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: XCII by Sir Philip Sidney
- Fareweel To A’Our Scottish Fame by Robert Burns
- O the Chimneys by Nelly Sachs
- Robert Burns: My Love, She’s But A Lassie Yet:
- In Memoriam A. H. H.: Is it, then, regret for buried time poem – Lord Alfred Tennyson poems
- The Sea-Wife by Rudyard Kipling
- Among the Rocks by Robert Browning
- The Child an’ the Mowers by William Barnes
- To The Unattainable Lament Of Mahomed Akram
- Passion For Light
- Change
- Олег Григорьев – Тонет муха в сладости
- Impotens poem – Amy Levy poems | Poems and Poetry
- God’s Grandeur poem – Gerard Manley Hopkins poems
- The Inheritance by Thomas J Camp
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
- Warm are the Still and Lucky Miles by W H Auden
- Voltaire At Ferney by W H Auden
- Underneath an Abject Willow by W H Auden
- This Lunar Beauty by W H Auden
- They Wondered Why the Fruit had Been Forbidden by W H Auden
- The Waters by W H Auden
- The Wanderer by W H Auden
- The Two by W H Auden
- The Riddle by W H Auden
- The Quest by W H Auden
- The Quest XII (Vocation) by W H Auden
- The Novelist by W H Auden
- The Labyrinth by W H Auden
- The Hidden Law by W H Auden
- The Geography of the House by W H Auden
- The Dream by W H Auden
- The Common Life by W H Auden
- Thanksgiving for a Habitat by W H Auden
- Taller To-day by W H Auden
- Song Of The Master And Boatswain by W H Auden
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.