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:
- Morning Poem #6 by Wanda Phipps
- Clouds by Philip Levine
- Remain! by Walter Savage Landor
- Robin Redbreast by William Allingham
- Man in a Window by Ralph Angel
- Song—Behold, my love, how green the groves by Robert Burns
- To Clementina Black poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- Died of Wounds by Siegfried Sassoon
- Sonnet Xi
- The Soul of the City Receives the Gift of the Holy Spirit by Vachel Lindsay
- Sonnet 33: Full many a glorious morning have I seen by William Shakespeare
- First Verse
- The Name poem – Alexander Pushkin
- Ship Starting, The. by Walt Whitman
- Assurances. by Walt Whitman
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
- Orpheus with his Lute Made Trees by William Shakespeare
- Orpheus by William Shakespeare
- Not marble nor the guilded monuments (Sonnet 55) by William Shakespeare
- Not from the stars do I my judgment pluck (Sonnet 14) by William Shakespeare
- Love by William Shakespeare
- It was a Lover and his Lass by William Shakespeare
- Hark! Hark! The Lark by William Shakespeare
- From you have I been absent in the spring… (Sonnet 98) by William Shakespeare
- from Venus and Adonis by William Shakespeare
- Fidele by William Shakespeare
- Fear No More by William Shakespeare
- Fairy Land v by William Shakespeare
- Fairy Land iv by William Shakespeare
- Fairy Land iii by William Shakespeare
- Fairy Land ii by William Shakespeare
- Dirge of the Three Queens by William Shakespeare
- Dirge by William Shakespeare
- Carpe Diem by William Shakespeare
- Bridal Song by William Shakespeare
- Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind by William Shakespeare
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.