A poem by Alec Derwent-Hope (1907–2000)
by Alec Derwent Hope
For every bird there is this last migration;
Once more the cooling year kindles her heart;
With a warm passage to the summer station
Love pricks the course in lights across the chart.
Year after year a speck on the map, divided
By a whole hemisphere, summons her to come;
Season after season, sure and safely guided,
Going away she is also coming home.
And being home, memory becomes a passion
With which she feeds her brood and straws her nest,
Aware of ghosts that haunt the heart’s possession
And exiled love mourning within the breast.
The sands are green with a mirage of valleys;
The palm tree casts a shadow not its own;
Down the long architrave of temple or palace
Blows a cool air from moorland scarps of stone.
And day by day the whisper of love grows stronger;
That delicate voice, more urgent with despair,
Custom and fear constraining her no longer,
Drives her at last on the waste leagues of air.
A vanishing speck in those inane dominions,
Single and frail, uncertain of her place,
Alone in the bright host of her companions,
Lost in the blue unfriendliness of space.
She feels it close now, the appointed season;
The invisible thread is broken as she flies;
Suddenly, without warning, without reason,
The guiding spark of instinct winks and dies.
Try as she will, the trackless world delivers
No way, the wilderness of light no sign;
Immense,complex contours of hills and rivers
Mock her small wisdom with their vast design.
The darkness rises from the eastern valleys,
And the winds buffet her with their hungry breath,
And the great earth, with neither grief nor malice,
Receives the tiny burden of her death.
A few random poems:
- The Cat And The Moon by William Butler Yeats
- Enigma of A Phoenix by Neelam Dadhwal
- Two Lovers And A Beachcomber By The Real Sea by Sylvia Plath
- On Catullus by Walter Savage Landor
- A Roxbury Garden poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Workin’ It Out by Shel Silverstein
- A Tribute to Henry M. Stanley by William Topaz McGonagall
- Lucy by William Wordsworth
- Rainbow Hues by Suchi Gaur
- Little Talk
- Виктор Шамонин-Версенев – Волк-дурень
- Of Love and All by Raja Mannar
- A character of it’s own by Sylvan Lightbourne
- Follower by Seamus Heaney
- By Garpal Stream by Stanley Wilkin
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
- He, who was born poem – Aleksandr Blok poems | Poetry Monster
- Halls grew darker poem – Aleksandr Blok poems | Poetry Monster
- Gamajun, the Prophetic Bird poem – Aleksandr Blok poems | Poetry Monster
- Don’t fear death poem – Aleksandr Blok poems | Poetry Monster
- A Girl Sang a Song poem – Aleksandr Blok poems | Poetry Monster
- A Girl Was Singing In A Church Choir poem – Aleksandr Blok poems | Poetry Monster
- The Wizard Way poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- The Twins poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- The Titanic poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- The Tent poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- The Rose and the Cross poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- The Quest poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- The Priestess of Panormita poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- The Pentagram poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- The Neophyte poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- The Mantra-Yoga poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- The Interpreter poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- The Hermit poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- The Hawk and the Babe poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- The Garden of Janus poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
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
Alec Derwent-Hope (1907–2000) was an Australian poet and essayist known for his satirical slant. He was also a critic, teacher and academic.