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:
- Валерий Брюсов – Это – не надежда и не вера
- Владимир Маяковский – Рифмованные лозунги
- Rhapsody on a Windy Night by T. S. Eliot
- Robert Burns: To The Weavers Gin Ye Go:
- Blank Joy by Rainer Maria Rilke
- earthfast.html
- Song to the Evening Star by Thomas Campbell
- Bible Study by Tony Hoagland
- Herodotus in Egypt Remeber Delos by Ruth Padel
- Days Are Gone by Mary Etta Metcalf
- Олег Бундур – Сорока
- Wold Friends A-Met by William Barnes
- Василий Тредиаковский – В сем озере бедные любовники
- So Long! by Precious Tahula
- Ballad de soul by Neelam Sinha
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-infernal-regions.html
- honeycomb.html
- Dark Matter by Aaron Baker
- polyphony_in_a_cathedral.html
- one_almost_might.html
- nursery_rhyme_for_a_twenty_first_birthday.html
- Not Love Perhaps
- night_piece.html
- never.html
- music.html
- meeting.html
- last_word_to_childhood.html
- june_sick_room.html
- houses.html
- flight_of_stairs.html
- epitaph_on_a_disturber_of_his_times.html
- Epitaph for Our Children
- empty_room.html
- earthfast.html
- don_juan.html
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.