Alec Derwent (A D) Hope Poems

A collection of select Alec Derwent (A D) Hope famous poems that were written by Alec Derwent (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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Australia

 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...Read more of this...
by Hope, Alec Derwent (A D)


Commination

 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...Read more of this...
by Hope, Alec Derwent (A D)

Conquistador

 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...Read more of this...
by Hope, Alec Derwent (A D)

Crossing the Frontier

 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 Shame; 
And,...Read more of this...
by Hope, Alec Derwent (A D)

Death of the Bird

 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,...Read more of this...
by Hope, Alec Derwent (A D)


Easter Hymn

 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...Read more of this...
by Hope, Alec Derwent (A D)

Meditation on a Bone

 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,...Read more of this...
by Hope, Alec Derwent (A D)

Morning Coffee

 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, temporary Tantalus 
Into...Read more of this...
by Hope, Alec Derwent (A D)

Observation Car

 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...Read more of this...
by Hope, Alec Derwent (A D)

Parabola

 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)

Phallus

 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...Read more of this...
by Hope, Alec Derwent (A D)

Standardization

 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, less industrial stars...Read more of this...
by Hope, Alec Derwent (A D)

The Commination

 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...Read more of this...
by Hope, Alec Derwent (A D)

The Gateway

 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...Read more of this...
by Hope, Alec Derwent (A D)

The Pleasure of Princes

 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; engage

The cunning...Read more of this...
by Hope, Alec Derwent (A D)

The Return of Persephone

 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...Read more of this...
by Hope, Alec Derwent (A D)

The School of Night

 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,...Read more of this...
by Hope, Alec Derwent (A D)

Tiger

 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 forest...Read more of this...
by Hope, Alec Derwent (A D)
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