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:
- Jerusalem Delivered – Book 01 – part 06 by Torquato Tasso
- “By Moscow Self-Devoted To A Blaze” by William Wordsworth
- Battle Salamis
- Kinu Goala’s Alley – English Translation by Rabindranath Tagore
- My prayers must meet a brazen heaven poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- Ольга Берггольц – Разведчик
- Robert Burns: Epistle To Dr. Blacklock: Ellisland, 21st Oct., 1789
- Tithonus poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Euclid by Vachel Lindsay
- The Strange Lady by William Cullen Bryant
- Countrywomen by Katherine Mansfield
- Responsibilities; Introduction by William Butler Yeats
- Address to Beelzebub by Robert Burns
- When I heard the Learn’d Astronomer. by Walt Whitman
- I know you will remember ME by Neelam Sinha
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
- The Defeat of Youth poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
- The Decameron poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
- The Alien poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
- Summer Stillness poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
- Stanzas poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
- Song of Poplars poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
- Social Amenities poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
- September poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
- Scenes Of The Mind poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
- Revelation poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
- Return From Business poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
- Private Property poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
- Points And Lines poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
- Poem poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
- Panic poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
- Out Of The Window poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
- On The Bus poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
- Minoan Porcelain poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
- Love Song poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
- L’Après-Midi D’un Faune poem – Aldous Huxley 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.