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:
- Backtracking by Satish Verma
- Late Moon by Philip Levine
- Выхожу один я на дорогу – Лермонтов: Стихотворение, читать текст стиха Михаила Лермонтова – Poetry Monster
- Scots, Wha Hae Wi’ Wallace Bled by Robert Burns
- Epistle to Colonel de Peyster by Robert Burns
- Алексей Жемчужников – Заметки о некоторой публицистике
- Song For The Severed Head In `The King Of The Great Clock Tower’ by William Butler Yeats
- Plague Victims Catapulted Over Walls Into Besieged City by Thomas Lux
- Джон Мильтон – По случаю своего двадцатитрехлетия
- Robert Burns: O Let Me In Thes Ae Night:
- Prairie States, The. by Walt Whitman
- Robert Burns: She Says She Loes Me Best Of A’:
- Panic poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
- Михаил Кузмин – Зачем в тот вечер роковой
- Lover’s Gifts XVI: She Dwelt Here by the Pool by Rabindranath Tagore
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
- Борис Заходер – Про пана Трулялинского
- Валерий Брюсов – Е.Т. (Кто глаза ее оправил)
- Валерий Брюсов – Дворец любви
- Валерий Брюсов – Две вазы
- Валерий Брюсов – Две испанских песенки
- Валерий Брюсов – Двадцать лет назад ты умерла
- Валерий Брюсов – Два мака
- Валерий Брюсов – Дрожащие листья на бледные щеки
- Валерий Брюсов – Дозор
- Валерий Брюсов – Дождь перед ночью
- Валерий Брюсов – Дождь
- Валерий Брюсов – Голос города (Ру-ру, ру-ру, трах, рк-ру-ру)
- Валерий Брюсов – Годы в былом
- Валерий Брюсов – Гнутся высокие лотосы
- Валерий Брюсов – Глупое сердце, о чем же печалиться
- Валерий Брюсов – Гимн Нилу
- Валерий Брюсов – Гимн Атону
- Валерий Брюсов – Гимн Афродите
- Валерий Брюсов – Гесперидовы сады
- Валерий Брюсов – Германия (отрывки)
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.