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 Copper Beech by Marie Howe
- Come Into the Garde, Maud poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Holy Communion
- Sir Giles’ War-Song by William Morris
- My Invisible Valentine by Nin Andrews
- Robert Burns: Lady Onlie, Honest Lucky:
- City of My Childhood
- When You Come by Maya Angelou
- Robert Burns: On Tam The Chapman:
- Robert Burns: On Seeing Mrs. Kemble In Yarico:
- Advice: A Satire. by Tobias Smollett
- The Infernal Regions
- My Mind Keeps Movin’ by Shel Silverstein
- Dedication For A Plot Of Ground by William Carlos Williams
- All through eternity by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
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
- Innocence
- In The Stone I Rooted
- In Between The Strophes
- Human Joys
- Human Charms
- He Who Creates Re Creates Himself
- Hai Kou Unpublished
- Hai Kou
- Greek Light
- Greece
- Golden Eangle
- Gesture Theory A Villanelle
- Gem Immortality
- Fruit Leaf Roots Flowers
- First Verse
- First Light
- Excerpt From The Gertrude Stein Collaborative Series
- Eudaemonism In A Senryu Novel
- Drunkenness
- Do Not Get Angry
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.