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 Call Of The Far — English Translation by Rabindranath Tagore
- Drowning. Not Waving by P.J.Reed
- The Hawthorn Tree by Siegfried Sassoon
- Hot and Cold by Roald Dahl
- A Dialogue Between Thyrsis And Dorinda poem – Andrew Marvell poems
- A Rare Guest poem – Alfred Austin
- Cinderella by Sylvia Plath
- Sonnet CXIX by William Shakespeare
- Sleep by Russell Edson
- Morale by Sunil Sharma
- Come Sleep, O Sleep! The Certain Knot Of Peace by Sir Philip Sidney
- The Mother Of God by William Butler Yeats
- The Galley-Slave by Rudyard Kipling
- A Ballad of Footmen poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- What is Creativity Anyway and How Come the Human Mind is So Good at It?
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
- Robert Burns: The Braes O’ Killiecrankie:
- Robert Burns: The Battle Of Sherramuir:
- Robert Burns: Highland Harry Back Again:
- Robert Burns: I Gaed A Waefu’ Gate Yestreen:
- Robert Burns: Ca’ The Yowes To The Knowes:
- Robert Burns: Willie Brew’d A Peck O’ Maut:
- Robert Burns: Extemporaneous Effusion: On being appointed to an Excise division.
- Robert Burns: Extemporaneous Effusion: On being appointed to an Excise division.
- Robert Burns: Sonnet On Receiving A Favour: Addressed to Robert Graham, Esq. of Fintry.
- Robert Burns: Presentation Stanzas To Correspondents:
- Robert Burns: The Kirk Of Scotland’s Alarm:
- Robert Burns: Epigram On Francis Grose The Antiquary:
- Robert Burns: On The Late Captain Grose’s Peregrinations Thro’ Scotland: Collecting The Antiquities Of That Kingdom
- Robert Burns: My Eppie Adair:
- Robert Burns: Whistle O’er The Lave O’t:
- Robert Burns: The Laddie’s Dear Sel’:
- Robert Burns: Carle, An The King Come:
- Robert Burns: Tam Glen:
- Robert Burns: My Love, She’s But A Lassie Yet:
- Robert Burns: John Anderson, My Jo:
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.