A. D. Hope

Alec Derwent Hope (July 21 1907 – July 13 2000) was an Australian poet and essayist known for his satirical slant. He was also a critic, teacher and academic.

Quotes

  • And her five cities, like teeming sores,
    Each drains her: a vast parasite robber-state
    Where second-hand Europeans pullulate
    Timidly on the edge of alien shores.
    Yet there are some like me turn gladly home
    From the lush jungle of modern thought, to find
    The Arabian desert of the human mind,
    Hoping, if still from the deserts the prophets come,
    Such savage and scarlet as no green hills dare
    Springs in that waste, some spirit which escapes
    The learned doubt, the chatter of cultured apes
    Which is called civilization over there.
    • "Australia", sts. 5–7. Australian Poetry, 1944 (Sydney, 1945)
  • Her bulk of beauty, her stupendous grace
    Challenged the lion heart in his puny dust.
    Proudly his Moment looked him in the face:
    He rose to meet it as a hero must;
    Climbed the white mountain of unravished snow,
    Planted his tiny flag upon the peak.
    The smooth drifts, scarcely breathing, lay below.
    She did not take the trouble to smile or speak.
    And afterwards, it may have been in play,
    The enormous girl rolled over and squashed him flat;
    And as she could not send him home that way,
    Used him thereafter as a bedside mat.
    • "Conquistador", sts. 13–14. Meanjin (Spring 1947)
  • Adam had learned the jolly deed of kind:
    He took her in his arms and there and then
    Like the clean beasts, embracing from behind,
    Began in joy to found the breed of men.
  • Quaking muscles in the act of birth,
    Between her legs a pigmy face appear,
    And the first murderer lay upon the earth.
    • "Imperial Adam", st. 11, ll. 42–44. The Wandering Islands (1955)
  • Remembering how I planned to break the journey, to drive
    My own car one day, to have choice in my hands and my foot upon power,
    To see through the trumpet throat of vertiginous perspective
    My urgent Now explode continually into flower,
    To be the Eater of Time, a poet and not that sly
    Anus of mind the historian. It was so simple and plain
    To live by the sole, insatiable influx of the eye.
    But something went wrong with the plan: I am still on the train.
    • "Observation Car", sts. 10–11. Collected Poems, 1930–1965 (New York, 1966)
  • No hunter of the Age of Fable
    Had need to buckle in his belt;
    More game than he was ever able
    To take ran wild upon the veldt;
    Each night with roast he stocked his table,
    Then procreated on the pelt.
    And that is how, of course, there came
    At last to be more men than game.
    • "Conversation with Calliope", st. 79. Collected Poems (1966)
  • Darwin's daughters have no tails,
    Yet a reminiscent motion
    Agitates the lovely frails
    At the seat of amputation.
    Charles called Eve and Adam lies
    And denied the garden state,
    Yet the gait of Paradise
    Could not wholly liquidate.
    • "To Julia Walking Away", sts. 1–2. Collected Poems (1966)
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