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:
- Ecologue I by Virgil
- In Abeyance by Satish Verma
- I Travelled among Unknown Men by William Wordsworth
- Breather by Vishü Rita Krocha
- The Travail Of Passion by William Butler Yeats
- Io v’amo sol perche (I Love You Simply Because) by Torquato Tasso
- When I read the Book. by Walt Whitman
- Thought. by Walt Whitman
- Gods. by Walt Whitman
- My Heart’s In The Highlands by Robert Burns
- Владимир Британишский – Отечественные записки 1840-х годов
- Ольга Седакова – Успение
- Love Sonnet XXVIII poem – Zora Bernice May Cross poems
- Still, though the One I Sing. by Walt Whitman
- America by Tony Hoagland
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
- Leto and Niobe by Sappho
- It’s no use by Sappho
- It was you, Atthis, who said by Sappho
- It is the Muses by Sappho
- It is the Muses by Sappho
- I took my lyre and said by Sappho
- I have no complaint by Sappho
- Hymn To Aphrodite by Sappho
- Hesperus The Bringer by Sappho
- He is more than a hero by Sappho
- He is more than a hero by Sappho
- Grace by Sappho
- Like the gods. . . by Sappho
- To A Girl In A Garden by Sappho
- Evening by Sappho
- Drapple-thorned Aphrodite, by Sappho
- Dica by Sappho
- Cyprian, in my dream by Sappho
- Claïs by Sappho
- Blame Aphrodite by Sappho
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.