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:
- Darling Daughter of Babylon by Vachel Lindsay
- Николай Карамзин – Послание к Александру Алексеевичу Плещееву
- Алексей Толстой – Рондо
- brownie.html
- Robert Burns: To Dr. Maxwell: On Miss Jessy Staig’s recovery.
- Владислав Ходасевич – Обо всем в одних стихах не скажешь
- Innocence
- Give Me Back My Rags #12 by Vasko Popa
- A Last Confession by William Butler Yeats
- Acts Of Love
- Robert Burns: Complimentary Versicles To Jessie Lewars: Jessie’s illness
- Иннокентий Анненский – Лаодамия (лирическая трагедия в 4 действиях с музыкальными антрактами)
- Verses On A Young Lady (playing harpsichord, and singing) by Tobias Smollett
- Where Be Ye Going, You Devon Maid? poem – John Keats poems
- The Results Of Thought by William Butler Yeats
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
- Number 1 by Raj Arumugam
- nonsense verse by Raj Arumugam
- no ambition for eternity by Raj Arumugam
- Nature’s song for the children by Raj Arumugam
- Nasrudin’s donkey eats poetry by Raj Arumugam
- Mummy, mummy who invented school? by Raj Arumugam
- Mum and children in the street by Raj Arumugam
- Mr Anonymous, a life by Raj Arumugam
- Moon poems by Raj Arumugam
- Moon, I hear you are moving away by Raj Arumugam
- minding love by Raj Arumugam
- message from the sun by Raj Arumugam
- may each find the peace within by Raj Arumugam
- M for Man, Money and Moon by Raj Arumugam
- lovers in nature by Raj Arumugam
- love growing by Raj Arumugam
- love by Raj Arumugam
- little teddy bear lost by Raj Arumugam
- little Sara’s sleep by Raj Arumugam
- life on the escalator by Raj Arumugam
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.