A poem by Alexander Pushkin – Pouchkine, Pooshkin (1799-1837), in English translation
With Homer you conversed alone for days and nights,
Our waiting hours were passing slowly,
And shining you came down from the mysterious heights
And brought to us your tablets holy –
So? in the wilderness, beneath a tent, you found
Us, feasting mad in empty gaiety,
Singing our savage songs and galloping around
Some newly hand-created deity.
We grew confused, aloof from your good rays hid we.
Then, seized of wrath and desolation,
Have you, O prophet, cursed your mindless family And smashed your tablets in frustration?
No, you have cursed us not. From heights you disappear
Into the shade of little valleys;
You love the heavens’ crash, but also wish to hear
Bees humming over red azaleas.
Such is the honest bard. With passion he laments
At solemn fairs of Melpomena –
To smile upon the crowd’s plebeian merriments,
The liberties of coarse arena.
Now Rome is calling him, now majesties of Troy,
Now elder Ossian’s craggy gravels –
And in the meantime he will hear with childish joy
Of Czar Sultan’s heroic travels.
A few random poems:
- Sonnet 62: Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye by William Shakespeare
- Василий Жуковский – Дружба
- Selfish World, Selfish People by Shahbaz Khan
- Aubade by Philip Larkin
- Такахама Кёси – О, как ночь коротка
- In The Carolinas by Wallace Stevens
- One Lonely Afternoon by Russell Edson
- Михаил Ломоносов – Надпись на день рождения Ее Величества
- A Sunrise Song. by Sidney Lanier
- Less Than The Dust
- The Dragon and The Unicorn by Mary Etta Metcalf
- The Shadowy Waters: The Harp of Aengus by William Butler Yeats
- Михаил Кузмин – Вот после ржавых львов и рева
- Джон Донн – Ворожба над портретом
- Sonnet 16: But wherefore do not you a mightier way by William Shakespeare
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
- Warm are the Still and Lucky Miles by W H Auden
- Voltaire At Ferney by W H Auden
- Underneath an Abject Willow by W H Auden
- This Lunar Beauty by W H Auden
- They Wondered Why the Fruit had Been Forbidden by W H Auden
- The Waters by W H Auden
- The Wanderer by W H Auden
- The Two by W H Auden
- The Riddle by W H Auden
- The Quest by W H Auden
- The Quest XII (Vocation) by W H Auden
- The Novelist by W H Auden
- The Labyrinth by W H Auden
- The Hidden Law by W H Auden
- The Geography of the House by W H Auden
- The Dream by W H Auden
- The Common Life by W H Auden
- Thanksgiving for a Habitat by W H Auden
- Taller To-day by W H Auden
- Song Of The Master And Boatswain by W H Auden
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

Alexander Pushkin (1799-1937) was a Russian poet, playwright and prose writer, founder of the realistic trend in Russian literature, literary critic and theorist of literature, historian, publicist, journalist; one of the most important cultural figures in Russia in the first third of the 19th century.