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:
- God lay dead in heaven by Stephen Crane
- Николай Языков – Романс (Угрюм стоит дремучий лес)
- Robert Burns: The Minstrel At Lincluden:
- Olney Hymn 31: On The Death Of A Minister by William Cowper
- Peace Universal Good
- The most noble bird, wife by Mukeshkumar Raval
- To Double Lock by Pierre Reverdy
- Алексей Толстой – Тебя так любят все
- A Misty Morning by Mary Etta Mietcalf
- The Taxi poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Here, Sailor. by Walt Whitman
- Photograph of My Father in His Twenty-Second Year by Raymond Carver
- ah poor moon by Raj Arumugam
- Владимир Маяковский – Вот что для голодающих прислали из-за границы, ассоциации и частные лица (Главполитпросвет №363)
- Вера Полозкова – И тут он приваливается к оградке
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
- Ode to Beer, an Irish Song
- Whose beer is that? A Poem about Beer.
- An Ode to Beer
- To – – – – –
- Yes, ’tis the pulse of life! my fears were vain!
- Ancient pornography before pornography. 10 Most Shocking Sex Artifacts From The Ancient World. Amazing works of erotic art of the ancient world.
- Sonnet to Italy by Felicia Dorothea Hemans
- Ode to Superstition
- A Practical Young Woman poem – Irwin Russell “,
- An Epistle to A Friend
- The Pleasures of Memory
- Oh could my Mind
- Italy
- English Poetry. Madison Julius Cawein. Indifference. Мэдисон Джулиус Кавейн.
- English Poetry. Madison Julius Cawein. In the Forest. Мэдисон Джулиус Кавейн.
- English Poetry. Madison Julius Cawein. In June. Мэдисон Джулиус Кавейн.
- English Poetry. Madison Julius Cawein. Hymn to Spiritual Desire. Мэдисон Джулиус Кавейн.
- English Poetry. Madison Julius Cawein. Home. Мэдисон Джулиус Кавейн.
- English Poetry. William Barnes. Third Collection. The Broken Heart. Уильям Барнс.
- English Poetry. Madison Julius Cawein. He Who Loves. Мэдисон Джулиус Кавейн.
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.