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:
- The Neäme Letters by William Barnes
- Buying leeks by Yosa Buson
- The River by Mark Olynyk
- Владимир Высоцкий – Свет потушите, вырубите звук
- Gwain To Feäir by William Barnes
- Sonnet VIII. To My Brothers poem – John Keats poems
- Goliath Of Gath by Phillis Wheatley
- If You Only Knew by Robert Desnos
- I’m So Good That I Don’t Have To Brag by Shel Silverstein
- Women’s Harvest Song poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Black Shawl poem – Alexander Pushkin
- Song—The Tear-drop—“Wae is my heart” by Robert Burns
- Popcorn, Glass Balls, and Cranberries by Vachel Lindsay
- The Poetry That Is Life
- Book Second [School-Time Continued] by William Wordsworth
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
- Reverie Of Ormuz The Persian
- Reverie Of Mahomed Akram At The Tamarind Tank
- Request
- Reminiscence Of Mahomed Akram
- Protest By Zahir U Din
- Prayer
- Palm Trees By The Sea
- On The City Wall
- On Pilgrimage
- Ojira To Her Lover
- Oh Unforgotten And Only Lover
- Oh Masters
- Oh Life I Have Taken You For My Lover
- No Rival Like The Past
- Nay Not To Night
- My Paramour Was Loneliness
- My Desire
- Middle Age
- Memory
- Marriage Thoughts By Morsellin Khan
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.