A poem by Alcaeus of Mytilene (c. 625/620 – c. 580 BC)
What constitutes a State?
Not high-raised battlement, or labored mound,
Thick wall or moated gate;
Not cities fair, with spires and turrets crown’d;
No:–Men, high-minded men,
With powers as far above dull brutes endued
In forest, brake or den,
As beasts excel cold rocks and brambles rude:–
Men who their duties know,
But know their rights, and knowing, dare maintain;
Prevent the long-aimed blow,
And crush the tyrant, while they rend the chain.

A few random poems:
- Year’s End by Marilyn Hacker
- The Princess: A Medley: Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Poems On Life by Rabindranath Tagore
- Vertumnus and Pomona : Ovid’s Metamorphoses, book 14 [v. 623-771] poem – Alexander Pope
- Canto XIII poem – Ezra Pound poems
- Epitaphs For Two Players by Vachel Lindsay
- Phantasm
- The Merchant by Rabindranath Tagore
- Владимир Британишский – Можга
- When I Came Last to Ludlow poem – A. E. Housman
- Paradise Regained: The Fourth Book poem – John Milton poems
- Михаил Лермонтов – Забудь опять свои надежды
- Николай Некрасов – В полном разгаре страда деревенская
- Огюст Барбье – Рафаэль
- Владимир Корнилов – Зачем
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
- Sonnet 12
- Sonnet 11
- Sonnet 10
- Sonnet 08
- Sonnet 07
- Sonnet 06
- Sonnet 05
- Sonnet 04
- Sonnet 03
- Sonnet 02
- Sonnet 01
- Resurgam
- Rendezvous
- Paris
- On The Cliffs Newport
- On A Theme In The Greek Anthology
- Maktoob
- Lyonesse
- Liebestod
- La Nue
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
Alcaeus of Mytilene ( c. 625/620 – c. 580 Before Christ) ] was a lyric poet from the Greek island of Lesbos who is credited with inventing the Alcaic stanza. He was included in the canonical list of nine lyric poets by the scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria.