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:
- How To Paint A Water Lily by Ted Hughes
- Robert Burns: Man Was Made To Mourn: A Dirge:
- Михаил Лермонтов – Всевышний произнес свой приговор
- “Goldie Pinklesweet…” by Roald Dahl
- Weekend Glory by Maya Angelou
- In torque by Muralidharan Mudaliar
- Address to the Toothache by Robert Burns
- Olney Hymn 40: Peace After A Storm by William Cowper
- Medallion by Sylvia Plath
- Great Men Have Been Among Us by William Wordsworth
- On the Religious Memory of Mrs. Catherine Thomson, my Christian Friend, Deceased Dec. 16, 1646 poem – John Milton poems
- Нина Воронель – Мой дед был слепым
- Вера Звягинцева – Карусель
- Design poem – A. R. Ammons poems | Poetry Monster
- The Battle Of Salamis
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
- An Epistle To Robert Lloyd, Esq. by William Cowper
- An Epistle To Joseph Hill, Esq. by William Cowper
- An Epigram From Homer by William Cowper
- An Enigma by William Cowper
- An Attempt At The Manner Of Waller by William Cowper
- An Apology For Not Showing Her What I Had Wrote by William Cowper
- Addressed To Miss Macartney, Afterwards Mrs. Greville, On Reading The Prayer For Indifference by William Cowper
- Adam: A Sacred Drama. Act 5. by William Cowper
- Adam: A Sacred Drama. Act 4. by William Cowper
- Adam: A Sacred Drama. Act 3. by William Cowper
- Adam: A Sacred Drama. Act 2. by William Cowper
- Adam: A Sacred Drama. Act 1. by William Cowper
- A Tale. June 1793 by William Cowper
- A Tale, Founded On A Fact, Which Happened In January, 1779 by William Cowper
- A Song : The Sparkling Eye by William Cowper
- A Song : On The Green Margin by William Cowper
- A Riddle by William Cowper
- A Poetical Epistle To Lady Austen by William Cowper
- A Manual, More Ancient Than The Art Of Printing, And Not To Be Found In Any Catalogue by William Cowper
- A Figurative Description Of The Procedure Of Divine Love by William Cowper
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.