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:
- Иида Дакоцу – С землею смешались
- flight_of_stairs.html
- To The Honble Commodore Hood on His Pardoning a Deserter by Phillis Wheatley
- How To Get On In Society poem – John Betjeman poems | Poems and Poetry
- John Milton As Author of Pornographic Verse: An Extempore Upon a Faggot
- Family Reunion by Sylvia Plath
- The Husband’s Black Hands by Mallika Sengupta
- Владимир Высоцкий – Утренняя гимнастика
- The islands of happiness
- A Code of Morals by Rudyard Kipling
- States! by Walt Whitman
- Remain! by Walter Savage Landor
- Tithonus
- The Great Carbuncle by Sylvia Plath
- For My People by Margaret Walker
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
- Hope A-Left Behind by William Barnes
- Heedless O’ My Love by William Barnes
- Haven Woones Fortune A-Twold by William Barnes
- The Happy Days When I Wer Young by William Barnes
- Hallowed Pleäces by William Barnes
- Gwain To Feäir by William Barnes
- Gwaïn To Brookwell by William Barnes
- Gwaïn Down The Steps Vor Water by William Barnes
- Guy Faux’s Night by William Barnes
- Grief An’ Gladness by William Barnes
- Grammer’s Shoes by William Barnes
- Grammer A-Crippled by William Barnes
- Good Meäster Collins by William Barnes
- Gammony Gaÿ by William Barnes
- A Father Out, An’ Mother Hwome by William Barnes
- Farmer’s Son by William Barnes
- Fanny’s Be’th-Day by William Barnes
- False Friends-Like by William Barnes
- Evenèn Twilight by William Barnes
- Evenèn Light 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.