A. D. Hope Poems
A collection of select A. D. Hope famous poems that were written by A. D. Hope or written about the poet by other famous poets. PoetrySoup is a comprehensive educational resource of the greatest poems and poets on history.
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by
Hope, Alec Derwent (A D)
...A Nation of trees, drab green and desolate grey
In the field uniform of modern wars,
Darkens her hills, those endless, outstretched paws
Of Sphinx demolished or stone lion worn away.
They call her a young country, but they lie:
She is the last of lands, the emptiest,
A woman beyond her change of life, a breast
Still tender but within the womb i...Read more of this...
by
Hope, Alec Derwent (A D)
...He that is filthy let him be filthy still.
Rev. 22.11
Like John on Patmos, brooding on the Four
Last Things, I meditate the ruin of friends
Whose loss, Lord, brings this grand new curse to mind
Now send me foes worth cursing, or send more
- Since means should be proportionate to ends -
For mine are few and of the piddling kind:
Drivel...Read more of this...
by
Hope, Alec Derwent (A D)
...I sing of the decline of Henry Clay
Who loved a white girl of uncommon size.
Although a small man in a little way,
He had in him some seed of enterprise.
Each day he caught the seven-thirty train
To work, watered his garden after tea,
Took an umbrella if it looked like rain A
nd was remarkably like you or me.
He had his hair cut once ...Read more of this...
by
Hope, Alec Derwent (A D)
...Crossing the frontier they were stopped in time,
Told, quite politely, they would have to wait:
Passports in order, nothing to declare
And surely holding hands was not a crime
Until they saw how, ranged across the gate,
All their most formidable friends were there.
Wearing his conscience like a crucifix,
Her father, rampant, nursed the Family S...Read more of this...
by
Hope, Alec Derwent (A D)
...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.<...Read more of this...
by
Hope, Alec Derwent (A D)
...Make no mistake; there will be no forgiveness;
No voice can harm you and no hand will save;
Fenced by the magic of deliberate darkness
You walk on the sharp edges of the wave;
Trouble with soul again the putrefaction
Where Lazarus three days rotten lies content.
Your human tears will be the seed of faction
Murder the sequel to your sacrament.Read more of this...
by
Hope, Alec Derwent (A D)
...A piece of bone, found at Trondhjem in 1901, with the following runic inscription (about A.D. 1050) cut on it: I loved her as a maiden; I will not trouble Erlend's detestable wife; better she should be a widow.
Words scored upon a bone,
Scratched in despair or rage --
Nine hundred years have gone;
Now, in another age,
They burn with passi...Read more of this...
by
Hope, Alec Derwent (A D)
...Reading the menu at the morning service:
- Iced Venusberg perhaps, or buttered bum -
Orders the usual sex-ersatz, and, nervous,
Glances around - Will she or won't she come?
The congregation dissected into pews
Gulping their strip teas in the luminous cavern
Agape's sacamental berry stews;
The nickel-plated light and clatter of heaven
Receive him,...Read more of this...
by
Hope, Alec Derwent (A D)
...To be put on the train and kissed and given my ticket,
Then the station slid backward, the shops and the neon lighting,
Reeling off in a drunken blur, with a whole pound note in my pocket
And the holiday packed with Perhaps. It used to be very exciting.
The present and past were enough. I did not mind having my back
To the engine. I s...Read more of this...
by
Hope, Alec Derwent (A D)
...Year after year the princess lies asleep
Until the hundred years foretold are done,
Easily drawing her enchanted breath.
Caught on the monstrous thorns around the keep,
Bones of the youths who sought her, one by one
Rot loose and rattle to the ground beneath.
But when the Destined Lover at last shall come,
For whom alone Fortune reserves the...Read more of this...
by
Hope, Alec Derwent (A D)
...This was the gods' god,
The leashed divinity,
Divine divining rod
And Me within the me.
By mindlight tower and tree
Its shadow on the ground
Throw, and in darkness she
Whose weapon is her wound
Fends off the knife, the sword,
The Tiger and the Snake;
It stalks the virgin's bed
And bites her wide awake.
Her Bab-el-Mandeb waits
Her Re...Read more of this...
by
Hope, Alec Derwent (A D)
...When, darkly brooding on this Modern Age,
The journalist with his marketable woes
Fills up once more the inevitable page
Of fatuous, flatulent, Sunday-paper prose;
Whenever the green aesthete starts to whoop
With horror at the house not made with hands
And when from vacuum cleaners and tinned soup
Another pure theosophist demands
Rebirth in other...Read more of this...
by
Hope, Alec Derwent (A D)
...He that is filthy let him be filthy still.
Rev. 22.11
Like John on Patmos, brooding on the Four
Last Things, I meditate the ruin of friends
Whose loss, Lord, brings this grand new curse to mind
Now send me foes worth cursing, or send more
- Since means should be proportionate to ends -
For mine are few and of the piddling kind:
Drivel...Read more of this...
by
Hope, Alec Derwent (A D)
...Now the heart sings with all its thousand voices
To hear this city of cells, my body, sing.
The tree through the stiff clay at long last forces
Its thin strong roots and taps the secret spring.
And the sweet waters without intermission
Climb to the tips of its green tenement;
The breasts have borne the grace of their possession,
The lips ha...Read more of this...
by
Hope, Alec Derwent (A D)
...What pleasures have great princes? These: to know
Themselves reputed mad with pride or power;
To speak few words -- few words and short bring low
This ancient house, that city with flame devour;
To make old men, their father's enemies,
Drunk on the vintage of the former age;
To have great painters show their mistresses
Naked to the succeeding time; eng...Read more of this...
by
Hope, Alec Derwent (A D)
...Gliding through the still air, he made no sound;
Wing-shod and deft, dropped almost at her feet,
And searched the ghostly regiments and found
The living eyes, the tremor of breath, the beat
Of blood in all that bodiless underground.
She left her majesty; she loosed the zone
Of darkness and put by the rod of dread.
Standing, she turned her ba...Read more of this...
by
Hope, Alec Derwent (A D)
...What did I study in your School of Night?
When your mouth's first unfathomable yes
Opened your body to be my book, I read
My answers there and learned the spell aright,
Yet, though I searched and searched, could never guess
What spirits it raised nor where their questions led.
Those others, familiar tenants of your sleep,
The whisperers, the gr...Read more of this...
by
Hope, Alec Derwent (A D)
...At noon thepaper tigers roar
-- Miroslav Holub
The paper tigers roar at noon;
The sun is hot, the sun is high.
They roar in chorus, not in tune,
Their plaintive, savage hunting cry.
O, when you hear them, stop your ears
And clench your lids and bite your tongue.
The harmless paper tiger bears
Strong fascination for the young.
His ...Read more of this...