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:
- Владимир Степанов – Мишка (Буква М)
- “Flight to the Moon” by Nina Gabriel
- Infant Sorrow by William Blake
- Николай Языков – Поздравление М. Н. Дириной
- Identity of Images by Robert Desnos
- The Masks of Love
- Robert Burns: The Belles Of Mauchline:
- Robert Burns: Damon And Sylvia: Fragment
- The Mocking Bird by Timothy Thomas Fortune
- The Scholars by William Butler Yeats
- Orlando Furioso Canto 8 by Ludovico Ariosto
- Михаил Кузмин – Три раза я его видел лицом к лицу
- Robert Burns: The Twa Herds; Or, The Holy Tulyie: An Unco Mournfu’ Tale
- A Short View Of: The State Of Man by William Alexander
- Sonnet 11
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
- Wind on the Hill by AA Milne
- us_two_by_a_a_milne.html
- twinkletoes.html
- the_morning_walk.html
- the_kings_breakfast.html
- the_dormouse_and_the_doctor.html
- the_christening.html
- rice_pudding.html
- politeness.html
- missing.html
- market_square.html
- lines_and_squares.html
- if_i_were_king.html
- hoppity.html
- happiness.html
- come_out_with_me.html
- buckingham_palace.html
- brownie.html
- at_the_zoo.html
- Water Strider by Aaron Baker
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.