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:
- Astrophel And Stella-Sonnet LIV by Sir Philip Sidney
- How Samson Bore Away the Gates of Gaza by Vachel Lindsay
- Crush by Muhereza Louis
- Lament For The Makers By William Dunbar
- Eternal Drift by Satish Verma
- On Tam the Chapman by Robert Burns
- Before Sleep poem – Ezra Pound poems
- To E. Fitzgerald: Tiresias poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- The Waters by W H Auden
- Василий Казин – Ожидание
- Crow’s Nerve Fails by Ted Hughes
- To Mrs. M. B. On Her Birthday poem – Alexander Pope
- Further You Go Longer You Stay
- The Wine by Sara Teasdale
- Алексей Ржевский – Ода Императору Петру Феодоровичу
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 Giver by Sara Teasdale
- The Gift by Sara Teasdale
- The Flight by Sara Teasdale
- The Faery Forest by Sara Teasdale
- The Dreams Of My Heart by Sara Teasdale
- The Crystal Gazer by Sara Teasdale
- The Coin by Sara Teasdale
- The Cloud by Sara Teasdale
- The Carpenter’s Son by Sara Teasdale
- The Broken Field by Sara Teasdale
- The Blind by Sara Teasdale
- The Answer by Sara Teasdale
- Spring In War Time by Sara Teasdale
- Soul’s Birth by Sara Teasdale
- A Song To Eleonora Duse In “Francesca da Rimini ” by Sara Teasdale
- Song At Capri by Sara Teasdale
- Since There Is No Escape by Sara Teasdale
- The Return by Sara Teasdale
- Pity by Sara Teasdale
- Pierrot’s Song by Sara Teasdale
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.