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:
- Before Sleep poem – Ezra Pound poems
- Sculptor by Sylvia Plath
- There Pass the Careless People poem – A. E. Housman
- Hark! Hark! The Lark by William Shakespeare
- The Deep-Sea Cables by Rudyard Kipling
- A Little Song poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Passing Of The Primroses poem – Alfred Austin
- After Apple-Picking by Robert Frost
- Otho The Great – Act IV poem – John Keats poems
- Ольга Высотская – Звёздочки
- Inscriptions In The Ground Of Coleorton, The Seat Of Sir George Beaumont, Bart., Leicestershire by William Wordsworth
- Two Quits And Drum And Elegy Drinkers
- Under Cover of Night by Robert Desnos
- Николай Языков – Пушкину (О ты, чья дружба мне дороже)
- Sonnet 29: When in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes 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
- Twenty-Four Hokku On A Modern Theme poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Travelling Bear poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Towns in Colour poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- To-Morrow To Fresh Woods And Pastures New poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- To A Husband poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Travelling Bear poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Swans poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Starling poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Pond poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Poet poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Letter poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Great Adventure Of Max Breuck poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Garden By Moonlight poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Dinner-Party poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Cremona Violin poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Country House poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- The Artist poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Prayer For Lightning poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Prayer For A Profusion Of Sunflowers poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Orange Of Midsummer 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.