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:
- Альфред Теннисон – В долине
- Ольга Берггольц – Озерный край
- Under A Portrait Of Jukowsky poem – Alexander Pushkin
- Birth Story by Rabindranath Tagore
- The lords above by Michael Nikoletseas
- Eclogue:–The Veäiries by William Barnes
- The Flight by Sara Teasdale
- Song: Eternity of Love Protested by Thomas Carew
- Юлия Друнина – Бережем тех, кого любим
- The Scarecrow by Ross D Tyler
- The Moon’s the North Wind’s Cooky by Vachel Lindsay
- The Crescent Moon poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Владимир Высоцкий – Заповедник
- A Child by William Ernest Henley
- Not Fear by Rafael Guillen
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 Haymakers’ Song poem – Alfred Austin
- Love’s Blindness poem – Alfred Austin
- At Her Grave poem – Alfred Austin
- At Delphi poem – Alfred Austin
- As Dies The Year poem – Alfred Austin
- Any Poet At Any Time poem – Alfred Austin
- An Experiment In Translation poem – Alfred Austin
- An Autumn Picture poem – Alfred Austin
- An Autumn Homily poem – Alfred Austin
- An Autumn-Blooming Rose poem – Alfred Austin
- An April Love poem – Alfred Austin
- An April Fool poem – Alfred Austin
- An Answer poem – Alfred Austin
- “Although no stupid scoffer, I” poem – Alfred Austin
- All Hail To The Czar! poem – Alfred Austin
- Alfred’s Song poem – Alfred Austin
- A Te Deum poem – Alfred Austin
- A Tale Of True Love poem – Alfred Austin
- A Spring Carol poem – Alfred Austin
- A Souless Singer 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.