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:
- Reviving My Feminity poem – Amy Cavanaugh poems | Poems and Poetry
- Epigram at RoslinInn by Robert Burns
- How a Little Girl Sang by Vachel Lindsay
- English Poetry. Madison Julius Cawein. Forevermore. Мэдисон Джулиус Кавейн.
- Nettles by Vernon Scannell
- Among The Rice Fields
- A Man Young And Old: III. The Mermaid by William Butler Yeats
- Алексей Жемчужников – Себе
- Федор Сологуб – Во мне мечты мои цветут
- Commerce by Satish Verma
- The Sea and the Shadow by Paul Blackburn
- The Easter Egg Hunt by Roger Turner
- Blackmwore Maidens by William Barnes
- In Commendation Of Musick by William Strode
- Casualty by Seamus Heaney
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 Maids Story
- The Night
- The Mob
- The Midnight Mass
- The Magic Wand
- The Legend Of Lady Gertrude
- The Last Battle Of The Cid
- The Kind Word
- The Hands That Hang Down
- The Hand In The Dark
- The Future Verdict
- The Easter Decorations
- The Dawn
- The Dawn Of Gods Sabbath
- The Crown Of Thorns
- The Coo Of The Cushat
- The Candle Of The Lord
- The Baptistry
- Sic Vos Non Vobis
- Seed Time And Harvest
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.