A poem by Alec Derwent-Hope (1907–2000)
by Alec Derwent Hope
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 passion on
A scholar’s tranquil page.
The scholar takes his pen
And turns the bone about,
And writes those words again.
Once more they seethe and shout
And through a human brain
Undying hate rings out.
“I loved her when a maid;
I loathe and love the wife
That warms another’s bed:
Let him beware his life!”
The scholar’s hand is stayed;
His pen becomes a knife
To grave in living bone
The fierce archaic cry.
He sits and reads his own
Dull sum of misery.
A thousand years have flown
Before that ink is dry.
And, in a foreign tongue,
A man, who is not he,
Reads and his heart is wrung
This ancient grief to see,
And thinks: When I am dung,
What bone shall speak for me?
A few random poems:
- I Have Loved Hours At Sea by Sara Teasdale
- Deserted Gipsys Song Hillside Camp
- I Found A Few Old Letters by Rabindranath Tagore
- Come Gather Round Me, Parnellites by William Butler Yeats
- A City One Wish
- don_juan.html
- Haiku: His Little Drum by Monty Gilmer
- Николай Карамзин – Рогатому человеку
- A Letter to a Live Poet by Rupert Brooke
- Владимир Костров – Письмо в никуда
- Complimentary versicles to Jessie Lewars by Robert Burns
- Владимир Британишский – Младший брат
- Let It Be Forgotten by Sara Teasdale
- Bantams In Pine-Woods by Wallace Stevens
- Summer – The Second Pastoral; or Alexis poem – Alexander Pope
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
- The Old Revolutionary’s Room by Nijole Miliauskaite
- Ode of Welcome by Oliver St. John Gogarty
- O mother, O Merry by Nikunj Sharma
- My Invisible Valentine by Nin Andrews
- My first seen by Osman cisse Hanif
- My Government Frustrates Me by Olaniyi Beloved Abimbola
- Mother’s Love by Nin Andrews
- Living with Cancer by Nin Andrews
- Living in my Bliss by Nina Gabriel
- Life and Love by Nithin Purple
- Let’s pray the divine by Nikunj Sharma
- Knoxville Tennessee by Nikki Giovanni
- Journey Of Life by Nikhil Srinivas
- Jacaranda by Norma Martiri
- Inter-religion Wedding by Nisha Gopalakrishnan
- If I Were a Tree by Norma Martiri
- I was born with a cry by Nur Al-Alam
- How…? by Nizar Sartawi
- From: The Home We Will Never Live In That Place by Nijole Miliauskaite
- Heat Wave by Norma Martiri
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.