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:
- Федор Сологуб – В моей лампаде ясный свет
- The Light By The Barn by William Stafford
- The Lady’s First Song by William Butler Yeats
- Алексей Толстой – Ты знаешь, я люблю
- Music by Stephen Vincent Benet
- My Friend by Rabindranath Tagore
- Владимир Высоцкий – Красное, зелёное, жёлтое, лиловое
- STEPPING OUT by Satish Verma
- Ольга Берггольц – Здравствуй
- Алексей Толстой – Пустой дом
- Lilian poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Cuchulain Comforted by William Butler Yeats
- Rendezvous
- Dawn God039s Sabbath
- Lovers by Siegfried Sassoon
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
- Альфред Теннисон – Сёстры
- Альфред Теннисон – Странствия Мальдуна
- Альфред Теннисон – Смерть Старого Года
- Альфред Теннисон – Рыцарь Галаад
- Альфред Теннисон – Прощание
- Альфред Теннисон – Пересекая Черту
- Альфред Теннисон – Нищая и король
- Альфред Теннисон – Morte d’Arthur
- Альфред Теннисон – Лорд Борлей
- Альфред Теннисон – Леди Клара Вер-де-Вер
- Альфред Теннисон – Королева мая
- Альфред Теннисон – Годива
- Альфред де Мюссе – Вспомни обо мне
- Альфред де Мюссе – Все мною предано забвенью
- Альфред де Мюссе – Слова отчаянья прекрасней всех других
- Альфред де Мюссе – Прости
- Альфред де Мюссе – Песнь барберины
- Альфред де Мюссе – Печаль
- Альфред де Мюссе – Ночи
- Альфред де Мюссе – Не забывай! Когда заря рассвета
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.