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:
- Lover’s Gifts LVI: The Evening Was Lonely by Rabindranath Tagore
- I Know A Man by Yehuda Amichai
- The Bear, The Fire, And The Snow by Shel Silverstein
- Far Within Us #7 by Vasko Popa
- The Door Of Humility poem – Alfred Austin
- New Year’s Dawn – Broadway by Sara Teasdale
- Омар Хайям – Египет, Рим, Китай держи ты под пятой
- Palm Trees By The Sea
- Ode to Fanny poem – John Keats poems
- Олег Сердобольский – Корова и божья коровка
- Олег Бундур – Ранним утром
- Argus poem – Alexander Pope poems | Poetry Monster
- Ho, everyone that thirsteth poem – A. E. Housman
- The Rhyme of the Three Captains by Rudyard Kipling
- Владимир Степанов – Как живете? Что жуете?
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 Milk-Maid O’ The Farm by William Barnes
- The Mead A-Mow’d by William Barnes
- The Meäd In June by William Barnes
- The May-Tree by William Barnes
- The Maid Vor My Bride by William Barnes
- The Maid O’ Newton by William Barnes
- The Lovely Maïd Ov Elwell Meäd by William Barnes
- The Love Child by William Barnes
- The Little Worold by William Barnes
- The Linden On The Lawn by William Barnes
- The Lilac by William Barnes
- The Lew O’ The Rick by William Barnes
- The Leäne by William Barnes
- The Leädy’s Tower by William Barnes
- The Lark by William Barnes
- The Ivy by William Barnes
- The Hwomestead A-Vell Into Hand by William Barnes
- The Humstrum by William Barnes
- The Homestead by William Barnes
- The Hollow Woak by William Barnes
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.