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:
- Юргис Балтрушайтис – Стучись, упорствуя, Кирка
- A Mesh by Shahida Latif
- Wandering Singers by Sarojini Naidu
- Жан де Лафонтен – Дровосек и Меркурий
- Николай Карамзин – Сильфида
- Courting Fidelity by Satish Verma
- Collage by Martine Morillon-Carreau
- MOURNING by Satish Verma
- nonsense verse by Raj Arumugam
- Apple-Blossoms by Will McKendree Carleton
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Отзыв на вызов
- To a Lady and Her Children by Phillis Wheatley
- Perseus by Robert Hayden
- Валерий Брюсов – Городу дифирамб
- Нина Воронель – Вечная мерзлота
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
- One Year by Sharon Olds
- Crab by Sharon Olds
- A Week Later by Sharon Olds
- 1954 by Sharon Olds
- Winter by Shaunna Harper
- Twilight by Shaunna Harper
- The Other Half by Shaunna Harper
- Saison Noir by Shaunna Harper
- River by Shaunna Harper
- Prelude by Shaunna Harper
- Passing by Shaunna Harper
- My Modern Surrealist Mind by Shaunna Harper
- Metamorphosis by Shaunna Harper
- La Fleur by Shaunna Harper
- Keeping the Dawn by Shaunna Harper
- In Measures by Shaunna Harper
- Hidebound by Shaunna Harper
- For Someone, Somewhere, In Relation by Shaunna Harper
- Ellipsis by Shaunna Harper
- Chanson D’Amour by Shaunna Harper
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.