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:
- Book Leaf by Shaunna Harper
- Sonnet 81: Or I shall live your epitaph to make by William Shakespeare
- A Statesman’s Holiday by William Butler Yeats
- An Evening Walk by William Wordsworth
- An Encounter by Robert Frost
- Владимир Маяковский – Рассказ Хренова о Кузнецкстрое и о людях Кузнецка
- Yin and Yang by Muralidharan Mudaliar
- Вера Павлова – Поколенье, лишённое почерка и походки
- Шекспир – Что, если бы я право заслужил – Сонет 125
- The Dreadful Has Already Happened by Mark Strand
- Evening in a Sugar Orchard by Robert Frost
- The Duel poem – Alexander Pushkin
- A Coat by William Butler Yeats
- Olney Hymn 33: Seeking The Beloved by William Cowper
- Василий Жуковский – Деревенский сторож в полночь
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
- Stepping Westward by William Wordsworth
- Star-Gazers by William Wordsworth
- Stanzas by William Wordsworth
- Stanzas Written In My Pocket Copy Of Thomson’s “Castle Of Indolence” by William Wordsworth
- Spanish Guerillas by William Wordsworth
- Sonnet: On seeing Miss Helen Maria Williams weep at a tale of distress by William Wordsworth
- Sonnet: “It is not to be thought of” by William Wordsworth
- Song Of The Wandering Jew by William Wordsworth
- Song Of The Spinning Wheel by William Wordsworth
- Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle by William Wordsworth
- Simon Lee: The Old Huntsman by William Wordsworth
- Siege Of Vienna Raised By Jihn Sobieski by William Wordsworth
- She Was A Phantom Of Delight by William Wordsworth
- September, 1819 by William Wordsworth
- September 1815 by William Wordsworth
- September 1, 1802 by William Wordsworth
- Scorn Not The Sonnet by William Wordsworth
- Say, What Is Honour?–‘Tis The Finest Sense by William Wordsworth
- Ruth by William Wordsworth
- Rural Architecture by William Wordsworth
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.