- Myself
- My Heritage
- Miserimus
- Memory
- Karazah Karl
- Judith
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
Ada Cambridge (1844 – 1926), also known as Ada Cross, was an English-born Australian author and poetess. She wrote more than 25 works of fiction, three volumes of poetry and two autobiographical works.