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:
- Валерий Брюсов – Е.Т. (Кто глаза ее оправил)
- Sunk Lyonesse by Walter de la Mare
- Robert Burns: The Lovely Lass O’ Inverness:
- SOFT MUSIC by Robert Herrick
- Владимир Высоцкий – Долго же шёл ты, в конверте листок
- The Germans On The Heighs Of Hochheim by William Wordsworth
- The Waggon A-Stooded by William Barnes
- A Human Being Needs Strong Tea
- Holding On by Satish Verma
- Как просто было в юности
- The Rose Tree by William Butler Yeats
- Harrow-on-the-Hill poem – John Betjeman poems | Poems and Poetry
- Rock ‘N’ Roll Band by Shel Silverstein
- Exiles by Marilyn Hacker
- Вера Павлова – Зеркало по природе правдиво
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
- Last night my soul cried O exalted sphere of Heaven by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- Laila and the Khalifa by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- Intrigued with Evening by Jelaluddin Rumi
- In the Waters of Purity by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- In the End by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- In The Arc Of Your Mallet by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- If A Tree Could Wander by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- I Swear by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- I See so Deeply Within Myself by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- I Have a Fire for You in my Mouth by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- I have fallen into unconsciousness by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- I have fallen into unconsciousness by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- I have been tricked by flying too close by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- I have been tricked by flying too close by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- I Have a Fire for You in my Mouth by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- I closed my eyes to creation by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- I closed my eyes to creation by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- I am a sculptor, a molder of form by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- I Am Part Of The Load by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
- I Am Part Of The Load by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
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.