A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916)
So when the verdure of his life was shed,
With all the grace of ripened manlihead,
And on his locks, but now so lovable,
Old age like desolating winter fell,
Leaving them white and flowerless and forlorn:
Then from his bed the Goddess of the Morn
Softly withheld, yet cherished him no less
With pious works of pitying tenderness;
Till when at length with vacant, heedless eyes,
And hoary height bent down none otherwise
Than burdened willows bend beneath their weight
Of snow when winter winds turn temperate, —
So bowed with years — when still he lingered on:
Then to the daughter of Hyperion
This counsel seemed the best: for she, afar
By dove-gray seas under the morning star,
Where, on the wide world’s uttermost extremes,
Her amber-walled, auroral palace gleams,
High in an orient chamber bade prepare
An everlasting couch, and laid him there,
And leaving, closed the shining doors. But he,
Deathless by Jove’s compassionless decree,
Found not, as others find, a dreamless rest.
There wakeful, with half-waking dreams oppressed,
Still in an aural, visionary haze
Float round him vanished forms of happier days;
Still at his side he fancies to behold
The rosy, radiant thing beloved of old;
And oft, as over dewy meads at morn,
Far inland from a sunrise coast is borne
The drowsy, muffled moaning of the sea,
Even so his voice flows on unceasingly, —
Lisping sweet names of passion overblown,
Breaking with dull, persistent undertone
The breathless silence that forever broods
Round those colossal, lustrous solitudes.
Times change. Man’s fortune prospers, or it falls.
Change harbors not in those eternal halls
And tranquil chamber where Tithonus lies.
But through his window there the eastern skies
Fall palely fair to the dim ocean’s end.
There, in blue mist where air and ocean blend,
The lazy clouds that sail the wide world o’er
Falter and turn where they can sail no more.
There singing groves, there spacious gardens blow —
Cedars and silver poplars, row on row,
Through whose black boughs on her appointed night,
Flooding his chamber with enchanted light,
Lifts the full moon’s immeasurable sphere,
Crimson and huge and wonderfully near.
A few random poems:
- To A Wife, On Mother’s Day by Ronald G. Auguste
- Civilian and Soldier by Wole Soyinka
- England! The Time Is Come When Thou Should’st Wean by William Wordsworth
- A Boston Ballad, 1854. by Walt Whitman
- A Fairy Tale poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Scorn Not The Sonnet by William Wordsworth
- The Soldier poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- Raise the head, child by Vinko Kalinić
- Алексей Жемчужников – Знакомая картина
- Quest for Thee by Vanessa Perkins
- Ольга Берггольц – Озерный край
- Adam: A Sacred Drama. Act 5. by William Cowper
- Sea God and the wind rose by Vinko Kalinić
- Ольга Берггольц – Твоя молодость
- Niobe in Distress by Phillis Wheatley
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
- Владимир Набоков – Стансы (Ничем не смоешь подписи косой)
- Владимир Набоков – Спроси у хрустальной луны
- Владимир Набоков – Скитальцы
- Владимир Набоков – Шахматный конь
- Владимир Набоков – Санкт-Петербург
- Владимир Набоков – Расстрел
- Владимир Набоков – Путь
- Владимир Набоков – Пускай все горестней и глуше
- Владимир Набоков – Простая песня, грусть простая
- Владимир Набоков – Поэт
- Владимир Набоков – Памяти друга
- Владимир Набоков – Осень
- Владимир Набоков – О, любовь, ты светла и крылата
- Владимир Набоков – О чем я думаю
- Владимир Набоков – На сельском кладбище
- Владимир Набоков – Мечтал я о тебе так часто
- Владимир Набоков – Лыжный прыжок
- Владимир Набоков – Кубы
- Владимир Набоков – Кинематораф
- Владимир Набоков – Какое сделал я дурное дело
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
Alan Seeger (1888-1916) was an American war poet who fought and died in World War I during the Battle of the Somme, serving in the French Foreign Legion. Seeger was the brother of Charles Seeger, a noted American pacifist and musicologist and the uncle of folk musician, Pete Seeger.