A poem by Alec Derwent-Hope (1907–2000)
by Alec Derwent Hope
For every bird there is this last migration;
Once more the cooling year kindles her heart;
With a warm passage to the summer station
Love pricks the course in lights across the chart.
Year after year a speck on the map, divided
By a whole hemisphere, summons her to come;
Season after season, sure and safely guided,
Going away she is also coming home.
And being home, memory becomes a passion
With which she feeds her brood and straws her nest,
Aware of ghosts that haunt the heart’s possession
And exiled love mourning within the breast.
The sands are green with a mirage of valleys;
The palm tree casts a shadow not its own;
Down the long architrave of temple or palace
Blows a cool air from moorland scarps of stone.
And day by day the whisper of love grows stronger;
That delicate voice, more urgent with despair,
Custom and fear constraining her no longer,
Drives her at last on the waste leagues of air.
A vanishing speck in those inane dominions,
Single and frail, uncertain of her place,
Alone in the bright host of her companions,
Lost in the blue unfriendliness of space.
She feels it close now, the appointed season;
The invisible thread is broken as she flies;
Suddenly, without warning, without reason,
The guiding spark of instinct winks and dies.
Try as she will, the trackless world delivers
No way, the wilderness of light no sign;
Immense,complex contours of hills and rivers
Mock her small wisdom with their vast design.
The darkness rises from the eastern valleys,
And the winds buffet her with their hungry breath,
And the great earth, with neither grief nor malice,
Receives the tiny burden of her death.

A few random poems:
- Картошка
- Autumn Leaves by Thomas J Camp
- Виктор Гончаров – Скоро, скоро я домой поеду
- The Symptoms of Love by William Cowper
- Hughley Steeple poem – A. E. Housman
- The Double Vision Of Michael Robartes by William Butler Yeats
- Николай Языков – Романс (Что делал с Евою Адам)
- Владимир Высоцкий – В этом доме большом раньше пьянка была
- Sonnet CVI by William Shakespeare
- A Paraphrase on an Ode in Horace’s Third Book, beginning thus:— “Inclusam Danaen turris ahenea.” by Abraham Cowley
- An Appearance by Sylvia Plath
- Sonnet IX. Keen, Fitful Gusts Are poem – John Keats poems
- Владимир Маяковский – У шахтера нет чая, нет табаку, нет сахару… (РОСТА №604)
- Олег Бундур – Я рисую картину
- Two Campers In Cloud Country by Sylvia Plath
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
- In Praise Of England poem – Alfred Austin
- Impromptu: To Frances Garnet Wolseley poem – Alfred Austin
- If I To You But Sorry Bring poem – Alfred Austin
- I Chide Not At The Seasons poem – Alfred Austin
- Hymn To Death poem – Alfred Austin
- Grandmother’s Teaching poem – Alfred Austin
- Gleaners Of Fame poem – Alfred Austin
- Love’s Wisdom poem – Alfred Austin
- Love’s Fitfulness poem – Alfred Austin
- Love Of Life poem – Alfred Austin
- Love Of Life poem – Alfred Austin
- Lost poem – Alfred Austin
- Lines Written On Visiting The Chateaux On The Loire poem – Alfred Austin
- Let The Weary World Go Round poem – Alfred Austin
- Leszko The Bastard poem – Alfred Austin
- Is Life Worth Living? poem – Alfred Austin
- Inflexible As Fate poem – Alfred Austin
- In The Month When Sings The Cuckoo poem – Alfred Austin
- In The Forum poem – Alfred Austin
- In Sutton Woods poem – Alfred Austin
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.