A poem by Alec Derwent-Hope (1907–2000)
by Alec Derwent Hope
A Nation of trees, drab green and desolate grey
In the field uniform of modern wars,
Darkens her hills, those endless, outstretched paws
Of Sphinx demolished or stone lion worn away.
They call her a young country, but they lie:
She is the last of lands, the emptiest,
A woman beyond her change of life, a breast
Still tender but within the womb is dry.
Without songs, architecture, history:
The emotions and superstitions of younger lands,
Her rivers of water drown among inland sands,
The river of her immense stupidity
Floods her monotonous tribes from Cairns to Perth.
In them at last the ultimate men arrive
Whose boast is not: “we live” but “we survive”,
A type who will inhabit the dying earth.
And her five cities, like five teeming sores,
Each drains her: a vast parasite robber-state
Where second hand Europeans pullulate
Timidly on the edge of alien shores.
Yet there are some like me turn gladly home
From the lush jungle of modern thought, to find
The Arabian desert of the human mind,
Hoping, if still from the deserts the prophets come,
Such savage and scarlet as no green hills dare
Springs in that waste, some spirit which escapes
The learned doubt, the chatter of cultured apes
Which is called civilization over there.
A few random poems:
- Reverie Ofmahomed Akram At The Tamarind Tank
- Chungnan by Wang Wei
- Domestic Peace by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- Candle Lord
- Death Sir Henry Wootton
- Спиридон Дрожжин – Свети мне, солнышко
- Come Into the Garde, Maud poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- Sonnet 121: Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed by William Shakespeare
- Auld Maitland poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Олег Бундур – Женские хитрости
- Crazy Jane Reproved by William Butler Yeats
- It is a Show by Rixa White
- Joy of giving by Vinaya Kumar Hanumanthappa
- Snow & Ice by Quincy Troupe
- An Imperial Elegy by Wilfred Owen
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
- Teacher
- Sleep
- Ode To A Harmonica
- Intruder
- Do You Know What Its Like
- Hellcat
- Yours & Mine poem – Alice Fulton
- Woman In Front Of Poster Of Herself poem – Alice Notley
- Velocity Of Money poem – Allen Ginsberg
- The White Cliffs
- The Next Chance
- The Melancholy of Birth
- The islands of happiness
- The Internet Romance
- The End of the World
- The Terms In Which I Think Of Reality poem – Allen Ginsberg
- Tears
- Teachers Day special
- Succeeding Sentiments.
- Stalker poem – Alice Notley
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.