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:
- Cantico del Sole poem – Ezra Pound poems
- Seal Lullaby by Rudyard Kipling
- ‘They’ by Siegfried Sassoon
- Boat Song—Hey, Ca’ Thro’ by Robert Burns
- The Emigrant Mother by William Wordsworth
- State of Siege by Mahmoud Darwish
- The Hemp by Stephen Vincent Benet
- Song of the Redwood-Tree. by Walt Whitman
- At The Wedding March poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- Новелла Матвеева – Мне кажется
- On The Grasshopper And Cricket poem – John Keats poems
- Flute-Priest Song For Rain poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Владимир Маяковский – Про это
- Владимир Гиппиус – Друг, скажу тебе несказанное
- 1914 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
- The Disquieting Muses by Sylvia Plath
- The Dispossessed by Sylvia Plath
- The Detective by Sylvia Plath
- The Death Of Myth-Making by Sylvia Plath
- The Dead by Sylvia Plath
- The Couriers by Sylvia Plath
- The Courage Of Shutting-Up by Sylvia Plath
- The Companionable Ills by Sylvia Plath
- The Colossus by Sylvia Plath
- The Burnt-Out Spa by Sylvia Plath
- The Bull Of Bendylaw by Sylvia Plath
- The Beggars by Sylvia Plath
- The Beekeeper’s Daughter by Sylvia Plath
- The Bee Meeting by Sylvia Plath
- The Beast by Sylvia Plath
- The Babysitters by Sylvia Plath
- The Arrival Of The Bee Box by Sylvia Plath
- The Applicant by Sylvia Plath
- Temper Of Time by Sylvia Plath
- Tale Of A Tub by Sylvia Plath
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.