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:
- Orlando Furioso Canto 3 by Ludovico Ariosto
- Inscription at Friars’ Carse Hermitage by Robert Burns
- Autumn by William Morris
- Ольга Берггольц – Дорога на фронт
- Robert Burns: Bonie Peg-a-Ramsay:
- Mother Nature by Walter William Safar
- complete text of the discovery of Kama Sutra by Raj Arumugam
- Let The Weary World Go Round poem – Alfred Austin
- Ontological by Maggie Anderson
- The Alfresco Moment by Russell Edson
- Robert Burns: Epistle To Major Logan:
- Speaking the Language of Deer by Martin Willitts Jr.
- Songs From “Prince Lucifer” I – Grave-Digger’s Song poem – Alfred Austin
- My Mother On An Evening In Late Summer by Mark Strand
- The Unchanging by Sara Teasdale
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
- Youth And Age by William Butler Yeats
- Young Man’s Song by William Butler Yeats
- Words by William Butler Yeats
- Wisdom by William Butler Yeats
- Why Should Not Old Men Be Mad? by William Butler Yeats
- Who Goes With Fergus? by William Butler Yeats
- When You Are Old by William Butler Yeats
- When Helen Lived by William Butler Yeats
- What Was Lost by William Butler Yeats
- What Then? by William Butler Yeats
- Veronica’s Napkin by William Butler Yeats
- Vacillation by William Butler Yeats
- Upon A House Shaken By The Land Agitation by William Butler Yeats
- Upon A Dying Lady by William Butler Yeats
- Under The Round Tower by William Butler Yeats
- Under Saturn by William Butler Yeats
- Two Years Later by William Butler Yeats
- Two Songs Of A Fool by William Butler Yeats
- Two Songs From A Play by William Butler Yeats
- Towards Break Of Day by William Butler Yeats
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.