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:
- Ode–Shell The Old City! Shell! by William Gilmore Simms
- Song. Mediocrity in love rejected. by Thomas Carew
- Hyperion, A Vision: Attempted Reconstruction Of The Poem poem – John Keats poems
- Helen Of Troy by Sara Teasdale
- Dedication To M… by Rainer Maria Rilke
- Robert Burns: Reply To An Announcement By J. Rankine: On His Writing To The Poet, That A Girl In That Part Of The Country Was With A Child To Him.
- Notice by Steve Kowit
- Robert Burns: On The Late Captain Grose’s Peregrinations Thro’ Scotland: Collecting The Antiquities Of That Kingdom
- Keeping Things Whole by Mark Strand
- Pity For Poor Africans by William Cowper
- Circulation by Raymond Carver
- Аля Кудряшева – Про ангелов
- I Heard an Angel by William Blake
- In The Country – English Translation by Rabindranath Tagore
- Михаил Лермонтов – Вечер после дождя
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
- Kodja Mustafa Pasha poem – Yahya Kemal Beyatli poems | Poetry Monster
- Itri poem – Yahya Kemal Beyatli poems | Poetry Monster
- He comes poem – Yehudah ha-Levi poems | Poetry Monster
- From the morrow poem – Yamabe no Akahito poems | Poetry Monster
- From the bay at Tago poem – Yamabe no Akahito poems | Poetry Monster
- Feeling Lazy poem – Yang Wan-Li poems | Poetry Monster
- A love song poem – Yehudah ha-Levi poems | Poetry Monster
- Don’t Light The Candles by Yahia Al-Samawy
- The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot
- Émigrés by Anna Barkova
- A Sure Sign by Georgi Ladonshchikov
- Civil War Songs
- I have outlived my own desires by Alexander Pushkin (Pouchkine)
- In Defense of Santa Claus
- Winter Apples by Tatiana Gusarova, translated by Fledermaus
- Такахама Кёси – О, как ночь коротка
- Такахама Кёси – Неспешно ступает
- Такахама Кёси – Мох зеленый примят
- Такахама Кёси – Мимо порта родного
- Такахама Кёси – Мацумуси пищит
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.