A poem by Aeschylus (c. 525 – c. 456 Before Christ )
Now long and long from wintry Strymon blew
The weary, hungry, anchor-straining blasts,
The winds that wandering seamen dearly rue,
Nor spared the cables worn and groaning masts;
And, lingering on, in indolent delay,
Slow wasted all the strength of Greece away.
But when the shrill-voiced prophet ‘gan proclaim
That remedy more dismal and more dread
Than the drear weather blackening overhead,
And spoke in Artemis’ most awful name,
The sons of Atreus, ‘mid their armed peers,
Their sceptres dashed to earth, and each broke out in tears,
And thus the elder king began to say:
“Dire doom! to disobey the gods’ commands!
More dire, my child, mine house’s pride, to slay,
Dabbling in virgin blood a father’s hands.
Alas! alas! which way to fly?
As base deserter quit the host,
The pride and strength of our great league all lost?
Should I the storm-appeasing rite deny,
Will not their wrathfullest wrath rage up and swell?
Exact the virgin’s blood?-oh, would ‘t were o’er and well!”
So, ‘neath Necessity’s stern yoke he passed,
And his lost soul, with impious impulse veering,
Surrendered to the accursed unholy blast,
Warped to the dire extreme of human daring.
The frenzy of affliction still
Maddens, dire counselor, man’s soul to ill.
So he endured to be the priest
In that child-slaughtering rite unblest,
The first full offering of that host
In fatal war for a bad woman lost.
The prayers, the mute appeal to her hard sire,
Her youth, her virgin beauty,
Naught heeded they, the chiefs for war on fire.
So to the ministers of that dire duty
(First having prayed) the father gave the sign,
Like some soft kid, to lift her to the shrine.
There lay she prone,
Her graceful garments round her thrown;
But first her beauteous mouth around
Their violent bonds they wound,
With their rude inarticulate might,
Lest her dread curse the fatal house should smite.
But she her saffron robe to earth let fall:
The shaft of pity from her eye
Transpierced that awful priesthood-one and all.
Lovely as in a picture stood she by
As she would speak. Thus at her father’s feasts
The virgin, ‘mid the reveling guests,
Was wont with her chaste voice to supplicate
For her dear father an auspicious fate.
I saw no more! to speak more is not mine;
Not unfulfilled was Calchas’ lore divine.
Eternal justice still will bring
Wisdom out of suffering.
So to the fond desire farewell,
The inevitable future to foretell;
‘Tis but our woe to antedate;
Joint knit with joint, expands the full-formed fate.
Yet at the end of these dark days
May prospering weal return at length;
Thus in his spirit prays
He of the Apian land the sole remaining strength.
A few random poems:
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Две прелестницы
- Cavalier Tunes: Marching Along by Robert Browning
- Simon Lee: The Old Huntsman by William Wordsworth
- Anticipation poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Федор Сологуб – Под кустами
- Song of the Wise Children by Rudyard Kipling
- Hero by Siegfried Sassoon
- Diving Deep by Pawan Kumar
- To The Rev. Mr. Newton : An Invitation Into The Country by William Cowper
- For My Young Friends Who Are Afraid by William Stafford
- Лермонтов – Бородино: Стихотворение “Скажи-ка, дядя, ведь не даром”, читать текст стиха полностью онлайн на Poetry Monster
- Someone Ate The Baby by Shel Silverstein
- Young Man’s Song by William Butler Yeats
- Anti-Thelyphthora. A Tale In Verse by William Cowper
- kaleidoscopic whorled wide web. by matthew scott harris
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
- Федор Сологуб – В лес пришла пастушка
- Федор Сологуб – В камине пылания много
- Федор Сологуб – В иных веках, в иной отчизне
- Федор Сологуб – В этот час
- Федор Сологуб – В его саду растет рябина
- Федор Сологуб – Терцинами писать как будто очень трудно
- Федор Сологуб – Тепло мне потому, что мой уютный дом
- Федор Сологуб – Тень решётки прочной
- Федор Сологуб – Там, внизу, костры горели
- Федор Сологуб – Так же внятен мне, как прежде
- Федор Сологуб – Так нежен был внезапный поцелуй
- Федор Сологуб – Святых имен твоих не знаю
- Федор Сологуб – Своеволием рока
- Федор Сологуб – Светлый пир
- Федор Сологуб – Светлый дом мой всё выше
- Федор Сологуб – Сверкайте, миги строгих дней
- Федор Сологуб – Солнце, которому больно
- Федор Сологуб – Собака седого короля
- Федор Сологуб – Снова саваны надели
- Федор Сологуб – Снежное поле бесшумно
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
Aeschylus (525 Before Christ to 456 B.C.) was an ancient Greek author of Greek tragedy, and is often described as the father of tragedy. Academics’ knowledge of the genre begins with his work, and understanding of earlier Greek tragedy is largely based on inferences made from reading his surviving plays. According to Aristotle, he expanded the number of characters in the theatre and allowed conflict among them.