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:
- Mushrooms by Sylvia Plath
- Низами Гянджеви – От сердца всю ночь мечтал
- Владимир Маяковский – Весенняя ночь
- Evenén in the Village by William Barnes
- Creativity in America and How Italians Can Learn From American Ingenuity
- Carol of Occupations. by Walt Whitman
- Quies poem – Ezra Pound poems
- Love’s Divinest Power by Timothy Thomas Fortune
- Николай Глазков – Пусть будет эта повесть
- Duty Surviving Self-Love by Samuel Coleridge
- The Year’s Awakening by Thomas Hardy
- Hear the Voice by William Blake
- Ольга Седакова – Элегия осенней воды
- Sonnet 50: How heavy do I journey on the way by William Shakespeare
- Sonet 44 by William Alexander
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
- The Old Maids Story
- The Night
- The Mob
- The Midnight Mass
- The Magic Wand
- The Legend Of Lady Gertrude
- The Last Battle Of The Cid
- The Kind Word
- The Hands That Hang Down
- The Hand In The Dark
- The Future Verdict
- The Easter Decorations
- The Dawn
- The Dawn Of Gods Sabbath
- The Crown Of Thorns
- The Coo Of The Cushat
- The Candle Of The Lord
- The Baptistry
- Sic Vos Non Vobis
- Seed Time And Harvest
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.