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:
- When I Have Fears That I May Cease To Be poem – John Keats poems
- In The Forum poem – Alfred Austin
- The Rape of the Lock: Canto 3 poem – Alexander Pope poems | Poetry Monster
- The Lonely Climber: A Seed Poem by Mike Yuan
- Among The Rice Fields
- The Colloquy Beneath by Margaret Marie Hubbard
- Олег Бундур – Играю в школьном спектакле
- Goody Blake And Harry Gill by William Wordsworth
- 1914 IV: The Dead by Rupert Brooke
- An Expostulation to Lord King by Thomas Moore
- Sexual eyes poem – Andrew Vassell poems | Poems and Poetry
- It’s no use by Sappho
- Untitled XVIII by Yunus Emre
- English Poetry. Charles Lockhart. Epistle to a Friend, with a Copy of Burns’s Letters. Чарльз Локкарт. Послание другу при возвращении ему томиков стихов Бернса
- Behind a Wall poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
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
- In a Spring Grove by William Allingham
- Half-waking by William Allingham
- Down on the Shore by William Allingham
- Autumnal Sonnet by William Allingham
- An Evening by William Allingham
- Amy Margaret’s Five Year Old by William Allingham
- After Sunset by William Allingham
- Aeolian Harp by William Allingham
- Adieu to Belshanny by William Allingham
- Abbey Assaroe by William Allingham
- A Singer by William Allingham
- A Seed by William Allingham
- A Memory by William Allingham
- A Gravestone by William Allingham
- A Dream by William Allingham
- A Day-Dream’s Reflection by William Allingham
- Zunsheen In The Winter by William Barnes
- Zummer Thoughts In Winter Time by William Barnes
- Zummer Evenèn Dance by William Barnes
- A Zong by William Barnes
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.