UPON HIS TWO FIRST BOOKS OF GONDIBERT
FINISHED BEFORE HIS VOYAGE TO AMERICA.
METHINKS heroick poesy till now,
Like some fantastick fairy-land did show;
Gods, devils, nymphs, witches and giants’ race,
And all but man, in man’s chief work had place.
Thou, like some worthy knight with sacred arms,
Dost drive the monsters thence, and end the charms:
Instead of those dost men and manners plant,
The things which that rich soil did chiefly want.
Yet ev’n thy Mortals do their Gods excel,
Taught by thy Muse to fight and love so well.
By fatal hands whilst present empires fall,
Thine from the grave past monarchies recall;
So much more thanks from human-kind does merit
The Poet’s fury than the zealot’s spirit.
And from the grave thou mak’st this empire rise,
Not like some dreadful ghost t’ affright our eyes,
But with more lustre and triumphant state,
Than when it crown’d at proud Verona sate.
So will our God rebuild man’s perished frame,
And raise him up much better, yet the same:
So God-like poets do past things rehearse,
Not change, but heighten, Nature by their verse.
With shame, methinks, great Italy must see
Her conquerors rais’d to life again by thee:
Rais’d by such pow’erful verse, that ancient Rome
May blush no less to see her wit o’ercome.
Some men their fancies like their faith, derive,
And think all ill but that which Rome does give;
The marks of Old and Catholick would find;
To the same chair would truth and fiction bind.
Thou in those beaten paths disdain’st to tread,
And scorn’st to live by robbing of the dead.
Since time does all things change, thou think’st not fit
This latter age should see all new but wit;
Thy fancy, like a flame, its way does make,
And leave bright tracks for following pens to take.
Sure ‘t was this noble boldness of the Muse
Did thy desire to seek new worlds infuse;
And ne’er did Heaven so much a voyage bless,
If thou canst plant but there with like success.
A few random poems:
- Sonnet CXLIII by William Shakespeare
- On The Decline Of Oracles by Sylvia Plath
- Olney Hymn 7: Vanity of the World by William Cowper
- Анатолий Жигулин – Калина
- An Experiment In Translation poem – Alfred Austin
- In a Subway Station by Sara Teasdale
- Владимир Британишский – Можга
- Robert Burns: Sonnet Written On The Author’s Birthday, : On hearing a Thrush sing in his Morning Walk.
- The Lover Asks Forgiveness Because Of His Many Moods by William Butler Yeats
- Ольга Берггольц – Мы предчувствовали полыханье
- Salut au Monde. by Walt Whitman
- On The Death Of Mr Crashaw
- Conviction (iii) by Stevie Smith
- Василий Лебедев-Кумач – Водовоз
- The Winter’s Willow by William Barnes
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
- An Arab Shepherd Is Searching For His Goat On Mount Zion by Yehuda Amichai
- A Precise Woman by Yehuda Amichai
- A Pity, We Were Such A Good Invention by Yehuda Amichai
- A Jewish Cemetery In Germany by Yehuda Amichai
- A Dog After Love by Yehuda Amichai
- Straw sandal half sunk by Yosa Buson
- Sparrow singing by Yosa Buson
- Ploughing the land by Yosa Buson
- Old well by Yosa Buson
- Not quite dark yet by Yosa Buson
- My arm for a pillow by Yosa Buson
- Listening to the moon by Yosa Buson
- Lighting one candle by Yosa Buson
- Yosa Buson – Yosa Buson
- Hokku Poems in Four Seasons by Yosa Buson
- His Holiness the Abbot by Yosa Buson
- He’s on the porch by Yosa Buson
- Harvest moon by Yosa Buson
- Evening wind by Yosa Buson
- Elegy to the Old Man Hokuju by Yosa Buson
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
Abraham Cowley (1618 – 1667), the Royalist Poet.Poet and essayist Abraham Cowley was born in London, England, in 1618. He displayed early talent as a poet, publishing his first collection of poetry, Poetical Blossoms (1633), at the age of 15. Cowley studied at Cambridge University but was stripped of his Cambridge fellowship during the English Civil War and expelled for refusing to sign the Solemn League and Covenant of 1644. In turn, he accompanied Queen Henrietta Maria to France, where he spent 12 years in exile, serving as her secretary. During this time, Cowley completed The Mistress (1647). Arguably his most famous work, the collection exemplifies Cowley’s metaphysical style of love poetry. After the Restoration, Cowley returned to England, where he was reinstated as a Cambridge fellow and earned his MD before finally retiring to the English countryside. He is buried at Westminster Abbey alongside Geoffrey Chaucer and Edmund Spenser. Cowley is a wonderful poet and an outstanding representative of the English baroque.