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:
- Adam by Rainer Maria Rilke
- A Song : The Sparkling Eye by William Cowper
- Aesop poem – Andrew Lang poems
- Thou Reader. by Walt Whitman
- Sonnets CXVI: Let me not to the marriage of true minds by William Shakespeare
- Clinic by Rob Leatherman Sr.
- What the Coal-Heaver Said by Vachel Lindsay
- Sonnet 03
- Robert Burns: The Poet’s Progress : A Poem In Embryo
- Олег Бундур – Вовка дразнит Свету
- Second Epistle to Robert Graham, Esq., of Fintry by Robert Burns
- Валерий Брюсов – Е.Т. (Кто глаза ее оправил)
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Отзыв на вызов
- Love Is A Parallax by Sylvia Plath
- Федор Сологуб – Лепестками завялыми
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
- Path by Pierre Reverdy
- Pace of Life by Pierre Reverdy
- One More Awakening by Pawan Kumar
- Of You by Philo Ikonya
- O my faithful by Priyanka Tungana
- O Man by Pawan Kumar
- My Daughter by Preeth Nambiar
- Moonbeam flowers by Preeth Nambiar
- Miracles by Paul Hostovsky
- Mind Extempore by Pawan Kumar
- Lovers since Eternity by Preeth Nambiar
- Love Dale by Preeth Nambiar
- Loud Silence by Preethi Saravanakumar
- Life Passing by Pawan Kumar
- Letter to my father by Preeth Nambiar
- Let me Roam by Penny Leigh Moller
- Lamhe by Priyanka Tungana
- It is raining! by Preeth Nambiar
- It’s the Wrong Address by peggy boone
- Infinite Journey by Pawan Kumar
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.