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:
- Epistle to John Rankine by Robert Burns
- Elegy poem – by Ambrose Bierce poems | Poems and Poetry
- Called Into Play poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster
- I Do Not Love Thee For That Fair by Thomas Carew
- A Question by Robert Frost
- With A Copy Of Shakespeares Sonnets On Leaving College
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- The Solitary by Sara Teasdale
- Curse of Righteousness by Vaishnavi Prakash
- Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind by Stephen Crane
- Rain falling by Vladimir Marku
- The Captive by Rudyard Kipling
- Вергилий – Лидия
- A Blockhead poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Sunflowers by Martin Willitts Jr.
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
- Lynching
- Kimchi
- The Kingfisher poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Cooling Tower poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
- Stacking The Straw poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
- Stacking The Straw poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
- Gradual Clearing poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
- Brought From Beyond poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
- A Hairline Fracture poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
- A Cure At Porlock poem – Amy Clampitt poems | Poems and Poetry
- A Poem about Sauerkraut
- Cabbage
- Women’s Song Of The Corn poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Women’s Harvest Song poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Women’s Song Of The Corn poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Women’s Harvest Song poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- White Currants poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Vespers poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Two Lacquer Prints poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Twenty-Four Hokku On A Modern Theme poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
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.