A poem by Alec Derwent-Hope (1907–2000)
by Alec Derwent Hope
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 grave somnambulists
Whose eyes turn in to scrutinize their woe,
The giant who broods above the nightmare steep,
That sleeping girl, shuddering, with clenched fists,
A vampire baby suckling at her toe,
They taught me most. The scholar held his pen
And watched his blood drip thickly on the page
To form a text in unknown characters
Which, as I scanned them, changed and changed again:
The lines grew bars, the bars a Delphic cage
And I the captive of his magic verse.
A few random poems:
- Daffodil Dreams by Vaishnavi Prakash
- Шекспир – Чтобы стихи, рожденные когда-то – Сонет 38
- L’Art poem – Ezra Pound poems
- With Ships the Sea was Sprinkled Far and Nigh by William Wordsworth
- Sow by Sylvia Plath
- A View of the Han River by Wang Wei
- Drowning. Not Waving by P.J.Reed
- Николай Огарев – Отцу
- Вероника Тушнова – У каждого есть в жизни хоть одно,
- Hope A-Left Behind by William Barnes
- Владимир Маяковский – С Польшей подписан мир… (РОСТА №428)
- Ballade Of The Midnight Forest poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Development of Indian English Poetry
- An Epigram From Homer by William Cowper
- Dolphin by Robert Lowell
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
- Dumb poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- Dionysus poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- Colophon poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- Boo to Buddha poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- Ave Adonai poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- Au Bal poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- Athor and Asar poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- At Sea poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- At Bordj-an-Nus poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- Arhan poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- An Oath poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- Adela poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster
- Tiger
- The School of Night
- The Return of Persephone
- The Pleasure of Princes
- The Gateway
- The Commination
- Standardization
- Phallus
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.