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:
- Lines to a Gentleman who sent a Newspaper by Robert Burns
- A Brook in the City by Robert Frost
- Николай Языков – Песня (От сердца дружные с вином)
- Looking In The Fire
- The Scarecrow by Ross D Tyler
- The First Part: Sonnet 3 – Ye who so curiously do paint your thoughts, by William Drummond
- Kashmiri Song By Juma
- The Jester by Rudyard Kipling
- Book Seventh [Residence in London] by William Wordsworth
- night_piece.html
- Now Finale to the Shore. by Walt Whitman
- All About You by Shel Silverstein
- The Mothering Blackness by Maya Angelou
- Юнна Мориц – Малиновая кошка
- Barter by Sara Teasdale
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
- Golden Eyes
- From Behind The Lattice
- Feroza
- Feroke
- Fate Knows No Tears
- Farewell
- Fancy
- Famine Song
- Early Love
- Disappointment
- Deserted Gipsys Song Hillside Camp
- Dedication
- Dedication To Malcolm Nicolson
- Camp Followers Song Gomal River
- Back To The Border
- Au Salon
- Atavism
- Ashore
- Among The Sandhills
- Among The Rice Fields
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.